We will be moving to YoungComposers.com

I've been in contact with Mark Richer, the owner of the site, and it turns out the board should be moving there within a few weeks. I am not going to give details at the present time because some things are uncertain, but what is fairly certain is that we will move the board over there and the site will resume being updated regularly with new compositions, thus ending the spell lasting several years when nothing was updated.

Which is good news. :(

Oooh, now, this is very exciting news indeed. If we move over to youngcomposers.com then we wll hardly have to worry at all about all the old members coming back in.

And if it comes to it (which I hope it doesn't) I much prefer these boards over the ones currently on the site. (Who doesn't?) The engine is much, much better and the boards feel much more professional. The only thing they lack at this point (ahem, Mike) is some customization to make them not look so generic.

Oooh, now, this is very exciting news indeed. If we move over to youngcomposers.com then we wll hardly have to worry at all about all the old members coming back in.

And if it comes to it (which I hope it doesn't) I much prefer these boards over the ones currently on the site. (Who doesn't?) The engine is much, much better and the boards feel much more professional. The only thing they lack at this point (ahem, Mike) is some customization to make them not look so generic.

I just stopped by to say hello.

We do need to work out various details to make things sustainable financially, but I'm also excited for Mike's offer to help reinvigorate youngcomposers.com. It doesn't matter to me about the message board software, so we can move this new one over to our server. We'd like to bring the rest of the site out of dormancy too, but as Mike said, we need to work out details on how to make that possible.

I'm in Boulder, CO, 51 years old, with three teenage daughters (15, 15 and 19). The oldest was a very good pianist, but hasn't played in years as she seems to have other interests. My 15 year old twins (well almost 16 now) play bass and drums and are into contemporary alternative pop and rock music mostly. None have taken an interest in music composition yet ... my wife actually started the site almost 10 years ago because it was a personal interest of hers. She's been too busy the last few years to have any involvement, one of several reasons the site has been stale. Her nephew Billy used to update the site until we couldn't pay him anymore so that was another reason for it going into hybernation. I think Billy (William Thompson on the site) might have already graduated from USC by now, but he was studying film music composition there when he was a student.

Well that's it for now. The first thing to do is to prepare the server for the new message board. Stay tuned and Mike will announce progress on this.

I'm sure you guys must have so many backup submissions by now that sorting through them all seems nothing short of a daunting and near impossible task. Thanks for the update, Mark. I hope you and Mike will continue to update us on the financial situation and let us know if any minor contributions could be made to help the cause. :happy:

On a pretty unrelated note: Your (wife's) nephew goes to USC? That's where I'm headed this fall, for music composition. Do you know if he is still there?

I'm sure you guys must have so many backup submissions by now that sorting through them all seems nothing short of a daunting and near impossible task. Thanks for the update, Mark. I hope you and Mike will continue to update us on the financial situation and let us know if any minor contributions could be made to help the cause.

Just to say, well done Mike on getting this ball rolling. Hopefully this will have a happy ending! Good work... :unsure:

Financial contributions are always welcome. You can donate via paypal at paypal@ableminds.com or send a check to Able Minds, 1750-1 30th St, #170, Boulder, CO 80301. If you send any money, please indicate who it is from (your screen name from which forum) and for what purpose. I receive money for other forums so I need to keep things sorted out. The first thing I need to do is get this forum moved to my server, and I might need to pay my mysql/php guy for help if we run into any obstacles.

For financial reasons, I stopped supporting youngcomposers altogether. Business is finally picking up again in general, but not to hire anyone on staff to help. If we had enough money, however, I could hire a contractor to do any work that is needed.

My nephew Billy (on my wife's side) graduated from USC already -- I recently heard from him actually as he asked me to host a movie teaser for something his older brother is trying to pitch to producers. Billy's doing quite well teaching music and being an accompaniest at a church. He is going by the name William Thompson-Sturdivant. He was interested in film composition (e.g., a big star wars fan) so I think he eventually hopes to focus more on composing again but right now is trying to make some money for 1-2 years. His first job out of college was working at Target for 2 months so he's doing quite well now compared to that start.

My contribution can be the board :unsure:

Surely the backlog of submissions is a great database of potential members?

I don't think Mark has all those old emails. Considering the site only got around 20 hits a day, it's unlikely anybody else sent their music in. But I'll ask Chopin.

(In case you guys are wondering why I refer to him as Chopin, it's because his name is Mike too, so it would get confusing if I called him Mike :))

Is there a way so that we don't have to always scroll down and try and remember where we last got to in the discussion?

With the old board, it would show you the last post you read, and the subsequent, new ones. Any chance of that happening here? THAT was the best thing about YCmkI

You click the little red square next to the thread's title.

Ah, alright. Excellent.