"so-called" composers

Well that's why moderation is necessary. Someone answering "just cuz, lol" to all questions is as well not answering them.

Oh yeah, and that member is a good example of what should NOT be allowed. He's hogging up space with "here's this, bye" threads. Not cool.

SSC, that word, "Colloqium" is awesome. Why have I never heard it before? As a moderator, I think I'd be willing to pitch in on cracking down on new posts in the upload forums. It's a very simple and sweet solution to some of the problems we're having. When somebody posts a piece with what we feel is an inadequate introduction, explanation, or other delivery, we kindly PM them asking them to include more information regarding the piece. We suggest certain basic items that they could include, such as a mandatory outline like SSC's (Why? How? Happy?) with additional suggestions like those requested from uploads on the old YC. Failure to comply will result in us hiding the thread until compliance. (not that we'll have to resort to that, but suggesting it will get people off their asses and actually write a presentation.)

If some members (like dark, and others) have a difficult time expressing their thoughts in English, they could work together with a moderator to outline a good deliverance for the post and there will be no issues.

I agree that it should be a single text box and that you give the posters guidelines for how to go about it' date=' but not enforce strictly that they do it in that order. So long as what they're saying touches on those points, it should be fine.

And yeah, the only way to enforce it would be to moderate manually.[/quote']This. Yes.

a website like YC may fulfil several functions:

- To allow the deposit of musical compositions with or without preliminary selection

- To receive the commentaries , in order to comment the compositions and to help the composers

- A positive goal consist’s in detecting and promoting promising compositions

- Another positive goal is, if such should prove to be the case, to deliver the majority from their illusions, which is painful but salutary .

Last comments relate to presentation of the compositions and insist on its importance for their appreciation . Personally, I think that a musical work is a whole, like a painting, a book, a building, a landscape etc which should be appreciable without any reference to the composer’s motivation, or its elaboration. Music should

suffice to itself. When you go to a good restaurant, you appreciate good dishes and you do not visit the kitchen.

Thereupon its obvious that the analytic elements and the composer’s ideas and motivations about his composition, bring us a plus to the understanding and appreciation of the work . I thought that the need of preliminary explanations was a typical french fault , as french people is supposed to have a less instinctive approach to music than german or english people, but manifestly I was wrong! The problem is, that in most cases, the provided elements are misleading and refuted by listening. Either the composer is clever with his presentation, and then you listen to his music, or he is awkward or doesn’t submit any presentation and than he risks not to be listened . For these reasons, I think that to give to much importance to presentation is a two edge sword, with the result that interesting compositions may be completely neglected.. Its better to listen first and, if you like it, you can enlarge your appreciation with analytic elements, composer’s ideas and so on. Those who give so much importance to presentation should remember that they discovered and liked works from past only by listening them and only later enlarged their knowledge by analytic etc elements.

I don’t understand for which reason my wish to a policy of promotion inside the site would impose a standart quality or a particular style (Gardner). I think that YC is devoted to “classical music” and this concept includes various styles: its not the goal of the site to preveledge a particular style.

To say that YC should not become a site of “good music” (Gardner) has no great signification.: YC lodges a lot of compositions and if YC has a promotional vocation it is necessary to choose. If YC has not this vocation,, it will become the depot of innumerable pieces and nobody will find his way in this jungle.

Sincerely Yours

Last comments relate to presentation of the compositions and insist on its importance for their appreciation . Personally, I think that a musical work is a whole, like a painting, a book, a building, a landscape etc which should be appreciable without any reference to the composer

A member called "Gold" in electronic, well it was always very difficult for him to say a word about his music, ... (very abstract stuff) because he used to handle no special meaning, he couldn't remember when did he do it, how much time did he spent etc etc ....so specific question may not work sometimes, but we can make the composer to remember things by adding a few questions, yes, that is true, so I support the idea just we have to find very centered questions.

Well, Gold was (or is; did he leave?) exactly one of those people SSC and I may have been thinking about, who posted -tons- of music in short time without actually presenting anything. It may have been good music (I didn't listen to much of it so I can't really say), but in my opinion the sheer mass of it, combined with the lack of presentation diminished it vastly. I'm simply not interested in listening to dozens of pieces posted by a composer within a day and giving detailed reviews on each of them, if it seems the composer just puts everything she or he produces immediately on YC without much further thought. Again, this has not much to do with the quality of music, but more with the fact that I feel less inclined in being thorough and considerate in writing about a piece if the composer her- or himself isn't.

If YC has not this vocation,, it will become the depot of innumerable pieces and nobody will find his way in this jungle.

I don't really know whether YC has a definite vocation and what it is, but asking the composers themselves to be considerate and careful when presenting their music will automately make this place less of a "jungle". Just limiting the number of posted pieces based on judges' selections does -not- guarantee that the music I am interested in will be posted here and other music won't be, because I'm sure that I have quite different views on what "interesting music" is than a lot of such possible judges.

So the place might still stay a jungle containing lots of music that doesn't interest me at all, yet also -not- contain a lot of music that does interest me anymore. It is not always the "well crafted" music that I enjoy listening or commenting on. There's a lot of music here which seems perfectly "well done" within a certain idiom I don't care about at all, while there are many other pieces that show great insecurities by the composer and maybe a lack of refinement that still contain ideas that I find very fascinating. An informational presentation of each piece would probably help me more in this respect than a preselection by an arbitrary jury.

I don't know, to be honest. Maybe some liner notes would be nice, but a piece uploaded is a piece uploaded. I think the Rihm quote is mad, mad applicable.

But then again, the way that I present pieces on my blog is the way I'd prefer to present them. Sometimes that means a long and detailed summary, sometimes it's meaninglessness. To choke off the meaninglessness, the lack of context, might be more damaging than to not have the chaff.

Honestly, its the people who blather on and on about their music that makes me rather not listen. How many paragraphs have we read, only to hear a pastiche?

Honestly, its the people who blather on and on about their music that makes me rather not listen. How many paragraphs have we read, only to hear a pastiche?

Oh, that's definitely true. A long presentation definitely doesn't equal a good presentation (and sometimes the contrary). And there are of course also other aspects that play into the "presentation" idea than the verbal description, such as a clear, legible score (in PDF format), if applicable, etc. I don't think we can make clear rules about what constitutes a good presentation and there obviously should be some leeway there. But I still think it's a topic people should be made aware of when posting music and it should be left to the moderators' discretion to reject pieces that appear to have been presented too sloppily and ask the poster to elaborate a bit.

Last but not least, it's also a question of a person's "posting history". If someone posts two new pieces every day without comment, with grammar mistakes in the title, possibly without ever reviewing the music of others, that's borderline spamming and definitely should be discouraged in my opinion. If an active forum member who presents one of her or his own pieces generally in a very considerate way decides in one case to cut his description down to a single short sentence that's a slightly different thing for me and a thing I would happily accept. As I said, Wolfgang Rihm is generally a very verbose composer who gives much thought to what he says about his music, so when he decides one day to cut it down to a short, somewhat humorous sentence you can assume that he did it very consciously and isn't just a lazy donkey.

I too take the stance that a description about a piece of music is more likely to receive better quality reviews, than a piece posted with a rushed description.

To say that YC should not become a site of “good music” (Gardner) has no great signification.: YC lodges a lot of compositions and if YC has a promotional vocation it is necessary to choose. If YC has not this vocation,, it will become the depot of innumerable pieces and nobody will find his way in this jungle.

All kinds of music will be uploaded to YC, but we now have a rating system in place in which we can search for music by popular vote. So we can filter through the better music with ease by genre, form, key signature, and more. Thus, this problem has now been solved.

You know, I created my Wiki profile a few days ago, and I was about to post a short bio (I thought that could be enough) but before creating the page I read all Chopin wrote about how to create a profile, and I saw a very helpful tool ..... A Profile example of how it should look ..... just by looking that profile I got a very and more precise idea of what to write and I even recalled other things I wasn't about to post.

Maybe we could develop an example page for each type or piece, piano, orchestra, choir, etc ..... like saying "look, that's how you have to do it" and there we add all those questions and that stuff...

[Edit]

Like those Curriculum Templates, sometimes you want to create a curriculum but you don't even know how to start it, well you see that template and you got "inspired" ...... templates for the threads in Uploading section

[/Edit]

Also, I'd say that .sib and .mus score may not be allowed, PDF only, (the is no pretext to not creating a PDF) because 2 things, some have Sibelius and no FInale, or Finale and no Sibelius, besides, now with VST configurationas and "automatic channels" according to "local-installed" sound-sets, make that you download a sib that may play correctly in the other member's PC but not in MY PC, (same problem with Finale)

About posting MIDI, how could we help those who have no libraries ? .. free rendering services :hmmm: who's going to do that ?

About posting MIDI, how could we help those who have no libraries ? .. free rendering services :hmmm: who's going to do that ?

Not anybody that has a life.

Maybe we could develop an example page for each type or piece, piano, orchestra, choir, etc ..... like saying "look, that's how you have to do it" and there we add all those questions and that stuff...

[Edit]

Like those Curriculum Templates, sometimes you want to create a curriculum but you don't even know how to start it, well you see that template and you got "inspired" ...... templates for the threads in Uploading section

[/Edit]

So would this be acceptable?:http://www.youngcomposers.com/forum/guitar-piece-17682.html

i'm guessing no, and maybe that it was passedover mostly might prove some points. But that's how i wanted to present it, for better or worse.

That's why i'm sort of against stringent rules about it.

Ferk - that "presentation" was laughable. In fact, I could hardly understand what you were trying to say. You guessed it wasn't acceptable. I would tend to agree. You didn't explain anything about the piece at all - just how you recorded it. If you had explained the piece, I would have listened to it...

The more a poster says, the more feedback they're likely to get. I've seen this again and again. Lengthy detailed presentations often result in deep and helpful discussion on the piece. People who just post a link and say "enjoy!" usually get 1 or 2 responses (more if they're lucky) that are along the lines of "that was good keep up the good work" "good job" "that was nice i lieked it" "i didnt like it didnt sound lik emusic"

So would this be acceptable?:http://www.youngcomposers.com/forum/guitar-piece-17682.html

i'm guessing no, and maybe that it was passedover mostly might prove some points. But that's how i wanted to present it, for better or worse.

That's why i'm sort of against stringent rules about it.

Oh, so you're awesome enough to not have to give any explanations for your work?

Y'know, you'd get booted out of any respectable seminar for doing something like that, and it's obviously because even if it's "that's how I wanted to present it" nobody cares how YOU wanted to present it. The presentation isn't for YOU, it's for US.

If you have a long history of doing it properly and you don't feel like repeating the same things or so on, like the Rihm example, I can understand. But nobody should get otherwise a free pass. The point of explaining something is so that you can put stuff into words and write it/say it; you're not participating just to show off but to actually engage in a dialogue with people who are going to listen to it.

If I had listened to that thing you did, my first questions would be exactly what you should've already said in your presentation at the VERY LEAST. And y'see, I don't care for asking every single person the same exact questions, nor would any professor or teacher. You do it because it's automatically expected of you as a composer to address what is of interest to other composers.

This is why you write a presentation properly. Don't mix ideas, you're not showing off, you're trying to open up a dialogue. If the dialogue has to be started by people responding to you by asking the things you should've already said, you're doing it wrong.

So I repeat: This has to be taught and enforced. If someone just wants to show off their scraggy and don't care for comments, they can go to youtube.

See, now I don't know what you'd be looking for in that piece. And I'm willing to learn.

All the things that I'd want a listener to focus on are there:

Effectiveness of recording style (using jvc headphones, direct to computer; low-fi, informal setting via leaving the TV on, having the volume low, use of effects, largely destroyfx's free bundle)

Use of an acoustic guitar with a rattle bridge.

The only thing I missed that may be relevant in my eyes is the fact that it's improvised, but I didn't want to bring any attention to that.

I certainly see your point about presentations being for the reader, not the composer. Yet the presentation is simply an extension of the piece, the way you want people to look at it -- and that gives people more of an idea, even if the mentality taken towards it is immature or petulant. Also, yeah, I'm an egotist and do sort of take the lower road of "look at my music" than "help me grow," despite a want to hear legitimate opinions.

edit: Looking back, i saw james's "about the piece" thing. I dunno I think the piece itself is straightforward enough. But I'm coming at this from a perspective that uses very little context, which is more album-oriente than "piece"

I want to make clear this sin't about my piece per se; I think what y'all are proposing is likely a good idea, except that I think it limits the kinds of presentations available; that alternatives to the more theoretical presentations (the example is not necessarily a good one) are wholly legitimate and equally beneficial.

I'm kinda glancing over some of this and was reminded of something that's stupid.

Who needs to post soundfiles?? Scores alone are pretty acceptable. I'd never post a soundfile with any of my pieces. Playback is just plain asanine for a rendering for a lot of pieces.

Oh, I fully agree that nothing more than a score should be required (unless of course the piece can't be represented well by a score in the first place, such as in a lot of electronic music etc.). I too would prefer only to post a score of a piece if I don't have a live (or studio) recording of it. But generally I only post pieces here -if- I have a live recording (with a single exception for a specific reason) because I do prefer also being able to listen to a piece and I know that many are uncomfortable relying on a score alone. Soundfiles just are a more immediate representation than having to interpret a score, so I can perfectly understand when people want them - or when people are also happy to post sample renderings/midis, even though I personally want to avoid that (because I don't feel they can represent my music as I imagine it and tend to give a quite wrong impression).

Oh, I fully agree that nothing more than a score should be required (unless of course the piece can't be represented well by a score in the first place, such as in a lot of electronic music etc.). I too would prefer only to post a score of a piece if I don't have a live (or studio) recording of it. But generally I only post pieces here -if- I have a live recording (with a single exception for a specific reason) because I do prefer also being able to listen to a piece and I know that many are uncomfortable relying on a score alone. Soundfiles just are a more immediate representation than having to interpret a score, so I can perfectly understand when people want them - or when people are also happy to post sample renderings/midis, even though I personally want to avoid that (because I don't feel they can represent my music as I imagine it and tend to give a quite wrong impression).

Yeah, I feel the exact same way.

People on here... I remember correctly... have insisted that a soundfile is necessary.

See, now I don't know what you'd be looking for in that piece. And I'm willing to learn.

All the things that I'd want a listener to focus on are there:

Effectiveness of recording style (using jvc headphones, direct to computer; low-fi, informal setting via leaving the TV on, having the volume low, use of effects, largely destroyfx's free bundle)

Use of an acoustic guitar with a rattle bridge.

The only thing I missed that may be relevant in my eyes is the fact that it's improvised, but I didn't want to bring any attention to that.

I already posted the typical questions. Why did you write it? What was the process? Did you improvise it, was it with a guide of some sorts? Did you have a idea of what you wanted to do before you started? ETC ETC ETC.

There's a thousand things you can say that helps understand the piece. If you don't do it, then I have to ask and that gets tiring if everyone thinks they can get away with just doing what you did. That may be fine, again, for a youtube description or something, but here where you have people who may want actively participate and they can't if you don't give them more info. They'll have to ask you and most won't, so you'll end up with one-line comments like CO's there.

PS: There are pieces where having a soundfile is completely moot, specially if they're improvisatory/aleatory/etc things. A score must be the only requirement save for electronic pieces, really.

I'm kinda glancing over some of this and was reminded of something that's stupid.

Who needs to post soundfiles?? Scores alone are pretty acceptable. I'd never post a soundfile with any of my pieces. Playback is just plain asanine for a rendering for a lot of pieces.

Compared to what? Silence? Every time I hear that "oh no! mp3s and playback is stoopid, it don't sound good" routine, I try to figure out why. If you'd be so inclined, go and practice your score reduction skills and play it on a piano. Guaranteed, it won't be as accurate nor in the original medium (say if the original was an orchestral piece), so how could it be a better representation of the piece? The computer playback is the closest we have to an accurate representation, some renderings more accurate than others. I mean, theoretically, playback can indeed sound as realistic as a live performance, if one takes the time to tweak every possible aspect of the performance on the computer. BUT, most of us plebeian composers don't have the time or energy to do so, neither do all of us have the Vienna Symphonic Cube. So the Sibelius or Finale playback is the best we got. Why shouldn't it be used? If you *really* think that it will give a bad impression, then give a disclaimer, or, in an extreme case, make a piano reduction and post that. If you are really that opposed to it, one would take steps like that and not leave most of us in the dark.

Honestly, I would require a .PDF score and a .mp3 rendering in EVERY case (except in the very rare case of improvised or perhaps electronic where it is only sequenced music, not notated). That way, when we comment on music, we can see the score that would be handed to the performer, and hear an approximation of that score. I'll wager to say that most of the people on this site don't have the ability to just read a score and automatically figure out what it sounds like in their head. Those that wish to ignore the audio may do so at their discretion, but to serve the larger community, I'd rather require the both.

Another reason to REQUIRE the score, which I jump down younger composer's throats if they don't add one, is the fact that classical music is predominantly an acoustic medium where real people play the piece. The score is the notation that tells said real people what to play. So the notation of the score is just as important, or even more important than what the notes are themselves. To have a clean score is of the utmost importance for clean performances, especially when rehearsal time is limited for the ensemble. I have seen horror stories of how a really brilliant piece would be rejected for performance on the grounds of a score that looks like cow dung and parts that look worse. This should be avoided at all costs and the skills of proper notation must be taught to the younger composers if they are at all serious. In my mind, no matter the quality of the composition in question, if the composer takes the time out to fix up the score and actually make it look nice, I can tell they are more serious about composition than the lazy teenager who just wrote something "just cuz. lol." I will therefore pay his piece more attention even if, compositionally, the piece is junk.

Just throwing that out there.

The major problem I see with requiring an mp3 is the following: People who'll rely on that alone to review a piece, without actually looking at the score and then getting completely false ideas about the piece. There may be some music where this still allows you to get an idea of what the music is supposed to sound like (or maybe this even is what the music is supposed to sound like), but in a lot of other cases that is not the case. Especially in pieces that focus heavily on instrumentation, sound qualities, extended techniques etc. that all can't really be imitated with normal samples. And even if it -was- possible with a lot of work, I honestly don't think I should be required to spend a lot of time and effort to make a virtual recording sound great if its actual purpose is to be played by humans.

As I said, I've only once posted a piece of mine where I didn't have a live recording and posted a sample-based mp3 instead for the benefit of those who prefer that to a score alone. I now regret doing that, because immediately there were people who based their comments on the recording alone without reading the score and therefore got some quite false impressions (since the score contains lots of things that can't be imitated with samples at all, at least not with the ones I have at my disposal).

Of course, you could say: Well, if you don't want to deal with that, then simply don't post any music unless you have a high-quality recording of great musicians. But do we really want to go there? As I said, I still don't tend to post my music if I don't have a recording of it, but I'd like to be allowed to, and keep it to a score. If that excludes some people from accessing my music, that may be regrettable - but I still should not be forced to present my piece in a way that I feel misrepresents it.

The major problem I see with requiring an mp3 is the following: People who'll rely on that alone to review a piece, without actually looking at the score and then getting completely false ideas about the piece. There may be some music where this still allows you to get an idea of what the music is supposed to sound like (or maybe this even is what the music is supposed to sound like), but in a lot of other cases that is not the case. Especially in pieces that focus heavily on instrumentation, sound qualities, extended techniques etc. that all can't really be imitated with normal samples. And even if it -was- possible with a lot of work, I honestly don't think I should be required to spend a lot of time and effort to make a virtual recording sound great if its actual purpose is to be played by humans.

As I said, I've only once posted a piece of mine where I didn't have a live recording and posted a sample-based mp3 instead for the benefit of those who prefer that to a score alone. I now regret doing that, because immediately there were people who based their comments on the recording alone without reading the score and therefore got some quite false impressions (since the score contains lots of things that can't be imitated with samples at all, at least not with the ones I have at my disposal).

Of course, you could say: Well, if you don't want to deal with that, then simply don't post any music unless you have a high-quality recording of great musicians. But do we really want to go there? As I said, I still don't tend to post my music if I don't have a recording of it, but I'd like to be allowed to, and keep it to a score. If that excludes some people from accessing my music, that may be regrettable - but I still should not be forced to present my piece in a way that I feel misrepresents it.

Granted, and I totally see where your coming from. But then what would be the harm of a disclaimer saying to look at the score before commenting? Often reviewers on this site are lazy and won't bother looking at the score, which really is a habit that needs to be broken around here. So many reviews are "yeah, I like that part where the horns come in." Well, there could be hundreds of points like that in a long piece. How does one know (save for time code markings)? One should use the score and .mp3 together as an approximate totality of an interpretation of a piece. Indeed, even the score alone won't garner a true representation of a work because little things (like micro-expressions of phrases for example) won't be written in the score but will be expected by players to add on their own using their own taste. And, naturally, that taste can vary from player to player. So I agree with you that only a live performance would truly do the piece justice, but most of us are young composers who don't have that available. So should we just let the synthesized version be put down? That would be unfair to the people reviewing because I believe, in order to have a truly thorough review of a work, you have to have both, not either or.

I supposed as a compromise that the mp3 shouldn't be absolutely mandatory but required, but then I just end up right where I started in that you should have both to review it properly. Perhaps some others could chime in on this issue?

Hmm, it has been brought to my attention that some of my posted pieces don't have a score either and that the ones that used to (i.e. most of them), no longer do, to the most part, since I removed them at some point. Makes me look a bit hypocritical, eh?

The fact that I originally posted some of my pieces without a score (and only a recording) was simply that the score was handwritten in an unwieldy format and it would have been impractical to scan it (not even to mention that I don't -have- a scanner). I know of some other members here who have never shared scores for similar reasons (such as charliep). I guess in the end that makes me come to the selfish, revised conclusion (:P) that it should be acceptable to present your piece with either score, recording, or rendering/midi if you have a good reason for excluding other formats. After all, my point about not forcing people to present their pieces in a way they feel inadequate should extend to scores as well. (And after all, the sounding music is the thing we always -do- base our "reviews" on when we're normal concert visitors/criticists etc.) But if you people feel a score should still be required, that's something I can still understand very well and will comply in future.

Hmm, it has been brought to my attention that some of my posted pieces don't have a score either and that the ones that used to (i.e. most of them), no longer do, to the most part, since I removed them at some point. Makes me look a bit hypocritical, eh?

The fact that I originally posted some of my pieces without a score (and only a recording) was simply that the score was handwritten in an unwieldy format and it would have been impractical to scan it (not even to mention that I don't -have- a scanner). I know of some other members here who have never shared scores for similar reasons (such as charliep). I guess in the end that makes me come to the selfish, revised conclusion (:P) that it should be acceptable to present your piece with either score, recording, or rendering/midi if you have a good reason for excluding other formats. After all, my point about not forcing people to present their pieces in a way they feel inadequate should extend to scores as well. (And after all, the sounding music is the thing we always -do- base our "reviews" on when we're normal concert visitors/criticists etc.) But if you people feel a score should still be required, that's something I can still understand very well and will comply in future.

Yeah-- and I never share anything on this website at all.

Hmmmmmmmmmm.

I don't know if this is too much ... but, would be good to have something to see what members have seen your thread

Since I liked this idea a lot, I had the developers implement this into our system. Members can browse anonymously if they choose to do so.

ok, but, Where are those things and functions, ? is that the "invisible mode" ?

Where can I see who have seen my threads ? (without browsing in that hidden mode you mention)

I checked the "special pages" but I could find it.