What Are You Practising / Composing Now?

[BBMmk2]

I’ve been having a few technical issues with my Sibelius software programme at the moment. So much so I’ve had to restart my current project, which I was a 1/4 of a way through!

[Dave2002]

I’ve been having a few technical issues with my Sibelius software programme at the moment. So much so I’ve had to restart my current project, which I was a 1/4 of a way through!

Have you lost much of it? If you have a musicxml or a midi file you might be able to rescue parts of it with other tools. Depends what your issues are.

[Dave2002]

Hi BBM - did you get that Sibelius problem sorted?

I found I could try out a whole bunch of instruments (virtually) using LMMS. Yes - I know that Logic or Reaper might be better, but this was quite interesting.

I wrote a short piece - first in Musescore, then tried to expand it to use different instruments. What started out as a piano piece (just for convenience of writing) turned into a piece with 4 or 5 instruments. Whereas some of the dissonances (if you can call them that) sounded quite good on the piano, they were really not working well in other combinations. Eventually the whole thing got really muddy - horrible mess of texture.

At that point I exported the file to Midi, and imported it into LMMS. Not much change there, except that unlike in Musescore I can easily solo individual instruments or come up with different combinations of instruments.

I can also change the instruments in that package quite easily, so I found that one line worked quite well on cello. I wondered what would happen with other instruments.

Then I discovered that it is possible to change instruments while the piece is playing, so I put it into a loop. Changing the instruments in this way gives some insight into the way different instruments sound, and perhaps why some instruments sometimes sound better. This is an interesting experiment to do. I think instruments which are richer in harmonics sometimes work better with this "trick". Substituting (say) a piccolo (fairly pure) sound for a cello part leads to a very breathy, not too interesting sound. Sometimes a substitution leads to something more percussive. As I wrote just now - it's an interesting experiment to try.

What would also be interesting would be to be able to dynamically change the pitch up or down an octave or two. I'm not sure that that's possible with this particular package, but if there was a chance of anything interesting emerging that could be done by having several duplicated tracks in different octaves.

The screen shot shows how different instruments can be selected in this package from the Soundfonts. The actual virtual instrument sound is the one shown in the Soundfont panel - not the one assigned to the tracks, so here the Cello track is playing Jazz Guitar.

I'm not sure if this dynamic reassignment of instruments is so easy to do in Reaper or Logic - maybe it is, but I've not found a way yet. This doesn't mean that I'd prefer to use LMMS - it still has significant limitations in some areas - but for trying to find instrumental combinations which could work, this seems like a useful technique. Once instruments have been found which work together, it should be easy enough to switch to other DAWs, or go back to the original score and change the instruments there.

[peterthekeys]

Started working on the John Ireland piano concerto (encountered it whilst going through my 2-piano collection, recording one part and then playing the other along with the recording). Not particularly difficult, but awkward - needs a lot of weird fingerings. It'll never be my favourite among his works: I find parts of it a bit over-exuberant and sentimental. He wrote it for Helen Perkin, one of his students: he obviously believed he'd finally found his soulmate. They spent a lot of time together, and eventually took the concerto on tour (Perkin playing and Ireland conducting). Howeve, Perkin went off and married George Adie, who was prominent in the Gurdjieff movement: Ireland hardly spoke to her again, and - appallingly - removed the dedication to her from the concerto. As well as a fine pianist, Perkin was a notable composer herself.

[Richard Barrett]

I've now received all the recordings and started work on a preliminary cleaning and tidying operation, necessitated of course by the fact that each individual was recorded in a different space with different equipment at different levels and so on. The finished piece will go online some time in late August, assuming I manage to finish it in the next couple of weeks. I will post a link in due course in case anyone's interested in hearing it.

Update: I did finish it about a week and a half ago, and I understand it will be put online next Friday, together with an interview I recorded with the ensemble last week. I have the impression that this unusual working process has called forth a kind of music a bit different from anything I've done before, which had been my hope from the start. Now: practising. Making a home recording on Monday of a solo performance for broadcast by the Latvian national radio in Riga. Going there would have been more interesting but this will have to do for now.

[Joseph K]

Update: I did finish it about a week and a half ago, and I understand it will be put online next Friday, together with an interview I recorded with the ensemble last week. I have the impression that this unusual working process has called forth a kind of music a bit different from anything I've done before, which had been my hope from the start. Now: practising. Making a home recording on Monday of a solo performance for broadcast by the Latvian national radio in Riga. Going there would have been more interesting but this will have to do for now.

Great news, I look forward to next week.

[Serial_Apologist]

Great news, I look forward to next week.

Me very much too!

[Richard Barrett]

my problem is that I honestly evaluated the quality of the music I've written in the past and found it inferior to what I'd like to be capable of. Also it's much easier to just listen to music other people write since chances are they have more original ideas than I do.

For what it's worth, my feeling on this issue is that when something seems not to be original that's precisely because it's too strongly affected by other people's ideas, whether consciously or not. Don't you sometimes feel that nothing anyone else has written (that you know of) is really the thing you want to listen to? Of course (as you no doubt know) those original ideas don't just bubble up to the surface of one's mind ready for use, but, given that everyone is an individual, everyone must surely have something in them that nobody else has, and if someone is dedicated to being a creative musician they ought to be able to nurture it into something that might be meaningful for others to hear. I think probably every composer has the feeling that what they actually produce is inferior to what they could produce, but everything we do is a document of a particular moment in our personal evolution which doesn't necessarily follow a standard "career path".

[Joseph K]

Just started learning today the tune 'My Shining Hour' which in the Aebersold book I have is given in E flat, then I started transcribing John Coltrane's version and quickly discovered he's playing it in C, for some reason...

[Dave2002]

Trying out ideas. Wrote a fragment for string quartet, then decided to redo it for wind quartet - which was fairly straightforward and took hardly any time. Some notation has to be changed - for example bassoons don't distinguish between pizzicato and arco. Other articulation could be used instead, if desired.

I was slightly surprised at the result - arguably it sounds better on the wind combination - somewhat different character. That is partly to be expected, but I felt that the change was greater than I thought it would be.

One issue is the notation for transposing instruments. I used Musescore - the latest version - 3.5 for this. I noticed that the clarinet part (B flat) was written at concert pitch - not in the notation a player would probably expect. When I changed the instrument to a clarinet in A, the notation stayed the same. I'm not sure if this is a bug, or a feature, or if there is an option to change the notation. I have a recollection that when I tried something like this before (trumpet that time), the notation changed, and the transposing instrument was marked with a different key signature. It's not perhaps a big issue, as the stave in question can easily be transposed, though that might confuse the virtual instruments playback.

Oh - one other thing - is it normal for flutes to go down to B nowadays? I suspect that it is for most orchestral players, and they will have instruments with the extended range. The flute part in the piece I put together - copied from a violin part - went lower than I expected, but wasn't marked with warning colours which is usually what happens if instrument ranges don't match. What is the expected range of a modern flute as played by professionals nowadays?

[Pabmusic]

Here's computerised versions of my Symphony (1975-1976) and Fantasy Variations (1982). The Symphony was given in Oxford in 1989, the variations have never been performed.

Symphony:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q77vcBcbCNU&t=84s

Variations:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BQQSxm3pkCs

[Richard Barrett]

I noticed that the clarinet part (B flat) was written at concert pitch - not in the notation a player would probably expect.

Not in the notation a player would ever expect. Plenty of composers write scores at concert pitch, and when this is the case of course changing the instrument isn't going to change the notes. Two seconds on Google reveals that Musescore is able to switch between concert pitch and transposed pitch by checking or unchecking the "Concert Pitch" button (who would have guessed?), and naturally the playback part of the software is aware of which has been selected.

one other thing - is it normal for flutes to go down to B nowadays?

Yes. There's a useful site called Wikipedia where each instrument has a page on which its range is given.

[Dave2002]

Not in the notation a player would ever expect. Plenty of composers write scores at concert pitch, and when this is the case of course changing the instrument isn't going to change the notes. Two seconds on Google reveals that Musescore is able to switch between concert pitch and transposed pitch by checking or unchecking the "Concert Pitch" button (who would have guessed?), and naturally the playback part of the software is aware of which has been selected.

Yes. There's a useful site called Wikipedia where each instrument has a page on which its range is given.

MMMmmm. OK. Where's MrGG when you want to gang up on me!

I do know that some flutes go down to B, though I was also wondering whether some (not bass/alto) models go down slightly more. The question was really about whether one should assume that B is in the range - presumably most real professional players will have at least one instrument which has an extended range, or an alternative foot joint.

Re the MuseScore thing - yes - and the feature does work. The A clarinet line now appears with a B flat signature. - where previously it had no sharps/flats. The button which is marked Concert Pitch is a toggle, and rather oddly it grays out in a rectangular box if selected. It's also posible to lose sight of the button on the toolbar altogether, which is confusing. Another way to control things is to point at the toolbar, and press CTRL (on a Mac) and a drop down menu appears, and the button can be recovered on the toolbar by means of the View menu option.

Can I assume that it would be madness to have some transposing instruments notated as at concert pitch and others not?!

Anyway, thanks for reminding/informing me.

[Dave2002]

Here's computerised versions of my Symphony (1975-1976) and Fantasy Variations (1982). The Symphony was given in Oxford in 1989, the variations have never been performed.

Symphony:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q77vcBcbCNU&t=84s

Variations:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BQQSxm3pkCs

Hi - nice to see you back in these parts. i was beginning to wonder if you'd disappeared.

[Dave2002]

I found this competition on MuseScore - there's plenty of time to enter - https://musescore.com/groups/classic...scuss/5069862#