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I like Arvo Pärt's choral music. Even though it is modern, it is deep and meaningful and has a certain simplicity.

Scores are my LIFE. If you have a messy score, nobody will even look twice at your piece. I refuse to review anything other than a score until it is legible. This is like being handed a "genius" book, but without being able to read the chicken scratch... Nobody will put in the effort.

Good suggestions! I'd love to find ways to get people thinking more about the practicalities of actually having their pieces performed. So many pieces are posted here, seemingly with no expectation of it ever going any further than the sound file spit out by their computer. Even if your pieces aren't perfect, you can learn soooooo much from really getting them out there to other musicians who play them. Instead of just getting a quick listen and a review. I post on choralwiki as well as here. That's the place choir directors go looking for free, downloadable music. Their site is SLOW. And confusing to navigate and hard to search. We could do much better with a little thought and become a destination for chamber groups, solo performers, etc. looking for new music to perform. I hang out on the choral directors forum as well and there are constant requests for suggestions of good new work by contemporary composers. People do want to perform new stuff. They find it exciting to premiere a piece by an unknown composer. They just need to be able to find what they are looking for. Most of the live music performed around the world is performed by volunteer amateurs, so not everything can be composed for a virtuoso. Directors have to make do with the performers they have available, so they may have 3 violins, a tuba, and an organ. There is often an overall theme to their concert that they need one more piece to fit with. Professional symphony orchestras aren't likely to look here for new repertoire, but smaller groups will. (Yay! Free music!) So I'd suggest: Some way to classify compositions, not by form, but by instruments required to play it, would be great: boxes to tick for the postee so that their piece would be searchable by instrument(s). Some way to search for a chamber group looking for a piece for violin, viola, baritone and flute that would let them tick all the boxes for those instruments and get a list of the current pieces on the site that match, or partially match, those instruments. You can do that on choralwiki currently, although it's a bit annoying. So people do. And people search. Some way to tag and search for music by themes. If I'm already programming "The Planets" I want to be able to be able to find your piece for orchestra called "The Stars" or "Neptune" or "Heavenly Bodies" because you've put a tag on it for "astronomy," "space," etc. Again, you can do that to a certain extent on choralwiki. Support for as many different sound formats as possible, and the ability to post more than one for the same composition, so that the old fart using dial-up who can only figure out how to download a midi file can get the download that way, and the person who wants an mp3 can get it that way, and the person who wants a wav file can get it that way, all for the same piece. All of the options clearly visible and obvious. Most of the compositions on choralwiki have several different ways to listen to the sound file, several ways to view and download the score, a link or two or three to a video… all for the same piece. We are young composers, but some people who would like to perform our work are older and have older person computer skills. If we kept that in mind and provided multiple avenues to exploring our work more often, it would be performed more often. A forum section for the users of the site who want to use this site to find new work to perform. Where they can ask questions, state things that annoy them about our scores and make them unplayable, state things that they really like… Maybe a really obvious, easy way to attach a sound file or video to a review, so that it occurs to a director to record their group's performance and post the recording along with their thoughts of what went well and what didn't. And for Pete's sake, everyone clean up your scores. (Pet peeve.)

I really love this idea. It envelops people into the community and gives us a chance to also get to know the person. How do they respond to criticism? How do they take compliments? How do their scores look? Do they provide scores? All good things to just let the person know as soon as they get here. Like a tutorial of some kind. I also suggest that each new member who joins should be asked to review one work before they submit their own, getting them in the habit of reviewing and also understanding the cyclical nature of the site: You review my piece, I review yours. (at least, that's how it works with me) I think YC should begin developing some major items that will attract people. Chopin, as I've read, is making a competing notation software. That's pretty good, but that sounds like it would take FOREVER to complete. What if we began work on a Youtube series introducing young people (not as in age, but in experience composition-wise, which is how the site is named) to composition. Talking about some basic music theory, why composition is good for the mind and soul, and the realities of pursuing it as a hobby or profession. Nothing too technical to start off with. And, maybe in the future, we could do some analysis videos of classic pieces, or try and get premieres of YC works to be put online. Another thing I wanted to do when I was here was hold a composition contest for solo baritone and piano, and have it recorded as the prize. I never got around to it. But, I might some day. We have to provide incentives for people to join and be active. Give them GOOD, scholarly resources other than the musings of a crazy composition minor in college posted to their piece. Give them a platform that is safe, inviting, and yet challenging. This also brings me to my next point: We should be reviewing more. My goal is to review a minimum of 1 piece a day! Get goallllsss! So, in the end, I have to leave but I'll be back soon. Let's keep the discussion going. :)

Me too. :P hahah. So, here's the deal.. I wonder if the forum format is just too big for what we are right now. I'm a member of a few facebook composition/orchestration groups... I know this might not be optimal (though, I will say that this site seems to be fairly facebook integrated...), but you/we might consider moving to a facebook group where we share pieces by thread and review questions by thread. Instead of having a whole separate forum. That's a VERY drastic thing, but I'm throwing out drastic options so we can scale them back and make them reasonable. In fact, there probably should just be a more laid back space, where community is the main focus, and the music-talk is organic from it. This whole system of "reviewing" and "contests"... these all seem to be parts of a community that is 30-40-50 people large. Where it's hard to keep up with everything unless it's organized. I, honestly, don't see the problem with scaling the forum back to the way it was back in the day. There weren't as many categories, and the music was NOT at the top of the page. Just some thoughts. I'm probably wrong. It's been a long time since I really put thought into the forum. My ideas might be outdated, but I like to think I have some out of the box theories that could work.

Do you really think there's anything about you that I can be jealous about? Or are you looking to brew up trouble? Frankly this rethorical question would be laughable at the very least, if it wasn't so tiresome to keep reading your self-pitying antics. Seriously? Or have you done enough to discourage any kind of criticism or the slightest suggestion for improvement? Also: Do you ever - EVER - review a piece by someone else? Or does anyone look up to you for advice on forms, development, counterpoint, orchestration or whatever? If your answer to any of these questions is NO, I wonder how can you possibly know for sure that you're garnering respect rather than indifference. Get the idea, for God's sake: this site is about cooperation and feedback. This is NOT a showcase site for "composer wannabes", so full of themselves as to blatantly ignore everything and everyone around them (and who would be better served by starting their own website). This IS a site for people who want to share knowledge and use it to improve, so the only attitude that can keep the site alive is that of cooperation and humility.