All Activity

Here is a lovely choral piece I sent him when she first had the heart attack, and I obviously did not write it.

Midnight in Kyiv. He is probably asleep and will read it (hear it) in the morning. He lost his grandmother, his best friend and favorite relative. Come to think of it, I haven't written much in B Major in 38 years, but that is the key it came to me in! I think my sister likes it. She is following this whole Ukrainian friend thing. This also marks the first time in 38 years that I have just sat down and wrote a piece for a friend in need. Yes, my sister likes it! Susan Podzon 4:59 PM (3 minutes ago) to me I love it! You are so sweet

A two-hour dash off, so not sure about the part leading! The longer middle section uses a melody I wrote in college in 1989; just the melody. Для Кирила Free Sheet Music by Robert C. Fox for Piano/Keyboard | Noteflight The Ukrainian Cyrillic title is "For Kyrylo."

As the third installment in my enharmonic perpetual canon cycle, this one follows a procedure nearly identical to that of the first one and is quite similar in duration as well. The lyrics (once again, in Latin) sung by the choir translate as follows: "Change is inevitable in all things. Everything flows in the balance of those who are tempestive." As with the previous installment, the coda further drives the meaning to greater clarity and realization. YouTube video link:

You’re welcome. And after writing that, I realized that your flute & clarinet were the same dynamic, so maybe it’s just a thing you could solve using Musescore’s mixer then exporting? But at the same time, the flute’s middle range speaks very clearly and the clarinet’s middle range (written C4-Bb4) speaks the least clearly. Live players could more easily be instructed to match dynamics if you made a note. I don’t know which would be the most effective option, lowering the flute dynamic, raising the clarinet, and/or using 2 clarinets, depending on if you want it live or to sound cohesive online. But I think you’ll figure something out:)

My proposals

A score would help us. May we please have it.

This is my first symphony, it is a very rough draft, not produced and the dynamics are not correct. But other than that, any suggestions to it? I am a bit stuck with my third movement. Synpmony No I BrotherMichael.mp3

Genius!

Good morning. I have not forgotten about your piece, just spinning many plates. I would like to purchase access to the three-part version. Please let me know how to make that happen. Best wishes, terri

La banda de Mozart - 26 - Ópera Delirante You know, bro, now that I think of it and am getting through the one-season series, Mozart's Band, better en Espanol but cool in English, is like a benevolent Spanish South Park; the kids are not the actual classical composers, but are like The Monkees, who wanted to be The Beatles! The composer names are nicknames, though Mozart in this has Mozart's actual hair! Beethoven is Benevolent Cartman, the fat kid (bad because real Beethoven had edema, not body fat) and is mischievous like Ringo in the Beatles, and is the drummer in Mozart's rock/classical crossover band. The real South Park Cartman is of course the most truly evil cartoon character in history. This is a benevolent 1995 Spanish Classical Music Themed South Park Type Cartoon! ... [Message clipped] View entire message Attachments area Preview YouTube video La banda de Mozart - 26 - Ópera DelirantePreview YouTube video La banda de Mozart - 26 - Ópera Delirante Anyway, an e-mail to my brother that is hardly private! This cartoon gets music notation right, and little tidbits like a classical or romantic symphony manuscript is always neat because the composer works little bit by little bit! It is rich, and I prefer it in Spanish with English subtitles.

May please have a pdf copy of score.

huh.pdf my 11th composition would love feedback : D

Thanks a lot, Peter.

For me I think competitions with prize money lose its original intention. In previous competitions when there was prize money for the winners, many composers joined YC in order to join the competition, and once the competition was over, they left YC immediately just like wind. I would prefer a light challenge to a money competition since with money everything denatures, and with no money people would really write for fun, even though the pool might be smaller. Henry

What kind of options could this poll have? We have a few ideas that we've already come up with on the discord, as potential topics around which to base future competitions on. Not sure if those would be appropriate for just a light challenge or if we should save them for a bigger "money" competition? Do you have any specific suggestions in mind? If you'd like to become more involved in this whole process we could invite you into the Staff/Judges corner of the YCF discord server, where we discuss all of these things and plan out the competitions/challenges. Let us know!

A lively interesting work ... in a classic classical style. Quite enjoyable ..... with a very clean/precise orchestration. 🙂 Mark

Yeah man, these are all good suggestions. @PeterthePapercomPoser and I brainstormed a ton in the last few years, we came up with a lot of what you suggested. Many others before we were involved held them too. It kinda just depends on if enough want to do it. We tried money incentives, but looking Bach, the attraction it gave was nice for participant numbers but not so much for the "fun" part of it. I've found that if it's lighthearted, it's better for a community type of contest, but there needs to be a community. Maybe we could run them on our discord, are you on that? I roam both, but I know some use one over the other.

That is excellent idea: I was wondering what to happen to YC competitions. I remember those. 🙂

Wow

Here from the chat inbox. I would be interested in participating in “for fun” competitions of course! Would us, the users, be allowed to publish our own ideas for competitions, or, would I be correct in assuming that Administrators are the only ones with access to publish competitions? Here’s a suggestion; maybe there could be a poll based on similarly suggested competition categories mentioned by users here at the suggestion thread. Then participants could vote on which one they’d like to do. Also could be a separate thread made requesting users who could judge the work rather than having the same people do it each time, since I see where you mention it becomes draining. (Which, I feel I’d be safe in assuming that Peter and Henry share a similar sentiment with that as well) that way the load of judging is distributed across other members who are of good reputation in the community, and could accurately judge the works presented? @Thatguy v2.0

This is my first time writing for wind quartet and would like to know if there is something that I'm overlooking as far as the range or writing for each instrument. As far as the music itself, I would like some feedback on sections that might not quite work or maybe even the tempo changes or transitions. I still would need to include dynamics and edits to the score but if there are any editing or formatting tips I'll take those too. Anything would be appreciated. Thank you.

Greetings! Haven't stopped by in a while, thought I'd take the occasion of winning the 20 Year Membership badge (!) to drop in and share a big something I finished recently. This is one of those pieces I have worked with, off and on, for many years - I began composing it in 2001 and just finished it this summer. I cannot account for exactly why it took me so long to bring this to completion, except that for much of that time I didn't feel worthy of the material I had sketched, and couldn't readily come up with ideas to match it in quality. This piece is in my usual Classical style, unusual mainly in that I have employed an exceptionally large orchestra, including three trombones. Ostensibly, it is written for instruments of the period, roughly 1800 to 1810, though I have it on good authority that the flute part is in places nearly unplayable on a flute of that time - not impossible, but extremely difficult in such places as the frightful two-octave ascending chromatic scale in the first movement, and the mortifying cadenza in the third. Ordinarily I would have edited the piece on such advice, but there comes a time when artistic vision must prevail, and this was one of those times. The opening movement is a standard Sonata-Allegro as typically modified for concerti in the Classical period. The second movement (Andante) is broad and expressive. The third movement is a Polonaise (Vivace alla Polacca) in the form of a Rondo. I hope you enjoy the piece, and as always I look forward to any comments you may have. Thanks!

When it comes to the different sections in a piece, I totally get what you’re saying and I agree with you. But for me, the main thing is that it just takes me ages to write something. Composing a single opus can take me anywhere from two to three years. That’s why, after twelve years of working on music as a hobbyist, I only have six official pieces to my name. I always start out with big plans for more ambitious works, but to be honest, I just get tired of writing and end up scaling things back. Also, since I don’t have much technique or knowledge, it’s way easier for me to write slow movements. So those are usually the first ones I finish, and by the time I think about the faster parts, I’m already worn out from the whole “project.” I wouldn’t want to share my earlier pieces, because I’ve honestly been unhappy with them for a long time and I think they’re a lot lower quality than what I’ve published recently. Right now, I’m working on a symphony and I’ve really tried to rethink my whole approach—I’ve started working on fixing my issues with theory and technique, because I feel like my biggest challenge is keeping things structured and telling an engaging story with the music. I honestly think that’s more of a skill thing than a talent thing, so I’m hoping I’ll get better results in the future. And since it looks like writing this symphony is going to take me about five years, I’m afraid I probably won’t be publishing anything new for quite a while! As for using vocal parts, I kind of agree and kind of don’t. I think it really depends on the genre of the music. Personally, I’m mostly into large-scale symphonism from late German Romanticism and early tonal avant-garde. How often you use choir or solo vocals, in my opinion, depends on the structure of the piece. If you look at symphonies with big choral finales—for example, Mahler’s 2nd Symphony—you’ll hear that the choir only comes in for about the last 30 percent of the bars in the final section, and the solo vocals even less, maybe 20 to 25 percent at best. But if you take something like “Das Lied von der Erde,” the solo vocal part in the final section takes up about 60 percent. Still, in my own work, I probably should have given the vocal part a much bigger role, so the comment is definitely fair.