JStone

Not necessarily one of my favorite pieces, but the Ives Piano Trio movement TSIAJ (This Scherzo is a Joke) is loaded with humor. There seem to be melodies tripping over each other in an attempt to get out of the way of the music. Ives music often makes me chuckle and think, how did he ever come up with that.

I think Sonar, ProTools and Cubase are the three leading programs. Sonar and Cubase have versions for users that don't need all the bells and whistles for less. You'll get people that are very vocal about the "professional-ness" of each of these, especially Protools, but I think all are very capable. I'm a Sonar user, but I've never used the others.

For sound cards I use the M-Audio 192 and it's been great. Clean sound, no driver issues, and MIDI in/out. I use it with Sonar and have had no issues although I will say I'm using 32 bit XP> I've heard that there may be some issues with 64 bit, but I think that's just about everyone. I'm holding off on 64 bit till it's a bit more settled down, I just don't feel like spending a lot of time messing with drivers to get things working. FYI quick search on the M-Audio 192 had it listed for US $179, but probably could find it cheaper with some searching.

It seems that our current era of music leaves us without many of the conventions that previous eras worked with and that leaves me, and I suspect others, spending time trying to understand how composition today fits into the musical tradition of the last 500 years or so. In a way it may have been easier, philosophically speaking, to compose in an era where there was a more structured expectation of music. Many of today

I always had mixed feeling about Stockhausen, I always enjoyed studying and discussing his work but it usually doesn't do much for me when I listen to it. Any person that contributes that much to the musical world will be missed though.

I bought a Kurzweil when I set up my studio and I really wish I had bought a controller and focused more of software. Of course, it depends what you want to do, but the flexibility of software is great. With hardware you will essentially have the same piece of gear forever but with software there are always new upgrades and features. You can always load the software in a laptop if you want to move around.

It took some getting used to at first, but now I really like working in the piano roll view. The main thing I regret about not having a notation program is the ability to create scores, but I'm not sure anything short of Sibelius or Finale would do what I want and I don't know if I'm ready to make that investment just for scores. I've decided to focus on electronic realizations for now.

I tried several things to get a readable score and none of them worked. Sonar makes a terrible score and I tried exporting MIDI into Finale Notepad and it was better but still not really readable. So here is the MIDI file and maybe you can look at it in Piano Roll View or maybe you'll have better software to make a score. http://jstonemusic.net/music/ZionMIDI.mid

This is a work based on my impressions of a part of Zion National Park. There is an area where the Zion canyon progressively becomes narrower and narrower ending up at a place where only the Zion river separates the walls of the canyon. http://www.zionnational-park.com/images/album2/images/zion-national-park-zp_jpg.jpg http://www.zionnational-park.com/images/album2/images/zion-national-park-j_jpg.jpg I

That works for me, I wouldn't have considered posting a percussion piece in the Chamber, so now I know.

Would anyone else consider this? I know percussion music is the red-headed stepchild of composition, :whistling: but I still feel that it's a vaild area of exploration and one that isn't represented by the Avant-Garde and Electronic section.

This is a percussion piece I've just finished. Been working on it for a couple of months. As with everything I finish there are many things I would change now but it's time to move on to the next piece. Three sections, moderate, slow and fast. I've tried to build the melodic material more, with musical interruptions playing a part. http://jstonemusic.net/music/Into%20the%20Sunrise.mp3

flint-wwrr, I think your comment on shorter pieces is very astute. I'm guessing that you also mean that the pacing on pieces in general will become quicker. Even though I write what I'd like to hear, I think my expectations of pacing have changed over the years. While it's not impossible to get into the state of mind to listen to a Mahler symphony, but it's much harder that it was earlier in life. I think many of us have been influenced by the pacing of movies and TV and our expectations have changed. That is a pity too because there are many ideas that can only be expressed though a slower pace and development over time. I hope I can fight this expectation in myself and allow myself to experience those things.

Well I

As I look at the world of composition now, it seems that things are so diverse and scattered even that it

My experience so far comes from the MIDI world and not the notation world and there are many pieces posted here in the .mus format that I'd like to be able to listen to. I've looked on the web and there are a couple of suggestions for converting .mus files to something I can listen to, mp3 or MIDI, but I wanted to get some advice from those that use the format. Is there a way I can get a good translation of the composers intent using Sonar and Kontakt? Kontakt has an orchestral sample library, but I'm not sure about the quality, it's not something I've used so far. I see that I can download Finale Notpad for free, but I'm not really sure what this will get me.

There was a time when I felt my music needed to be complicated to be good. The piano pieces of Satie (Gymnopedies and Gnossiennes in particular) were a revelation once I really appreciated them. Great music didn't need to be complicated, WOW. So now I don't necessarily strive for simplicity, but I never feel that I need to "fix" something just because it's simple. If it works, it works, simplicity can be a composers friend.

This is an interesting conversation here and being new I'll throw in my opinion. I agree that being original shouldn't be the focus of your composing, but it is something that I find myself considering. I do believe that there are still lots of things in the "world" of music still to be explored. I use the word world purposefully because we live in a time when anyone (at least anyone with an internet connection) can listen to and study an enormous variety of musical styles and sounds. The world of Western music tradition is a fantistic treasure of styles, sounds and compostitional techniques, but other musical traditions have an equally vast areas to explore. A composer today can learn Japanese forms and can work them using African sounds and Western compostitional techniques. The possibilities are endless and worth being explored. We live in an era where our musical influences can be more varied than ever before. The musical heritage of the entire planet sits before us waiting to be explored.

http://www.jstonemusic.net/music/Night%20of%20Shooting%20Stars.mp3 I don't really feel that this is Avant-garde or traditional electronic, but there's no other category that fits so I'm posting it in here. This piece is a reflection of my interest in non-traditional instruments, in this case Gamelan with an emphasis on rhythmic ideas. I've been collecting Gamelan samples for a while and this is the first piece where I've used a Gamelan tuned set as opposed to a equal tempered gamelan from a synthesizer. If you don't know how a Gamelan sounds then you will get a glimpse when you listen to this. Essentially it's a piece in 4 parts, where the first part, after a very short intro, is more or less a traditional Gamelan ensemble sound. The second section introduces the drum and hand cymbals, and the third section comes back to the Gamelan ensemble with a different, less traditional Gamelan feel. The fourth section attempts to put the ideas from the first three sections together. All the tuned pitches are a 5 tone Gamelan tuning. I work in Sonar and Kontakt and it took me about a month to imagine and record this. I'm trying to find my way into composing working with rhythmic ideas and these types of sounds. I would sincerely appreciate any comments or questions you might have.