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I've got one more sonata to share here. This is a 2015 composition. It was performed as part of my trio performance in 2018, but we didn't get around to making a house recording of it, so the performance will have to do in spite of some shortcomings in both the performance and recording. Remembering that the balance was piano-heavy in the violin sonata I had played in the same venue some years earlier, I placed the recorder quite close to the cello this time. Too close, as it turns out. One of these times I'll get it right; this seems to be a difficult venue to record in, despite the excellent live acoustics. For those expecting some modern elements in my writing, you'll note that there are a number of aleatoric elements, including but not limited to baby cries, pages shuffling, various weird noises, an early entry, and some wrong notes (all completely intentional, of course). The piece itself is in three movements. The first is a rather slow, brooding sonata-allegro. The second is an ABABA rondoish form with alternating slow and quick segments, and the final movement is also best described as a rondo, though it doesn't cleanly match the standard 5-part or 7-part form of Classical period works. It's one of my darker works and likely not as appealing as other things I've written, but I've finally decided I like it enough to share it here.

Some short pieces. Six Piano Pieces.pdf 01 Aeolian (Winds).mp3 02 The Hummingbird's Phrygian Flight.mp3 03 Quick Diminished Changes.mp3 04 Can We Be Friends.mp3 05 Longing Worlds.mp3 06 Gemini II.mp3

Concerto per violino, archi e bass continuo in b minor "Paradiso e inferno". written 20.06.19 - 25.06.19. Been some time since i wrote a concerto, so here is my summer contribution. Three part concerto written in the late italian school. I. Allegro - paradiso: 4/4 time, livly tempo and fugures, high in the register of the violin (Heaven it is!), the triumph key of d major. II. Adagio - cadere dalla grazia (fall from grace) 4/4 time. slow pace, rethorical use of rets, b, minor III. Vivace - inferno, 4/4 time, fast pace, slaming fugres, chromatic downward passages (going down to hell), b minor Please tell me what you think SimenN

A small test of Cinematic Studio sounds. Only the harp is from the other library.

Here's a personal project of mine. Space is a wonder to me. The first man ever set his foot on the moon 50 years ago. Being a music composer, I wanted to do something for this anniversary. The project got so big and ambitious that I wanted to make a clip for it. And I got lucky when NASA announced that they made their footage copyright free. So I bought video editing software and made my first ever cut. I'm definitely not an editor but I had a lot of fun making this video. Here is the link to the music and video. https://youtu.be/EcvL36-x_Ec

So a year ago, I had this idea of composing a suite that would represent different types of weather. I would call this suite Weather Music. But it wasn't until a few days ago that I actually started composing part of the suite. What part did I start composing you might ask? Well, I started composing probably the most intense part of the suite. That's right, I composed the part of the suite that is supposed to represent a storm. I am like exactly a quarter of the way through finishing the piece. But before I even started composing it, I was like: Full orchestra example: Beethoven here is really getting across the feel of a thunderstorm and the calm after the storm with the orchestra here. String orchestra example: Probably the most well known example of a storm represented in music. So well known, that it itself is often called Storm when played without the preceding 2 movements of Summer. There is no calm ending to the music at all. Piano example: Not directly a piece representing a storm unlike the previous 2 but it could very well be interpreted as stormy music because of the tempo and all the octaves. So I had a lot of pieces to go on as to how to get the feeling of a storm across. The only real questions were what key to have the piece in and what to compose the piece for. I eventually decided on piano solo because that is my area of expertise. I mean I am a very advanced pianist and I started composing in my intermediate years, mainly piano works. So it makes sense that composing for piano would be a natural thing for me because I know my abilities and limitations as a pianist. I don't directly know those same things for flute, violin, or any other instrument the way that I do for piano. The only way I know these things for other instruments is by studying the instruments and pieces written for those instruments. This is how come I know that out of all the possible piano-not piano duets that exist, the most balanced is the cello-piano duet. This is how come I know that a forte dynamic in the first octave is impossible on the flute. It has to do with pieces that I have listened to that are written for those instruments and other ways that I study the instruments. But no matter how good I get at say writing for flute, my piano composition skill is likely to always be superior because I get that skill directly from my knowledge of music notation, music theory, and 10 years of experience playing the piano, no studying piano pieces out of context of playing them required at all. Plus I have several other non-piano works that I am working on(namely my first symphony which might take me a year just to get the piano draft of it finished but that's okay) Anyway, back to my storm piece. That was quite the digression there but I just felt like I had to get it out. I decided to have it in the key of C minor because it is very easy for me to improvise in the key of C minor and simultaneously get it to sound very expressive. It is almost impossible for me to do that same thing for C major(which is partly why I mostly avoid composing in C major). And stormy is 1 feeling that is very natural to the key of C minor. In fact, just about any emotion that you can get out of a key is a natural emotion in C minor under certain conditions. Even happiness is a natural emotion for C minor. How I'm getting across the feeling of a storm So 1 thing that I noticed in common in nearly all pieces of music that I would consider to have a stormy character was octaves. But not just any old octaves. No, the octaves I noticed in stormy music were very fast and they were alternating. Very commonly, I would notice that almost the entire bass line is in octaves(as is the case with the Beethoven examples) or otherwise as in the Vivaldi example, the repeated notes in the bass would get across the same feel as octaves would and the octaves only really exist if you combine the bass and alto lines. So naturally, I took these octaves and applied them to the left hand part of my piece and the only time these octaves would be slow was in chords. Even when I state the Fate Motif, it isn't slow, despite being a rhythmic augmentation of the original motif just because of the fast tempo. I so far have done all these things to get across the feel of a storm: Keep up the momentum of the 16th notes except in certain spots to make the entire piece sound dramatic Use a minor key because the same drama would be hard to get across in a major key, even taking everything else into consideration Use scalar passages with unpredictable leaps to represent the strong wind by giving a chaotic feel to what would otherwise be a normal scale. Use diminished 7ths more often than dominant 7ths just to add more drama Use the Fate Motif as a bass line during some of the scalar passages to represent the lightning flash. Use chord progressions to represent the thunder that comes after the lightning(this is what I mean when I say that the octaves are slow in chords) Have the melody in the right hand outside of scalar passages be staccato to represent the rainfall Under the staccato melody, use fast octaves to give a sense of turbulence, which is very fitting for a storm Use stark dynamic contrast between passages representing thunder and lightning and passages representing rain Creschendo to a loud dynamic Suddenly get quieter Presto tempo(mine is actually on the slow end of Presto, at 160 BPM) Here is the piece as it is so far. Sound ends at about 1:25 in the MP3 just so you know. Does it sound stormy to you with all the octaves, 16th notes, and the Presto tempo?

Tomorrow is the longest day of the year on a Sunday in my country, at which time people burn a dummy witch per old tradition, and this afternoon, I just felt in the mood to finish this piano piece. I feel like it has a bit of summer in it. But I actually started on it back in April or so, then put it in the drawer, because I found something off-putting about it. I hope it sounds reasonable now.

This song sounds amazing.

I feel a happy emotion to this, even when the minor keys are exposed. But not just any happiness. It feels kind of like a person is skipping around. I love it. And the C major is so expressive here. I have tried to get my C major to sound expressive and all I get is what sounds like happy boredom, sort of like this piece here: If I want the piece to both be expressive and have C as the tonic note, I usually resort to 1 thing, using the key of C minor. I find that with C minor, I can get just about any possible emotion across relatively easily like this: Anger - Just use more forte dynamics and diminished 7ths, faster tempo further reinforces the emotion but isn't necessary Sadness - Keep it slow Mysteriousness - Slow and in low octaves Nocturnal peacefulness - Slow and in high octaves Happiness - Fast tempo and off beat notes(I find that, if I just displace a note by say an eighth from where I would typically put it, and I put more dynamic emphasis on weak beats, I can get C minor to sound happy)

I'm very excited to share this with you all! My short piece for symphonic orchestra was premiered a few weeks ago, and I've managed to get the recording and learn how to make a video with score. It's a bit tough to see, though, so I'll upload it here as well. A bit of background on the piece: Johan Emanuel Nyström was a man who lived in the town I currently reside who, in the 1700s, sold his soul to the Devil for money. He went to the town Church and on a piece of parchment wrote a contract with the devil in pig's blood. That contract is on display at the town's museum now, so we have our own little ghost story, in a sense. He is documented as paying his taxes and being active in the Church up until the date written on the contract - after which he seems to disappear from history. This piece is based on his journey after his disappearance - the devil comes to take his soul, then knocking on the gates of Hell, and that Johan comes to terms with the choices he's made, and the consequences he faced. "Min kropp och själ i dina händer", or "My body and soul in your hands" is a line taken from the contract. Hope you enjoy!

Woodwinds are pretty diverse and complex, so forgive me if this answer is too generalized. By themselves, woodwinds blended together create this lush, watery, woodsy sound that you don't get from the strings. Unfortunately, they're easily drowned out by the rest of the orchestra, so you have to choose your woodwind moments wisely. As you know, they're much more versatile than their wind cousins the brass, so woodwinds are great for playing those fast harmonies or countermelodies against the strings. However, what I like best about the woodwinds is their different voices! The flute is light and airy, the oboe resonant and mournful, the clarinet liquid and graceful, the bassoon (such a versatile instrument!) deep and chocolatey in its lower register, wispy and yearning in its upper register. If you were to take a melody and have it repeated by the different strings (violin, viola, cello, bass), your piece would be boring. But take that same melody and have it repeated by the different woodwinds, and each tells a different story! Concerning woodwinds cues, I feel your pain. My head doesn't naturally "hear" the woodwinds in its music, so when composing I have to pause every now and then and ask myself "Has every instrument been given a chance?" Some of the richest moments in my pieces have been when I did this and passed a lush melody on to the woodwind section! Like much of music, it's an art that gets better the more you do it. I hope this helps!

Hello, i'm new on this forum. I would like to share my lastest composition. It's the first movement of my 2nd piano concerto, composed in A minor. What do you think of it ?

Hi all! I'm new here, and I really wish I'd discovered this community much sooner! I love classical music but, as a violist, my largest complaint has been the lack of stirring, cinematic viola concerti. Well, what's a composer to do? So here's my stab at a full-length viola concerto. I've named it Yfirsést (pronounced ih-ver-syest), the Icelandic word for "overlooked," and an all-too common feeling among violists. This is the first movement, and it resounds with the struggle of overcoming mediocrity and being seen for what you are. (I couldn't tell you what composer it sounds like, because to me, it sounds like me. 🙂) I appreciate your feedback, and especially taking the time to listen! I'll upload the second and third movements (along with the scores for all 3) later.

@SilverWolf Thanks for the feedback! Here is the second movement, entitled 'Andante religioso.' It's mournful and redemptive, with hymn-like themes and swelling anthems. At times tender, at times dissonant, it continues the struggle to not be "overlooked."

I totally agree with you on the coffee.. I love to have a cup and work on music.. Oh yes..... the music..... Nice piece, clear smart arranging. I like the piece a lot - my only criticism is I would like to hear the drums a bit louder, horns EQ'd a tiny bit (shelve low end). A very old trick, is to listen your piece, and very gradually at a consistant speed lower the volume.Notice which instruments drop out first, and how long it takes each instrument to drop out. Go back, and adjust volumes (very gently).. You are never going to get them all to fade out together. Make mixes of each, then decide which works best. Great piece and arrangement

My arrangement of the traditional Irish tune. Hope you like it!

Hello, This is my brand new track, "Time Travel". What do you think?

It sounds like you have some really good divisi sections in the strings that sounds really cool. I'm trying to get creative with East West Symphonic Orchestra due to some limited features. I know it's possible, but trying to figure out which amount of divisi to create, that's where it gets technical.

What libraries do you use?

First post here. Here's a piece I recently wrapped up. (Mod's, if this is the wrong sub please feel free to move)

Not sure of the best forum to post to, so I figured I give this one a try. I’m an amateur and this is my first attempt at making any kind of composition. I envision this maybe becoming an instrumental piece eventually, only right now I’m trying to start out with a piano arrangement. I’m making the song using Apple’s GarageBand. I would appreciate any constructive feedback people are willing to give.

The Serenade in E-flat major was written alongside the Fantasia in F-sharp minor, Op. 7. In fact, this piece was meant to be the original second movement of the Fantasia, but seeing just how long the entire piece would have been, I decided to replace it with a shorter second movement, and make this piece a separate work. The piece lasts roughly 14 minutes in length. Here is my performance of the piece on Youtube: I hope you all enjoy. 🙂 Theo

Theo, I have spent two enjoyable afternoons listening to your three recent piano works (op. 7,8,9). Last weekend, I decided I should hear them again before commenting. Having now done that, it is clear that they are all accomplished, confident works. Your performances are also excellent and make for enjoyable listening. In my opinion, the Serenade is the best of the three, and by a fairly wide margin. Though all these works have some very beautiful moments (the end of the barcarolle, the harmonic sequence at 6:00-6:30 in the serenade and 2:30-50 in Op. 9 stand out to me), there is a much greater degree of contrast in the Serenade, which makes your themes more memorable. The main theme of the Serenade is particularly well-crafted. It has a sense of unpredictability in the rhythmic treatment that makes it feel more natural and expressive, and it contrasts beautifully with the haunting material of your second theme. Here, it is the colour that captures my attention, not the melody, and this is why I find it so effective - it is not always the same element of the writing that is captivating in this work. For me, these works demonstrate an interesting combination of primarily Rachmaninoff and Liszt. It is unsurprising to know that Rachmaninoff is among your favourite composers, as your use of harmony and the motives themselves are frequently reminiscent of him in all three works. You may find that people criticize you for this, especially if you study at the post-secondary level (or perhaps you have encountered this already). Ignore them. They may very well have useful things to say about your works, but if the criticism is solely directed at the fact that your writing bears a resemblance to earlier composers, those opinions are of no value to you. Always write the music you want to hear. I will conclude by saying that you made the right decision to not use this as the 2nd movement of your fantasy. Curious, I listened to that work with this movement in the middle. It doesn't work. The character is too different. Best wishes!

This is a re-post of a work that was deleted from the site during the conversion. It was composed in the spring of 2009 - hard to believe it's been 10 years already. Time flies... The work is in three movements, following the traditional 19-century pattern. Movement 1 is a sonata-allegro, movement 2 is in ternary form, and the final movement is a sort of rondo (ABABA). The recording was taken at the dress rehearsal prior to a performance in 2014. I didn't have a long enough extension cord to get the recording device past the back end of the piano, so unfortunately the balance is a bit off, but it'll do for here. Enjoy!

Could be a pop song of some sort. Try and define what exactly you were trying to do, then ask yourself- should it really be as repetitive? Can I change something? The harmony? Maybe the rhythm? Should I develop my motive further? Should I add a counter motive? Maybe I should simply try and compose something new just to keep composing? My first piece was... awkwardly repetitive ... looked something like that: because I just thought like "isn't this rhythmic idea cool" and basically kept it exactly the same during the entire piece (I think it's about 3 minutes long). Of course, it could be used for something. a repetitive pattern can contribute a lot to a piece's texture (https://youtu.be/APIKVLw1tT0). Yet, you might want to give a further thought to your piece, try some new grounds. The worst thing that could happen really is that you'll hear how it sounds, would not think it's as good, and then try something else or go back to your familiar ground.

Hi! I would like yo show you a new video. In this case it's quite experimental. I would love yo know what you think about It! Thank you so much. https://youtu.be/M6PcAxbFIFU

Wow, I love it! I think music material and ideas are very good organized. I like the rhytm changes and the reflexiv character. In some way it reminds me the music of an anime japanese movie. Congratulations!!! by the way, what VST library are your using? Piano sounds great!

This is nice, I like textures. But the sound doesn't do justice to what it could be.

https://youtu.be/Pd7HFhXGseY

Hey Oscar, Congratulations! Sound amazing 🙂

Theo, I'd be happy to take a look at these works. Perhaps I can find some time this weekend, though I can't make any promises. It's been a busy time for me!

I just wrote a simple guitar riff and I thought it would be nice if I just put it over some videos I recorded from the forest and lake in my neighborhood. So, I made a complete dark ambient song and made this music video for that.

Awesome Also the best Dracula film

Hello everyone. It's my first post here in youngcomposers forum. So, I decided to start composing! My goal now is to compose a short piece every week, with some kind of limitations, to keep my work organized, more interesting and asking some research. To get started my limitation now was simple - write melody first and then harmonize it. So it's my first tune for 'one tune in a week' challenge, and my first composition for strings! Sounds a little silly, but I had some fun while composing this, and that I think is very important! Critiques and feedback are more than welcome! 🙂

This has a nice flavor, and sets a pleasant scene. However I'd like to see the accompaniment do something with a bit more variation, more vitality. The boom-chuck-chuck is definitely a classic way to do accompaniment, but if that is the only rhythm you use for the entire piece, it does not sound "artfully" done. It causes the piece to drone on because the ear just becomes accustomed to a super consistent sound that never changes. You want to keep the ear interested, and variety is the spice of life. Look at how Mozart uses the Alberti bass style, for example. He puts it in, then takes it away, then brings it back. It is used at his discretion, but always selected for artistic value, not just because it is the simplest possible rhythm. Sometimes the accompaniment are single notes, sometimes chords, sometimes nothing at all and sometimes it mirrors the melody. This has the effect of keeping the music interesting, keeping your ear expecting more, waiting in excitement for the next rhythm to come. So I'd say keep your lovely flute melody as is, and work on having your piano part "say something". Cheers! Jonathan

Thank you, gents, for the kind sentiments. I appreciate them, and they leave me wondering why I sat on this for more than a year before posting it. Personally, I feel the violin work is the superior sonata from a compositional point of view, but it's clear this is the more popular of the two... so perhaps we can chalk it up to another instance where the composer incorrectly assessed the appeal of his own compositions. Best wishes to all of you!

Fantastic piece! I personally find this piece is very appealing, probably because I'm more into darker music these days. - I love all the movements of this sonata, but the 1st movement is probably my favorite movement. I love the dark and brooding feeling that permeates the whole movement, and I also love the clarity and emotional quality of the themes. I also love how smoothly the 2nd theme is introduced. - The main theme of the 2nd movement is just heavenly 😍. The movement has a very interesting form. I like how you end the movement in an emotionally ambiguous manner, in neither a major nor minor chord. - A very exciting and turbulent 3rd movement. I love how you end the movement in C minor. I thought it was going to end in C major, but the surprise of the minor-key end is much more effective, in my opinion. Again, it's a truly fantastic piece! Also, like the Violin Sonata recording, the balance didn't bother me, as I was still able to enjoy the music. I really wish I was at that concert! One of the great things about your music is that even though you compose in a late-romantic fashion, you still manage to express your own voice! You are one of my favorite contemporary composers! Best, Theo 😀

You know how I have been composing for a long time without finishing a sonata? Well, that has changed. This sonata that I finished is fourth in order of composition but it is the only one I have finished so far. So that is why I have Piano Sonata no. 4 in the title. I first posted this sonata on Musescore.com as soon as it was midnight and on Mozart's birthday, I got a huge spike in views and followers because of that 1 piece. They all said that it was great and that my style and Mozart's themes blend in really well in this sonata. You won't find it on my Musescore account anymore because I had to delete it(I can't afford the pro membership so to make up for that, I delete pieces that are either really good and have been uploaded to YouTube or that haven't gotten many views or that are incomplete). Before the deletion of my sonata from my Musescore account, I uploaded it to YouTube. So it is one of my videos now. Now for the context under which I composed this sonata. Context It was a few days after Christmas and I noticed that Mozart's birthday was fast approaching. I figured that this would be as good of a time as any to compose a sonata. So I did and I dedicated the sonata to Mozart, the composer that inspired me to start composing at a young age. I called this, the Compose a Sonata within a Month challenge(pretty self explanatory there). Also, because I was borrowing from Mozart's style, I went with the flow, just like Mozart did when he composed. Movement by Movement detail The first theme and the transition of the first movement, both sound like they could be part of a Mozart sonata. In fact, the transition has similarities to the transition in the K545 sonata. To add some contrast and also to reinforce the birthday context of the sonata, I based my second theme off of Beethoven's Ode to Joy theme. I modified it slightly, especially the left hand to give it that Mozartian touch to it. The development section is where I go a bit wild with it. I present the Ode to Joy theme followed by its inversion(both melodically and in terms of the hands switching roles). I then have short motifs from other parts of the movement such as the closing theme. And I use a long modulation chain to go from D minor(closely related to the F major of the closing theme) to Bb major. Here it is: D minor -> D major -> G major -> C major -> F major -> Bb major In the C major section, I do some 2 part counterpoint. The F major section, I leave unharmonized until the final 2 chords of the development section. The recapitulation is basically the exposition ad verbatim, except it is all in Bb. Because of this, there is a change of register when the Ode to Joy theme comes back in Bb. In the second movement, I focused more on melody. It ended up being in a compound ternary form where I have this structure: AA'BB'CC'AA' The AA', etc. are representing that those sections are repeated but slightly different. The B and C sections both make up the second section of the ternary form and thus the middle section is in binary form. But I focused more on melody than form with this second movement. The third movement, I decided to have it be in sonata-rondo form to give a more dramatic ending. There is like 1 measure of C minor in the B section. This hints at my more serious use of minor keys in the development section of the rondo. You'll notice that I do use a famous Mozart motif in my rondo. That is the one from the first movement of Symphony no. 40 except I only preserve the note values. The rhythm in my sonata is quarter, eighth, eighth. In Symphony no. 40, it is eighth, eighth, quarter. In other words the rhythm in my sonata is retrograde(or you could also think of it as being the same but starting on weak beats instead of strong beats). Feedback wanted Here is my sonata, it is a 15 minute long composition. What do you think of it? I had to make some invisible measures in Musescore to avoid a delay at the repeats.

I recently completed a flute concerto that will be premiering in the fall. A few things I can share off the top of my head: I think it's unwise to write the piano part and orchestral part as two separate entities/two separate sessions. One thing I learned while writing was that you need to give the soloist time to breathe. Both in the literal sense, and also from the standpoint of the audience. The ear tires from listening to the same type of sound after awhile, so the best way to keep the ear interested is to change up the sound. When you listen to great concertos (of any instrument), there will be sections heavy on the solist, sections where the soloist and orchestra play together as a "unit", and then purely orchestral sections. Those breaks are important, for everyone involved. Write to the strengths of your soloist. If it's you, then write to your own strengths! My solist has a very good technical capacity, and also has a very strong tone in the lower register, so I was sure to make it technically challenging and wasn't afraid to write some passages down low. Some people are better at shaping long musical phrases, some are better at extended techniques, it's good to sort of "tailor" the music to what they're good at. If you personally aren't the soloist, don't be afraid to consult them during the process. Maybe some things are too challenging for them, or maybe they have suggestions on how to make something flow better. You'll learn a lot along the way! Speaking of register, another reason I don't think it's wise to write the piano and orchestra parts separately is precisely because of orchestration. You want to leave space in the orchestra to let the soloist shine through. In my case, this meant not having a lot of flute parts (as in the ones sitting in the orchestra), and generally avoiding countermelodies/accompanying figures in the same register as the solo. In your case, you have the entire piano at your fingers, which is both a pro and a con. The pro being it's a lot more flexible in terms of register, the con being you can easily go crazy and write thick passages that will come out muddy if the whole orchestra is playing something too contrary. I think writing them separately would be too confusing, you might think while writing the piano part "oh, I should do this in the orchestra", but most likely forget it by the time you get to writing the orchestra. These are all of course tip more on technical things and less about the actual act of writing music. As the others said, try everything and see what sticks. Don't overthink things, and of course have fun with it!

...or something like that. Fantasy game music I wrote, anyway. Let me know what you think.

I love it. It isn't all that often that I hear the bassoon outside of an orchestra, much less in a duet. And while yes, there are some great bassoon concertos and some great bassoon solos in symphonic works, I love how the bassoon really stands out when the piano is the only other instrument. And the sound of the bassoon is so beautiful. It almost sounds like a clarinet when it is in its high register. But that bass register is so warm sounding. If there were such a thing as a woodwind orchestra like how there is such a thing as a string orchestra, the bassoon would be analogous to the cello, which is another instrument that really sounds warm in the bass register outside of the lower 5 notes or so where the bass part of the sound becomes prominent.

The main piece of advice I can give you is to work out your form in advance, then come up with some ideas (they can be short) to fill each section. Learning how to develop well will help make you pieces longer.

This is a lovely piece. NIce to hear the bassoon as soloist.

Thanks for taking the time to listen, Willibald - I'm glad you enjoyed it. Regarding the composer competition, I certainly agree with you. I've seldom found much enjoyment in listening to mid to late 20th-century art music. The peculiar thing is that the general market is not actually especially interested in academic music. There's interest among performers and composers, but the vast majority of concert-goers would prefer listening to a Brahms, Bach, or Mozart over a Boulez, Babbitt, or Cage, for instance. Modern composers are often quite removed from this market, partly because it is incredibly difficult to gain a foothold against the established repertoire, and partly because there simply isn't enough demand for classical music to allow most composers to make a living of it. Thus, they pursue it as a hobby in the way that Ives did, while earning their living doing something else. I think what's really at play here is that most post-secondary composition instructors of the past couple of generations grew up in the academic climate of the 50s through 70s - an era that was marked by a striking intolerance for utilizing stylistic elements from past eras in an effort to advance music in the same way that all other fields were advancing - and they push their students to continue this tradition. Most composers are intelligent people, and they pride themselves on this intelligence. They do not want to be regarded as unoriginal, nor as individuals incapable of handling the complexities of highly advanced modern music. Those who did dare write more traditional music (Barber, for instance) often received scathing criticism from the proponents of the new style, and students who were not lucky enough to have an open-minded professor at school were likewise scolded for their lack of originality. This peer pressure can be extremely persuasive, and in my opinion is the primary reason that avant garde styles came to dominate the art music world. Unfortunately, this played a significant role in killing off demand for serious art music (which was seen as necessary by many of the chief proponents of the avant garde movement). The effects are still very much present to this day. A few years ago when I was checking in here more regularly, I remember seeing numerous examples of composers in this forum posting nicely written music in traditional styles who were admonished that they should be "finding a fresh, original voice" rather than imitating styles of the past. Invariably, these detractors were modernists, and ironically, their music was seldom any more creative or original than the composers they scorned - they were just imitating a somewhat more recent style of music. The idea they persisted in advancing - that one MUST employ the tools of the modern era in order for his or her music to be relevant to the modern era - always struck me as deeply flawed. If older musical styles are no longer relevant, why do we still listen to and adore them? Why are they still, to this day, more popular among the concert-going public than modern art music styles? The argument only makes sense if one feels that the primary purpose of music is to advance and evolve. All that said, it also makes no sense to me that anyone would claim the world would be better off had avant garde music never been explored. There are some musicians who genuinely believe that this is the most beautiful and expressive music in the world, and they should not be scorned for it. There are also many who find a real sense of fascination and intellectual fulfillment in the process of writing in serialist, aleatoric, and other avant garde styles. I actually think that for many of them, that is of much more importance and relevance than the resulting sound. And there can be no denying that such music is a greater communicator of certain emotions than the tonal system could be. I suppose, in a nutshell, that I wish people would stop trying to pressure each other into writing in their own preferred style. Write what you enjoy - not what you're told you should write. Unless, of course, you make a living writing music for other people, in which case what you write should probably be something they want to hear. :-)

LA Scoring Strings and EWQL Hollywood Strings are essentially the same. However, EWQLHS takes up about 5 times the RAM (if not even more) in a single patch than LASS does, while the quality is preserved. So it's all in terms of what type of computer you have before you buy either of them; if you have a 4-6gb RAM computer, go with LASS, if you have a 24-48gb RAM computer, go with EW. (personally i'd go with EWQL if i had a better pc.)

Looks like it's time to play the clarification game! :D Each of these products is a sound library, and they each happen to use a different playback engine. Kontakt, PLAY, and ARIA are sampling/playback engines. Garritan, until recently, was a Kontakt product but has now switched to its proprietary ARIA player. ARIA can only service Garritan products and is unable to load, interpret, or otherwise interact with other developers' libraries. What you're loading when you're using these libraries in your sequencer is the sampling plugin (generally in VST or AU format, depending on whether you're on Mac or PC and on what sequencer you're using). The sound libraries themselves are then loaded within that plugin for use. Kontakt is the industry standard sampling engine and is extremely powerful, flexible, and efficient. It also has a "lite" version called Kontakt Player which is free and will allow you to use certain Kontakt libraries without needing the full version of Kontakt (which is around $400). This free version can be had independently from the Native Instruments website or it comes bundled with all the libraries that use it. The caveat is that not all Kontakt libraries can be opened in the Player — only those that have been licensed by Native Instruments (the company that makes Kontakt). In the case of LASS, they're independent and do not have a license with NI and so you can only work with LASS in the full version of Kontakt. In other words, if you want to use LASS, you need the full version of Kontakt. PLAY, on the other hand, is another fairly fresh beast. All of EastWest's libraries used to be Kontakt-based but they were unhappy with the platform for various reasons (actually mostly just piracy) and decided to develop their own player that would resolve this and be customizable for their libraries. PLAY emerged as a buggy and under-achieving baby that gained the company no love whatsoever in its fledgling state. Now, several significant updates later, it's at least stable and performs as advertised, though it remains inferior to Kontakt in its sample handling and efficiency. But that's a different story. The point is that PLAY is the proprietary sampling engine that runs all of EWQL's libraries now, and you need it to use any of them, period. PLAY comes with some fun extra requirements, most notably the iLok security dongle. Basically it's a USB key that handles licensing of the libraries — you need it plugged into your computer at all times while you're using PLAY to be able to access the samples. In the end, PLAY has a very attractive interface (which makes it seem easy to use) but is functionally stunted, providing only the most basic functionality of Kontakt...and less efficiently at that. Hollywood Strings, therefore, runs on PLAY. So it's a necessary evil if you're going that route. However, it's important to note that all concerns of interface, efficiency, and engine preference aside, you need a POWERFUL computer to run either LASS or Hollywood Strings and running them from a notation program is akin to using a sophisticated oven to toast your bread in the morning — it's possible, but you're wasting HUGE amounts of potential, the product isn't designed to be used that way, and you're missing out on precise MIDI control control that a sequencer affords you...which is what's required to make either of these two sound good. Of the two of them, Hollywood Strings is the more heavy on your machine. To give you some perspective, when LASS was first released, it was strongly recommended you have a second computer to run it. This turned out to be unnecessary, but you'll still need a lot of RAM, and several fast harddrives to optimize performance if you use it on one machine. The same is true of Hollywood Strings, except in its case the second computer option is still favourable. The folks that have been running it on one machine have generally resorted to splitting it across 4 internal harddrives, usually SSDs (Solid State Drives, like flash memory in USB keys, as opposed to your typical disk drives that have spinning disks for storing information — SSDs are exponentially faster, performance-wise). Even with this setup and a good 16GB of RAM (which is considered the minimum required to make use of HS in any meaningful way), they can't have much else loaded or their system simply can't handle it if they're using the full patches. That being said, HS offers some "lite" patches for weaker machines and you can get away with splitting it across a few hard disk drives instead, but the point is that if you're not packing a powerful machine, you'll spend more time freezing and bouncing than writing. In the end, if you don't know what I mean by that, you really shouldn't be buying Hollywood Strings because you won't know how to use it properly. To Dominus Vobiscum's point, sequencing using these powerful libraries is a separate and entirely different skill from writing good music. For those who have the luxury of frequent access to live musicians, it may well not be a skill worth learning. But for those of us for whom the final product is the recording, and we don't get to work with live musicians 90% of the time, it's crucial. It is a huge technical challenge though, and it's a skill that you keep perfecting as you go. Ok, so for the TL;DR crowd: LASS and Hollywood Strings are professional products intended for use within a sequencer. They require a good deal of skill to wield effectively, much more so than Garritan Personal Orchestra, and using them within a notation program is laughable at best. Each comes with its own difficulties: LASS requires the full version of Kontakt which will set you back a further few hundred (though it opens up a VAST world of sample libraries of truly excellent calibre, LASS being one of many); Hollywood Strings requires you to use PLAY, which in turn requires you buy and put up with the finicky iLok dongle. Both also require powerful machines to run them. If you are working within a MIDI sequencer and have a powerful machine, which you get depends more on your preference of engine and recording style than anything else. HS is expertly recorded and engineered and can give you a fantastic Hollywood sound out of the box, but it's not really designed for anything else and you'll have trouble getting it to sound smaller. LASS is perhaps a bit more flexible since you get access to all divisi sections plus the first chair separately, but its tuning can be a bit unstable and it takes some work to get it sounding cinematic. HS has more articulations, but LASS is easier on your system. HS has switchable finger positions, but LASS has amazing scripting and an upcoming EQ-matching feature that's going to be extraordinary. And so on. Listen, think, and buy accordingly! :thumbsup:

Play=easy to use, and I think hollywood strings would be a better choice, but that's just my opinion ;).

well the official range for trombone is tenor- 2nd E below middle c to 1st Bb above middle c but almost all players can easily play as low as the 3rd Bb or Ab below middle c to about the 2nd D above middle c. nowadays trombonists are concetrating alot on range expantion so some can even hit the 2nd F or G above middle C. modern bass trombone is pretty much the same but the in between pedals and normal range range sounds better and most players can go down to as low as 3rd G below middle C. trumpet in Bb ( to me ) only goes as low as the 1st E below middle C ( concert pitch) but today most pros can go as high as the 3rd E above. which tuba do you wanna know about? :P no offence but horn, if you have played it, can have a very wide solid range in my opinion. definitly 3 and a half octaves. :shifty: and today most trombone players play soprano, alto and contrabass as well ( the've become common once again) do you want there ranges as well? :wacko: P.S. I live in a third world country where all brass players have day job and only have 3 max 5 hours to pratise and still they have these kinds of ranges so Brass players in the rest of the wrold derinitly have these kind of ranges. hope this helps... Janca