muhmuhmuhmusic

Time the contests to when people actually use the site. Bi-monthly works well in spring and fall, in the summer you can probably have monthly or two simultaneously. Summer contests have seemed to be the most effective. I second a winning works folder. And also never having the winner choose the next topic, not a good plan. Incentive could work better if someone was offering a performance recording of the winner, which has happened as non-monthly competitions. Try to get a few of those into the cycle.

Good is a spectrum, good is relative, and good is a long-term goal we have. If you're concerned about other people considering your music to be "good", then you can't be concerned with what you write before you write it. There is a limited amount of "good" music, and you can write virtually any amount of "bad" music. The distinction will come from you and others determining whether you wrote is one or the other. If you make good music on the first try, great for you! If you don't then you'll want to revise it, and eventually what you write will be considered "good". As for the Rite/Firebird: Firebird was perhaps the second large work in Stravinsky's career, maybe even his first. Rite was his third ballet. It took him some time to write a ballet that was great, even considering the praise he got for Firebird. Even further, Stravinsky continued to practice, writing a bunch more ballets later. Not all were "good", he didn't have a magic formula, but he tried things until they worked, and then tried more things until those worked. In your music, it is a nice connection to see it as an evolutionary process. Come up with several options, then choose the best option. Repeat. Eventually, your work will be as "good" as it can possibly be, although this may be beyond any of our lifetimes. So, good is a spectrum, good is relative, and good is a long-term goal we have. Until then, we work towards it. Gradus ad Parnassum.

I like Stirling's Sigur Ros suggestion, but honestly, I would go out to their "Varuo". http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Gf1h2PMPCAo

Russo seemed pretty good.

Hey all, I'm trying to start a Facebook meme thing supporting classical music. This is the first idea, I'm open to other suggestions as well. Trolls, I'm trying my best to support what we love here. So, if you agree, it'd be cool if you could share this with your friends on facebook and help it spread. Thanks!

Good topic choice. Thank you.

Aren't those the YC awards at the end of the year? ;)

If we were thinking of changing the prompt, and I may suggest a different competition, I'd like to propose we write a piece inspired somehow by "Rite of Spring". It's 100 years old this year, and within the public domain, so it's easy to look through the original material. Then, there's so many ways to take inspiration from, from quotes to plot to structure to tonal schemes. You can do almost anything with the Rite, as long as you explain what you did and how you got there. Is that any good of an idea?

Is there an idea for a composition that's been bouncing around your head for a while now? An opera you want to write, a text you want to set, a symphony to compose, a chamber work to flesh out? What's the greatest work you've never composed, only dreamed about? And why haven't you started on it? -- For me, I've always wanted to write a series of Bolero-like variations on a minor version of "Battle Hymn of the Republic", as a kind of anti-war message. I never start it because I always feel it's too good to waste on my meager skill set and don't want to mess it up. Also, I'm toying with the idea of setting Shakespeare directly into chamber operas, but I'm still not sure how I feel about interpreting the bard that much. Anyways, what say you, forum?

Listen.

Florence + The Machine Muse Coldplay Of Monsters and Men Sigur Ros Daft Punk Of course I like the Beatles, who doesn't? Others that I don't remember, and a few individuals that I don't count as a band. I think I was accidently born on the wrong side of the pond. Britain please take me! Unless you mean "bands", in which case: Blue Devils Cavaliers Carolina Crown (I like drum corps quite a bit as well)

Hooray!

It works, but it wouldn't open or close a set. Nobody would complain if it came up in the set though.

First off, and I don't mean to sound preach-y or anything, but a fairly basic amount of music theory is virtually essential to your success composing and songwriting. Now, there are some musicians who can't read music whatsoever and are getting along just fine, but this works best when they are the ones playing their own music. Being able to write your music out in some form that others can decipher in order to learn it is the key to having musicians play what you want them to. Unless you are there to teach the song by ear, or if you are performing it yourself, some kind of notation is necessary, and the western music-stave approach is the most common. So, I encourage you to learn to get the notation down. This could be as a piano part, or just a melody and chord symbols, but it will help your progress immensely. Try to learn by playing piano music or looking up pop songs you know for the tabs, see how they are written out and what makes them tick, and you will understand how to express your own music better. Now, as to your questions about how to compose and what to start with. That's a bit like asking if the chicken or the egg came first, you get an endless loop. Music and lyrics often gets asked this, and there is no industry standard as to which comes first. Do whatever is natural to you. In reality, melody, arrangement, and structure happen simultaneously when working on a piece, to an extent. You may be working on just the melody, but you also wind up thinking of how you arrange it, and other cases like that. There are some people who are dead set in starting with one facet of the work, but most people tend to mix because it feels right for them. Chances are, some part of the overall piece will be rewritten as you realize you would like it better a different way, and you will reorganize the form or rewrite the parts because you now realize that. Think about the big picture, work on the small details, and your destination will be the same no matter where you begin. You seem to be focused in songwriting, and I'm not entirely up to scratch in that, but I hope this helps. Don't feel pressured to write in a linear fashion. The best introductions I ever write are when I start writing the middle of the piece and come back for the intro once I've finished. Songwriting is like dreams, "you always wake up in the middle of whatever is happening". Inspiration will take you to the most important part of the song, so figure that out while you still have it. Then, once you have your parts, mess with it in chunks for structure. Once structure is put in a good place, finish any auxiliary parts you need. As you move through the piece, pull out parts of the main section you were inspired to write, seeding them throughout the whole piece. A melody here, a snippet there, and you'll look like the smartest guy in the world for pulling them all together, when all you really did was break one section apart. For starting a piece, or finding a melody, my best recommendation is to improvise. If you can learn pieces by ear, you can improvise just fine. As you come up with lots of bad improvised melodies, just remember and write down the good ones. Repeat chords as you try this, until the background of the song is hardwired in your brain, and the piece should begin to work itself out. On a final note, I'd like to welcome you to the forum. Also, though you don't seem like a classical person as much, I'd like to recommend you listen to some minimalist classical music. You mentioned you like electronic dance music? Minimalism like Reich and Glass is actually very similar, and maybe something you'd be interested in. These are the kinds of people who can write a 30 minute piece based on one of your 8-bar phrases and pull it off. Check it out a bit, see if it works for you.

Your mentioning Howard Shore means that you know how to pick the most classical of movie scores. Shore decided to write LOTR using a bunch of different leitmotifs and combine them in different ways throughout the film. Basically, the only difference between LOTR's score and a classical concert was the length of ideas being presented. Point being, you are on a right track. Don't be scared if your style sounds like one or the other, you sound like you. If you want to change how you sound, this place is here to help guide that. Yes, a symphony is long and hard. You have 8 minutes of music, which means you've almost written more than this. You will probably want to take short breaks to compose little sketches, ideas that you've been working on, or just something that strikes your fancy, and going on a whim is good for you. Think of Berg, writing a viola concerto in the middle of Lulu (ok, bad example, because he died before he finished the latter. Please don't die, ok?). Just because a symphony is your main goal doesn't make it the only thing you can work on, and little side trips are great steeping stones for the bigger picture. Maybe you'll want to re-write a smaller piece into the larger whole, who knows? There's a category on the site for incomplete works. If you ever get stuck, or want advice, maybe you should post your work there? It might help take the vagueness out of your questions, and I'm always interested to see what others are working on. Regardless, welcome to the forum, and concert band FTW!!!