Search the Community

Here's the third and final movement to my trio for guitar, bass, and harmonic series keyboard. Please have a listen and leave any comments, feedback, and criticism as all the feedback I've received has been very valuable so far. Above all, I hope you enjoy it.

Hey everyone! Please check out this trio I wrote for me and my two friends to play. So far only the first movement is completely rendered (ie transcribed from sheetmusic to mp3), but I'll probably have the other two movements done within a week (work permitting). I should mention that the development section is abridged because my friends aren't the most professional of musicians and I wanted to have something they would actually want to play. This synthesized recording was made on LMMS from the original sheet music. The keyboard part plays a plucked string sound sample and is tuned to the 32-note harmonic series scale. Enjoy!

Here's the second movement for my first microtonal trio for guitar, bass guitar, and keyboard tuned to the 32-note Harmonic Series scale. Please leave comments, criticisms, feedback, as even Monarcheon's feedback on the first movement helped a lot. Hope you enjoy it!

Hi Everyone! I've already posted this piece before, in chamber music as it is a piece for solo guitar, but this is a new version, arranged by Ken Nickels-Ken320. He did a fantastic job and it's my pleasure to share our collaboration with you! The piece has been shortened from 11:38 to 6:44 but it really hasn't hurt anything :) the video is also made by Ken :) Please let me know how you like it :)

I was recently invited to participate in a festival in Yerevan, Armenia for which I wrote this piece. It was inspired by the artwork of Nana Aramyan (which you can see in the background of the video) and performed by guitarists Joao Lima of Portugal and Lilit Maridyan of Armenia! Hope you enjoy the work! If anybody is interested, a similar event will be held in London and there will be an opportunity for composers to submit new works. Feel free to ask for details! Alex

Hey everyone! Please let me share a newly recorded version of my composition "The Sea". Don't know If this is the right place for it, but it's a guitar composition so I thought It would fit well in the chamber music althought it's not a typical chamber music piece. There's a nice story behind this, I was at the summer vacation in Croatia and I once brought my guitar to the beach with me, it was in the late evening and the beach was all empty. And while I was listening to the waves and playing some harmonies that had the "sea feel" to me, a family of strangers sat so near to me as If they wanted to listen to my playing while watching the sea. After a while they left and so I thought that maybe they didn't like it, but they soon came back to the exactly same place near to me with a blanket and stayed there until I left. So I thought If they like it, I should make a composition out of what I was playing and this is it. It's played by me and the waves in the background are recorded in Ireland by my friend. I hope you'll enjoy! :)

My aim is to write songs in an acoustic ballad style (no electric guitars or drums) similar to Don Mclean's Starry Night in terms of arrangement Primarily on piano and guitar (both picking and strumming). I am looking for software to assist with: 1. Recording lyrics (entered by typing) in a way that matches up with chords and melody without much difficulty. 2. Gives the options of best chords available for a given key. (ie. you can edit individual chords in a progression easily) 3. Does auto-arranging for acoustic ballad piano or guitar style. (with the more variety being better) 4. Can generate alternative melodies or similar melodic figures that I can select from. 5. Allows a VST to be imported, so it doesn't sound like rubbish while I'm composing. From my research so far, it seems that all the software that records and displays lyrics to match chords is separate from the software that does arranging and produces nice sound. If I am wrong here, I would love to know which of the advanced arranging software is lyric friendly. EZKeys seems like the best software for my needs, but I might be wrong. EZKeys suggests the best chords, has a nice VST piano, and does auto-arranging, although the variety seems limited and I can't find any info on whether you can import or create your own arrangement midi database. (seems like you have to buy the ones they have made and they are quite expensive) EZKeys doesn't have a melody generator that I could see. Melody generation seems best done by Rapid Composer, but some have suggested that Band In A Box can also do this. From my observations of BIAB it seems they are heavily focused on the jazz, rock and electronic styles which I have no interest in. My main concern with Rapid Composer is that it will produce melodies that sound too computer-generated and weird, like what I have seen in the demos on youtube. Has anyone had good success with Rapid Composer? Synfire seems like a mystery package, but one that might be helpful as I often struggle with coming up with new rhythmic and melodic ideas. The demo on youtube makes it look pretty ordinary and would love to see the workflow of someone making something awesome with it. I'm not sure how good it would be at generating alternative melodies and arrangements that fit the modern ballad style. People suggest loading it's AI database with classical music, but I don't want my music to sound 300 years old in style! Perhaps I could only upload midis of the songs styles similar to what I want to create? Reaper seems to be the best value DAW, so I would go with that. My observations of VST acoustic guitars are that all the good ones require Kontakt 5. I especially like the workflow of Strummaker IV but it seems you need to buy Kontakt 5 which is expensive. I can't find any other VST guitars that enable you to customise strumming patterns but I might be missing something out there. So it seems I will need to buy: 1. Lyrics/songwriting software which can import/export melody and chords. 2. EZkeys OR Reaper plus a good VST guitar OR Kontakt 5 with strummaker 3. BIAB, Rapid Composer OR Synfire if I want help with melody ideas. Any suggestions would be much appreciated :)

Hello everyone! This is a guitar piece from my debut EP and it's called "Morning". I composed it a while ago,I think it was back in 2010 and It's one of my first compositions ever,althought I made some changes to the original one here :) It's played by me. Let me guys know what you think of it!

over the years i thought in terms of do-re-mi-etc the key degrees inside any key. even if i'm not in Cmajor but rather in E major for example, in my mind the root was always "do". the fifth of the scale/key was always a "sol" (when in reality i hit B) and it was orange in my mind. i attributed all of them a particular color. ("re" - the second degree of the key is yellow, etc) the problem is, me trying to play the guitar, i can get lost if i don't play in C major, because sometimes i loose track of the shape (that guides me to the root of the key), and when i'm a bit lost i pay attention at what note i'm at, and i see a B flat for example.. which tells me nothing (in respect to what key it belongs, and what degree of that key this B flat is) so.. i kind of never really learned keys. but when doing a solo, especially in a more fast one, i doubt one could think in terms of "i need to hit an F sharp right now because the Dmajor chord is coming", i suspect guitarists think in terms of "i need to hit the major third because the root of the key is coming" - this would be universal to all keys and there shouldn't be weird situation like being a master guitarist when playing in Cmajor but a complete beginer if the song is in Dmajor. i'm confused.. how do you guys think inside a key? 1.do you think in terms of key degrees ("i should hit the major third now") and if so how exactly do you "name" the note in your mind, 3? or mi? (like i did) and if so how do you relate these degrees to the actual note that plays (B flat for example)? 2.or do you actually learned keys, and play with the actual note names in your mind. but how do you know the Bflat minor chord sounds plain sad if you don't know that it's the sixth degree of the key (without this degree the simple note of Bflat means nothing - if its not in a context)?

I'm working on making a video game from scratch, about a lost puppy. I actually wrote this piece on the guitar years ago with that idea in mind, because of a comment from a friend, and I wanted to capture the fear and excitement of a dog exploring a big scary world. Not sure if I achieved that, but this would only be one track from the game, with others to explore that idea further. I've been told I should just record it on the guitar, since it sounds great that way, and a lot of things may not translate well, but I wanted to experiment first with a sort of 16-bit sound (like Super Mario World or any other SNES game). I've found a decent library of Soundfonts, and I thought I'd give it a try. A lot of the strumming sections turned into Street-Fighter-esque machine gun sprays of notes, whcih I find pretty comical, but I feel like my ear isn't objective since I've been playing this on the guitar for so long. LINK: http://www.youngcomposers.com/music/listen/6443/Lost%20Puppy%20Theme (or see attachment) I need to fiddle with the volumes, I apologize if some sections sound piercing at the moment. Anyway, I would LOVE some feedback and advice! The song is designed to repeat (the transition back to the beginning needs to be a little less abrupt), and I've broken it down into 5 short sections: INTRO > ARPEGGIO > FEAR > RISE > MAIN THEME >> I'm proudest of how the main theme turned out. I can picture a puppy frolicking through a field. :) I would also love to change up the instrumentation, right now it's a chippy guitar for everything, but I can totally hear some viola & cello swells, especially in the main theme. Any advice would be wonderfully appreciated! Thanks so much for your time. lost_puppy1.mp3

Hi there, I am composing a duet for viola and guitar, and have some queries regarding voicing possiblities etc, as well as virtuosity in passages. It can be notated as I have it, or it could be notated in semiquavers, the bpm is 175 for a crotchet. Here is a link to the score on youtube. Tnks in advance for any advice etc. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oupfeUaWDpo

For works for a piano plus another instrument, such as a violin or cello sonata/trio, do you usually give each individual player parts, or do you give them the full score so that they can see what each player is doing?

I bought a Squire Bronco Bass 4 string guitar at a garage sale. The strings were out of tune. Using my guitar tuner I tuned the strings to EADG and recorded the open strings played from my amp. I never had a bass so Im not sure if I tuned it correctly. Can someone with a good ear tell me if the bass is correctly tuned? Are the notes on the correct octave for Bass Guitars? http://soundcloud.com/jb777/eadg-bass