If you somehow thought that commercial music was only good for film, jingles, and video games......

Zimmer’s Remote Control Productions Releases Inception – The App Featuring “Augmented Sound to Induce Dreams”

I'm a tiny bit jealous........

UK Kids Learn the Music Biz With New Pop4Schools Program

Prepared piano

http://www.npr.org/2010/11/11/131245315/hauschka-gets-the-most-out-of-88-keys
just an interesting link

More interesting articles

A few more articles for your reading pleasure:

Film Composing: Crafting an Artist Product

ASCAP Provides Members Free Copyright Protection with MyWerx

MEIEA, IRLA and RightsFlow Partner To Produce Educational and Marketing Outreach

Sakari

More Steps To Better Creativity

After we talked about boosting and exercising our creativity at the last meeting, I came across another interesting article in my email about the same topic: More Steps To Better Creativity

Happy composing! :)

Sakari

Need help finding music?

Often, I am not sure where to look for new music. There are so many composers and music artists out there, and I often feel that while I know a lot, I don't even know a percent of just the AMERICANS doing stuff with music.

Then I stumbled across this. It is called Gnoosic, and it randomly suggests artists/composers to you based on your given preferences. It runs the program through shortly, so you can set up another search for an alternate style or preference.

I hardly see it as an end-all solution, but it certainly might help, and is worth checking out!

the importance of performance

As an art form, our medium can be quite limiting. If you present a written piece of music to someone, they can look at it, (and if musically literate) and may understand some of it, but for the most part, our music does not truly exist unless it is performed audibly. Unlike a picture, you can't hang your music on the wall for all to enjoy. The closest we can come to capturing our art live is through recording. However, you can't have a recording if you don't have a performance.

So, that is definitely one tally in the category of why you SHOULD get your music performed. Along the same lines, since your music can't be heard without being played, it is almost as if you haven't written it if it hasn't been played.

There are other reasons you should get performances too. The more you write and HEAR, the more you learn. You can theorize about what the sounds you chose sound like, but without hearing it, you can't KNOW.

Also, writing music and getting performances lends itself to more performances. If people are accustomed to your writing, and hear your music often, they may be more willing to play for you again in the future. (Connections are important.)

One more big reason is that performances are important in your professional life. If you wrote 12 pieces this year but only had 2 performances, very few people will know your music. This means less people will seek out your music, and you will have to struggle to get performances, because you haven't been. Professional organizations, competitions, grad schools and even employers look to see how often your music is getting performed. The general phrase is "steady schedule of performances."

While that is incredibly cryptic, 2 performances a year isn't really great enough to be considered "steady." That being said, take every opportunity to get your music performed. Get pieces performed multiple times. Premieres are easy, it is the 2nd performance that is hard. Apply to competitions, where your music may be heard in a different city, state, or country, and where YOU don't have to rehearse it! If it fits the bill, get it performed, even if you may not be too proud of it anymore. Someone may still like it.

On a related note, I plan to organize another composition concert in February/March sometime. If you have ANY piece, this is a freeeeee concert opportunity. Take advantage of it.

Which piece had a profound effect on you?

When asked which piece (or pieces) had a profound musical effect on me, my musical language, and artistic goals, two pieces came to mind; Frank Zappa's "Peaches en Regalia" and Steve Reich's Electric Guitar Phase.

Peaches because it was just so cool, so long, and that awesome guitar solo. It was rock music, but nobody sings; it was chamber music, but theres a drum set and an electric guitar solo; it totally blew my mind.

Electric Guitar Phase was the first time I had every heard anything related to minimalism. For those not familiar with the piece, it is a distorted guitar riff (originally a violin) played constantly, then a second guitar playing the same riff enters, and slowly phases (moving forward or backward one eighth note at a time) in and out with the first guitar. Then a third guitar enters, then a fourth. All playing this same riff, all phasing with each other. For 22 minutes. The first time I heard it I had to hear it again. It was glorious.

I have since gobbled up all the Zappa and Reich I possibly can, read their books, played their music, and been to concerts of their works.

I love Zappa's work ethic and unique perspective on all things, I love Reich's experiments with tape and voice and layering. Just the mind wanting to experiment and discover and look what happened!

So really you can blame it all on them.

Lists of Websites

Hello everyone!

I found two great lists of useful websites for composers on Composers Forum.

--> List of useful websites for composers and musicians

--> List of useful websites for filmmakers (I suppose this is great if you are interested in film composing.)

Feel free to add to this list in the comments section and/or on the website itself.

Enjoy!

Sakari

Rivising Old Creations

As some of you may know, tomorrow I am having my composition "Hypnosis" performed at the recital tomorrow at 8pm. The most challenging part about this writing the piece is that when I wrote it to be performed tomorrow, I did not start from scratch--I decided to revise what I had completed back in January. It was performed then too, but since then, I had given this piece a rest as it was in what seemed to be a pretty "final" version at the time. Considering that this is the most I have ever revised one of my pieces (I believe I began writing it in October 2009), much of the music has changed despite the fact that my vision for it has remained the same, and I have acquired many new skills since I began writing it.

Since I wanted to retain my original vision, I realized that I had to retrace the development of the music and reevaluate the reasons behind the choices I made as a composer. For example, many of the melodic lines are designed to run contrapuntally in order to convey how the mind often has multiple trains of thought occurring at once, even at the subconscious level. When I revised the piece, I noticed that some sections were strictly homophonic, which contradicts this idea and hinders the development of the piece. Also, some melodies repeat by moving to other instruments while new ideas are explored on top of that framework. Therefore, when I altered the development of the work, I had to maintain the concept of "recurring thoughts" within each section of the piece. As a result, each section has some aspect that hints at or is reminiscent of earlier themes. (I would not, however, classify the overall work as "theme and variations" sort of piece.)

Part of the reason why I chose to revise this piece is because I believe that it is, so far, the most pivotal work that has defined my voice as a composer. Out of the several compositions that I have created which have also upheld a determined vision, this one reflects how I have been much more meticulous with making sure that the development and character of the piece remains consistent and focused. In addition, I decided to revise it because I aspire to create several more movements of this work, and quite simply, the end of it was repetitive, far too resolved, and banal (oh those lovely authentic cadences!). I also found it ironic that the authentic cadence, which strongly set it in a key, resolved a piece which in the middle began to wander far out of its original key and did not have a well-established tonic in the first place.

One question that I have for you all is, how do you approach revising a piece if your original vision has changed?

Sakari