Scheduling A Virtual Meeting Concerning Problems Of This Site

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This is surely a great idea. There is a place in this forum where people can share lessons, start small courses and things like this. As you are confident in this idiomatic field, why don't you start a small regular course about it? I would love to join it^^

I'm just writing the first lesson now! Exciting stuff :) 

Heh. Remember the days when Mods and Admins had meetings on Skype every month or two? Some of those discussions were actually quite good. Did it do anything? No. 

ThatGuy is right. It is all about what *we* do as a community, not the site itself. Mike will be forced to fix things if the place is viable; right now it is not. Being a great lover of this site and a member for seven (!) years now, there's been a lot of up and downs with the site. Most of the ups were in the "old days" when the site was on Vboard and all brown and disgusting. It wasn't pretty to look at, but that wasn't the point. We all loved it because the community was viable to be worth one's interaction. Reviews, while rarely detailed analyses, were truthful and helpful, from the heart. You occasionally see that today but its rare. What really needs to happen is the *community* gets working on building a community. The problem is, I feel so discouraged involving myself here (for several reasons) that my contributions will be for naught. Its apathy that kills any community, not a site's design. 

But, in fairness, that banner has GOT to go...

^Yup. :)

Having been here 8 years, I can say the same thing! I loved the site back in 2006-2009ish. It was an amazing time for us as a community because we ALL wrote pieces and shared them. We had more discussion NOT on music (specifically) than we did on music. Around 2010, I think, there was a movement to discontinue the excess talk about other stuff because it became very, very heated and people started acting like children. We had members who brought the off-topic discussion INTO the reviews forums. It was pretty weird. 

We had people who just... started leaving. I mean, I took a hiatus in 2013. *shrugs* So, we can either build a new community, or let YC die a natural death.

The community suffered from a bunch of teenagers being teenagers. The only thing one can do in that case is just hope that common sense and civility prevail. Often it didn't, and with Mike at the helm, his constant site changes certainly didn't help. 

But, in fairness, that banner has GOT to go...

I like the banner.

In fact I think we should have another banner at the bottom of the page, which pops up as you scroll down. That would be awesome.

I like the banner.

 

In fact I think we should have another banner at the bottom of the page, which pops up as you scroll down. That would be awesome.

I especially like viewing the (full) site on mobile devices: the edges of my screen tend to have lives of their own, which isn't at all irritating.

So I know I'm VERY new here, but I think the thoughts of someone who has literally just joined may be useful for you all.

 

 

I think something really useful would be some key resources and indeed lessons to help understand instrumental idioms. I may be new to this site, but years of orchestration classes are what have made me into the composer I am today. Understanding real instruments, that are played by real people is essential to anyone who plans to write acoustic music. Just looking around it's obvious to me that there are people here with real talent, but that talent needs to be backed up with solid, academic grounding. I've seen pieces that are wonderful -  in theory - if the flute could play forte in it's low register or if the violin could actually play a double stop on the D and E strings. So much of the talent here needs to be consolidated with good knowledge, a composer should know the principals of every instrument and having an easily accessible page teaching people about these instruments would be very useful.

 

 

My next idea is a little out there, but as a composer a live performance of my music is the best thing I could ever hope for. I wonder how many of you are also talented instrumentalist who could actually go away and record some compositions or even perform them! I'm very lucky to study in a university that is dedicated to performing student compositions, because a real person playing your music is so useful. So for you competitions why not give a prize, choose the instrumentation based on the performers on the site and then the winner gets a recording of their piece. For instance I could easily record a string quartet piece... it makes it harder with larger ensemble works I know, but in many ways composing for a small group of instruments or solo instruments is actually more difficult, so it could be a real challenge for the competitions! 

These are things that are consistently suggested that are always followed by incredibly poor execution. It is very rare for an instrumentalist to follow through on recording pieces, if anyone volunteers in the first place.

Lessons were attempted on here, but they were incredibly unsuccessful because of incredibly poor execution. I tried to demonstrate the proper way to go about it, and met with marginal success but considerably more than the site achieved. In any case, my lessons were thrown off of the site and I had to operate independently with the students I had acquired. Because, you know, I'm a jerk. And I wasn't one of the official teachers who asked for astronomical fees without any credibility to back up the price.

Which I'm still able to do, although I don't have any current students.

To drive traffic to this site could you use Twitter and do an automated link every time someone posts a new composition? 

To drive traffic to this site could you use Twitter and do an automated link every time someone posts a new composition? 

Twitter integration would be interesting...

An official youtube page  would also help the site grow. It could feature videos of YC's best pieces...

Twitter integration would be interesting...

An official youtube page  would also help the site grow. It could feature videos of YC's best pieces...

Both were tried once upon a time, and they failed miserably because of the time effort necessary to make them useful. 

Both were tried once upon a time, and they failed miserably because of the time effort necessary to make them useful. 

Surely all that's needed is an 'advertisement'. If there were like 10 of the best pieces on a decent looking youtube channel and description of the site, then lots of people could flock to the site. I've seen lots of people posting their compositions on youtube without so much as one review: these are the people who would enjoy this site. :)

I go for the "help google find you" approach.  Make sure that key searchable words are on the main page as text that google can find, not as images in larger fancy backgrounds.  Make sure the most relevant words someone who wants to find this site would search for are there.  

And link to YC from other places, so google knows we're important.  I talk us up all the time.  (: