Notation and Sequencing Software

[Florestan]

Originally Posted by stephen wainman

Let us take counsel from Mr Bennett in Pride and Prejudice, as he says to Elizabeth, "For what do we live, but to make sport for our neighbours, and laugh at them in our turn?"

Indeed. I have spent much of my life endeavouring (perhaps vainly) to do neither - in real life, at least, though I am obviously not above making a spectacle of myself on the internet.

[Florestan]

Originally Posted by Jeff

It is impossible for one to devote ones life so wholeheartedly to music like the great ones could.. There is to much possibility for distraction for another composer to reach Brahmsian levels..

I know Herz has already picked up on this and I don't want you to feel jumped on from all sides, but I would argue that if anything, the opportunities for composers to devote themselves to their art are better now than ever.

In modern western society it is possible for people to be almost free of other responsibilities; we have much more leisure time now than in previous centuries and far better living conditions. There is far less pressure to raise a family. If the composer is male, it is not unthinkable that his female (or male) partner might be the breadwinner. And there is emergency healthcare should the worst happen. If someone wants to shut themself in a garret with a pencil and paper, the conditions have never been more favourable.

[maureen]

i agree the devotion to the arts depends more on motivation and heart than opportunity...
it can be difficult but turn off the tv and play and write
compensation may not be present but if you love something you pursue it
i am a hobbiest level painter and for years i put it off because i felt i couldn't afford it
then i just started painting
and for years as i was raising children and had to work to support them, i wrote poetry when i couldn't paint
painting with words
i will probably never attain even a professional level however, it's not lack of opportunity it's lack of motivation and perhaps lack of enough talent
still i enjoy it
still i pursue it

[Chilperich]

Originally Posted by Herzeleide

I made some posts relevant to this in the 'Music and Spin' thread.

I have to declare a potential bias here, since Herzeleide and I are friends in the world outside cyberspace.

That said, although I have used Sibelius for the last ten years, I have to applaud his artistic purity.

I think he is basically correct in stating that exclusive reliance on Sibelius militates against the development of the inner ear, and he's also right in suggesting that - unless money really is no object - the aspiring composer would actually be far better off investing first in a piano and some good scores, recordings and theory books and making serious headway with them.

I'm now 48, and I had to learn the supposedly hard way (which Herzeleide is right in declaring to be the better way), working my way through C. H. Kitson (at school), Walter Piston and Bach/Riemenschneider (at university), and through many other theory and orchestration texts (especially those of Prout, Schoenberg and Schenker) on my own initiative. Only then did I belatedly come to Sibelius.

When composing I still work in my head, sketching on manuscript paper with a pencil, as Herzeleide sensibly recommends. Once I am happy with the sketches I then transfer them onto Sibelius (which is useful for preparing parts). Whatever sounds you use in association with Sibelius, you are only going to obtain a very rough approximation to how it would sound played by real musicians, so it is a big mistake to use Sibelius rather than your inner ear to audition a piece. (I currently use Sibelius choral sounds, Garritan Personal Orchestra and EastWest samples, but I am acutely aware of their serious limitations.) Since my PC has insufficient CPU memory to support these samples I've had to invest in a dedicated laptop. (If you are going to use Sibelius, a Mac is definitely preferable to a PC.)

Yes I use Sibelius, but always with several caveats (of the Herzeleide variety) to myself. Herzeleide has mentioned the inadequacy of Sibelius (whatever sounds it employs) as far as representing the different timbres of the various registers of instruments. (Timbre is also, of course, affected by such considerations as the string employed on a string instrument, or the dynamics currently in force.) Another issue is that of tuning. Sibelius only employs tempered tuning as its default, and it would be a very time-consuming process to adjust manually the tuning of every note played by every instrument in a lengthy work to approximate to non-tempered tuning (although it's theoretically possible on outboard sounds such as Garritan and EastWest), not to mention all the various subtle adjustments of pitch and portamenti that real musicians make.

[Chilperich]

Originally Posted by haydnguy

I can't speak for the process of creating music, but when the computer replaced the typewriter with a word processor, suddenly everyone was a book writer. As a consumer, it wasn't really that big a plus because I have to wade through the crap of all these people that are not really good writers who can more easily write books.

The same thing is happening in recording. It used to be very expensive to make a CD. Now anyone can do it, and you have to wade through all the crap out there to find the good stuff.

Not saying I would want to go to the typewriter days and monopolistic record companies. But there ARE downsides to making things easier.
(2 cents).

Yes, I too have very mixed feelings about all of this. I learnt in my early 20s to touch-type on a manual typewriter (left to me by my late mother), but I welcome the modern word-processor as a great boon (in terms of actual convenience). I can see, however, that it might be better for a writer to work first in longhand (as I still sometimes do), and only commit his or her thoughts to the typewriter (with all its practical limitations) when they are at a very highly developed stage.

It is no bad thing, in some respects, that the monopolies enjoyed by record companies have been broken (by such things as cheap digital recording technology and MySpace). It was probably good for there to be gatekeepers, so to speak, when the gatekeepers themselves were of a higher calibre (or deputed matters of artistic judgement to those who actually knew something rather than to the proverbial accountants and lawyers), and when there was perhaps more consensus about artistic standards than now.

It's true that too much democracy is as bad as too little, and there's no doubt that there is an awful lot of crap being made in home studios. You can't uninvent the technology, though, and it might be better to concentrate on trying to educate people (both in a formal setting and by example) to raise standards. (See Herzeleide's remarks on studying composition passim.)

[Florestan]

Originally Posted by Chilperich

Yes, I too have very mixed feelings about all of this. I learnt in my early 20s to touch-type on a manual typewriter (left to me by my late mother), but I welcome the modern word-processor as a great boon (in terms of actual convenience). I can see, however, that it might be better for a writer to work first in longhand (as I still sometimes do), and only commit his or her thoughts to the typewriter (with all its practical limitations) when they are at a very highly developed stage.

It is no bad thing, in some respects, that the monopolies enjoyed by record companies have been broken (by such things as cheap digital recording technology and MySpace). It was probably good for there to be gatekeepers, so to speak, when the gatekeepers themselves were of a higher calibre (or deputed matters of artistic judgement to those who actually knew something rather than to the proverbial accountants and lawyers), and when there was perhaps more consensus about artistic standards than now.

It's true that too much democracy is as bad as too little, and there's no doubt that there is an awful lot of crap being made in home studios. You can't uninvent the technology, though, and it might be better to concentrate on trying to educate people (both in a formal setting and by example) to raise standards. (See Herzeleide's remarks on studying composition passim.)

Well said. You can't get the genie back in the bottle and education is absolutely the key to mitigating against the depredations of technology.

And I speak as someone who has been employed in the editorial production departments of many well known magazines and newspapers over the past 20 years despite never having learned to type properly. If we still had to do it all on typewriters I'd be sunk!

[Philidor]

Originally Posted by Florestan

If we still had to do it all on typewriters I'd be sunk!

Hot lead! You'd have made a great Mother of Chapel.

[Florestan]

Originally Posted by Philidor

Hot lead! You'd have made a great Mother of Chapel.

Attachment 319

Yeah, why aren't they out in the car park?

[Philidor]

Originally Posted by Florestan

Yeah, why aren't they out in the car park?

A trip down memory lane...




























http://www.oatridge.co.uk/Wapping4.htm

[Florestan]

God, that brings back memories of picketing a News International depot in Norfolk and a policemen promising to trample on me 'when things get going'.

He didn't, but the vans came out at 70mph and it's a wonder everyone got out of the way in time. They weren't going to stop for anyone.

I often pass the now boarded-up Sogat House, never without a feeling of sadness.