Varnon

Hey guys, thanks for your time and commments. These peices are actualy over a year old now, and some of your comments were things I had allready considered. Upstart There really wasn't in intent in any of our earlier music. We didn't intend for things to clash or to have an edge or anything. We just sort of did what we thought sounded good with out thinking about it too much. I'd like to start writing things with intent now, instead of just letting things randomly happen. I had thought about tempo variations, and I think I have some decent ideas. The total lack of keyboard dymanics was one of those technical things encountered in our rush recording... but I really don't know what to do with dynamic variation anyway. Any ideas? It had not really occured to me that the chord progression was ordinary, I'll have to think more about that in future works. Thanks. Erik, I know, the timing of the recording bugs the crap out of me. The members of the band are from different cities, and we were out of practice when recording. We also didn't have any time to fix anything in studio. Not to say we don't all have our timing deficits, but live recordings we made when we all lived in the same city and could practice were very tight. Unfortunatly, the songs I mentioned aren't the worst recordings we made for this CD. Can you discribe in any more depth what you mean by a goal? We didn't aim to be anything in particular, we just played stuff that sounded good. I listed it as progish because we don't have any song structure. I guess I can see that the song structure may be more interesting than chorus/verse/chorus/verse but the parts that make up the song sound ordinary. I hadn't really looked at it that way before. I've come a pretty long way since I wrote these songs, and these are actualy the first handfull of songs I wrote... and I may be better than any of the other rock musicans locally, but I'm still a neophyte when it comes to the 'big picture' of music. Any other comments are greatly appreciated. Thanks again.

I finally learned how to do that a few months ago. And I don't even play a wind instrument. Its such a weird technique. I wonder who first discovered it. I think its a pretty standard technique with indian wind insturments.

Neat. I like the pizzicato strings about half way through. The volume fluctuations are a bit drastic for me, but they work fairly well.

Hi guys. I'd actualy like to see if I can get a few of my peices with my band crituqued. My band is called Iceland, we have some diverse rock related influences. Everything you hear is guitar, drumset and keyboard (me!). Unfortunatly all I have to offer is these recordings found at http://www.myspace.com/iceland and http://www.purevolume.com/iceland These are all at least a year old and we have developed a bunch since then. But... I'd still like to see what real musicians think about the song writing. We have a few songs online, but I really only care for the review of three of them. Feel free to comment on anything though. The songs I'm interested in you guys looking at are 1491 (purevolume) Sals Song (purevolume) P nut (myspace) Some of our earlier songs were not so well put together and some others were butchered in our super quick studio recording. We are working hard on several new songs, and I'd really like to see if you guys have any usefull thoughts that could be relevant to new material. Any thoughts?

I'd really like to hear this peice, but I'm not able to get the link working. Suggestions?

Did you write this for any particular purpose? I kind of like this. I do think it needs another instrument. You could really break the whole thing down into several instruments, but you probably want a prominent piano. For actualy playing... its going to be hard to find someone that can keep a good solid tempo with those fast beats. It can be done though. I used to be able to play like that just fine, but I stopped playing like that to play in a different style, and now I can't keep a good tempo playing fast beats like that. Also my hands tend to desync now when playing that fast. Oh, I totally didn't even hear that bit at about 15 seconds in the first time around. Well I might could pull that off on my synth with super fake fast action keys, but I definatly couldn't do it on a real piano. I really do want to know what your purpose in writing this one was, it sounds like something that would be fun to do with a rock band, with a few modifications.

I've allways heard that Liszt was a totally show off when he played. I mean his solo stuff is written to show off technical skill and certiantly requires alot of movement, but I hear he embelished his movements even more. Probably would have been an interesting performer to see.

Its allways weird to me to see little kids playing very well. Because it seems like half of them don't even care about it when they grow up, or they never expand outside of what they were forced to learn. Its weird... I mean, I'd like my children to be musical maybe... but forcing them makes for a different product I think.

I havent started tackeling bass clef much yet... But don't the notes fit differently on the ledger line? Thats what I don't get. It seems like you should be able to have a low octave and high octave version of the same clef. And E on the higher clef should be on the same place as an E on the lower clef. It just seems weird that the position of the notes is different. Theres actually a good chance I don't know what I'm talking about, so correct me if need be.

I hate bass clef. Why is there more than one clef? And why do pianists have to read two clefs at once?

So what do you guys think about the people who only play other people's music? Its not even that they don't play music they write, but they just don't write anything at all. And What do you think about people that write music but don't play it? I don't even know if there are any people like that. But certianly the music software we have makes that possible. To me, if you lack one part or the other then you are missing half of music. At first I could not understand why anyone would want to be a musician in an orchestra, allways playing someone elses peice. Then I saw an orchestra play, the sound is pretty cool. I could see why someone would want to be part of that. Although its still pretty extreme to me to not write anything. (the url for this thread is hilarious)

Weird. It sounds like something I'd instantly discredit... but I'm intrigued. I think I'll actualy wait a read about it before slaming on it.

Hmmm... Guitar - just got electric guitar strings for my acoustic tonight, its so much better. I have a really crappy acoustic with terrible action, the tension on the electric strings is a lot less, makes it much easier to play. Not quite ready to start learning it though. Cello - got to have one first, but I really like it. Chapman stick - again... I don't have one, but it'll be great. Organ- I just need me some foot pedals! Timpani - I want some. Sitar - I want one!

Huh, I still havent had any problems with "improper fingering." You remember what the specific difficulty for you was?

Then there is stuff like this This guy plays pretty strait faced untill he gets to a hard part. His faces are pretty stupid looking. I guess its cool to know that he has to concentrait. But its even cooler when you see a later video where he plays something so hard that it would have made him be shitfaced a year before, but now its no big deal. Theres a video where he really gets shitfaced, I think he might have taken it down. But that guy dancing around stage, just says to me "hey look at me, I'm playing something so easy and rediculous that I don't even have to pay attention!"

... but I mean, if you really wanted to watch somebody move to music... then you should really go watch a dancer. I know its not seperate to many people, but it really should be.

Ah my guitarist wants one, was going to build one, but he said it was too expensive or something. I don't think he could handle it currently. It would be cool to omit the the volume control, and instead use a foot volume pedal to control it... and then play two theramins at once. Or a theramin and another instrument... or whatever. Be nice to effects process the theramin too. Maybe add a little detune chorus to add some extra tone to it. Be fun.

The volume pretty much has to be intentional in notepad. They really don't want you using it. But I really don't have the money to spend on something. If finale wants to stick it to me by having a mute demo then I guess I can stick it to them and pirate one of their other programs. Like seriously, I either have to plug speakers up to my computer and hold the speakers up to my ear, or run a cable to my PA. The PA works, but it is overkill. I shouldn't have to do that. The demo of Finale 2007 is probably 3 times louder than notepad. Its redicerous.

I was actualy about to post a similar question. Is there anyway to amp the volume in Finale NOTEPAD? Its SO quiet! I just want to be able to hear it when I'm putting stuff together.

Ah, what a shame too.

Boring music is just music that lacks the techniques or musical decorations that you find interesting. Its kind of pointless to find the differences between boring or lame... or stupid or notanygood or sucky music, because it really all points to the same thing.

Yeah I think its kind of silly too. I may bob my head a little tiny bit... but I'm pretty still. I actualy don't understand why people move around at all. Like... I just don't conprehend it. Of course I don't comprehend emotion or soul in music, so I am a weirdo anyway. My guitarist loves to dance around like mad when he plays... and his playing heavily suffers. But the kids like it, so whatever. Actualy they allways get mad at me for not moving. People want me to kick out my leg to the side when I'm playing keyboard and stuff. I've seen some pretty silly movements at keyboard before. Well they are rock musicans, and synth players and they aren't from the 70s, so we allready know they are pretty crappy... But they hold one note down and then just shake their head around as fast as they can... Its stupid. I almost think exagerated body movements like that stem from how cool it looks when THE MUSIC calls for extreme movements just to play the peice. It is cool watching somebody play a crazy Liszt peice, even if you don't like Liszt, its impressive to watch... I think people tried to immitate that movement... and then after time they just forgot what they were imitating but still thought movement was cool.

I'm surprised that you thought hand independence might be easy. Anyway, its not. I'm actualy self taught. But I'm a smart self taught guy. So really I ended up looking up and researching all the things a piano teacher would teach me anyway. There really isn't a more efficent way than to take lessons from a competent person. If you self teach you just end up having to learn the same things anyway, or you don't realize that you need to learn them and never become any good. You sound like you have a good enough musical background to know how to look up the important things. I'd suggest Bach's inventions for hand independence though.

I can't picture it doing much on a bass... Makes some decent sounds on a guitar, but still doesn't seem worth the price of replacing the bow every show.

I was going to post the same video. But if you really really had to do it, I'd just make my own arangement.