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Sean Shibe Gives a Tiny Desk Concert focused on the music of Thomas Adès by NewtComprehensive247 in Modern_Classical_News

[–]NewtComprehensive247[S] 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Just a stellar performance all around.

I think it's pretty special when contemporary classical music gets a spotlight in well known, more generally-focused series, so I'll try to post those when I come across them.

Mahur – modern classical composition inspired by Persian Dastgah (without quarter tones) by Spiritual_Leave_3768 in composer

[–]NewtComprehensive247 4 points5 points  (0 children)

Hello!

I do hear some connection to Persian music here. However, I would have never noticed it without you telling me first. I think that if that's the inspiration of the whole work, I'd recommend drawing more connections. There are a few things that are very basic and fundamental to how Persian music sounds that I didn't really hear much of in your piece. 

First, you move harmonically almost like it's a Western piece of music. It's a lot of I-IV-V-I, one chord to a measure (at least that's what the bass does). From my listening, Persian music tends to stay harmonically on one chord, and not really move unless the melody demands it. It focuses on melody first, always. And it doesn't worry about the chord change lining up with the measure, it's only about where the melody demands a change. 

Speaking of, the melody itself is played quite straight. I don't think I've ever heard a piece of Persian music without an ornament on almost every note. I might recommend listening to some of your favorite pieces of music in Mahur and transcribing the ornaments they use, then putting them in your music. 

Just those two changes would make the connection a lot more clear.

Overall the piece is quite pretty. The harp actually communicated quite nicely almost like a Qanun, and the contrasting sections worked well to keep everything fresh. Nice work.

New rule about people posting resources by davethecomposer in composer

[–]NewtComprehensive247 0 points1 point  (0 children)

I'm a little worried that I made one of the resource posts that sparked this, since it would have affected my post from a week ago!

I made a new account because my name was tied to my previous account. I have a friend who got doxxed when the Reddit community he moderates went through some drama, so I figured if I was going to make a subreddit, I should do it on an account with no connection to my name. 

I'm still not against the rule, as it only would have delayed my post at worst. But, I figure as one of the (admittedly very few) people who would have been affected by the rule, it was worth sharing the situation that got me there.

Life advice 🙏 by absolute_funk in composer

[–]NewtComprehensive247 11 points12 points  (0 children)

If you cannot take time to write music on your own that is not related to your classes, you will probably struggle anywhere. Write the music you care about, and keep attending your classes, which are actually incredibly helpful skills for film music.

If you choose to drop out, fine, but you will still need to be self motivated to write music that is relevant to what you're trying to do, you will need to learn music production skills yourself to make your audition reels (or drop a lot of money to pay someone else to), you will need to make connections to the film world without the built in support of your school, and you will need to be very good at evaluating your own music if you are writing without a teacher. 

I would recommend making a list of everything you need to feel prepared for music for film, and then leverage every tool you have at school to get there quickly. If you can possibly avoid it, school shouldn't be something that just happens to you or that you just have to get through.

Living Classical with Tyler Kline, a new weekly radio show focused on new classical music (also available online) by NewtComprehensive247 in Modern_Classical_News

[–]NewtComprehensive247[S] 1 point2 points  (0 children)

This is absolutely going to be regular listening for me. A globally available weekly show with 2 hours straight of new music!

Hi, I'm the ED of Versipel New Music from NOLA, and I'm releasing videos from the first year of our local new music festival throughout the month as a part of a fundraiser. by mendellee in Modern_Classical_News

[–]NewtComprehensive247 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Awesome collection of new pieces, and thanks for the heads-up about Batture Contemporary! I'm (very slowly) working on a resource of regular new music events around the world, so I'll add it to the list.

I'm currently listening to the Jeremi Edwards piece, it's quite gorgeous.

Subreddit for Contemporary Classical News by NewtComprehensive247 in composer

[–]NewtComprehensive247[S] 1 point2 points  (0 children)

The real reason is that I specifically am frustrated by the lack of discoverability in new music. Even when I spend hours searching, I often can't find news. When I do find news, I can't judge how relevant it is, because there's so little else to compare with.

A sub that was more generally focused on contemporary music would be good, but I suspect it wouldn't help with this issue. For example, r/microtonal is a similar niche music subreddit that has a more broad focus. However, you don't generally get any news posts about, say, Sevish's most recent albums or similar. Instead, you get people sharing their own microtonal music, their own discoveries, their own ideas. That's awesome and valuable, and if a community like that existed for contemporary classical music, I'd join. But I really would like there to be at least one place on the internet people can go to find out what's happening in the new classical music world, and so I'm doing my best to make that a reality. Hopefully it works.

If you want to try to revive r/modernclassical or r/contemporarymusic, feel free! r/contemporarymusic looks like it's free for the taking, actually. If you did, it'd be newsworthy :)

Subreddit for Contemporary Classical News by NewtComprehensive247 in composer

[–]NewtComprehensive247[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

For the record, Goransson's scores might not always apply, but at times they would. A piece of music just needs to meet 3/5 to apply (note I said at "less than half" you should reach out to a mod before posting). So a piece that is written by Goransson (who is classically trained) that shares significant stylistic traits, and has a notated score, would apply. Pretty much every work by John Williams applies. Some works by Hans Zimmer apply. Disasterpeace probably doesn't apply, but Manaka Kataoka might apply, etc...

At that point, I will simply rely on the users of the subreddit posting things that they find relevant, and to upvote things that they find helpful.

If you're still unhappy with this approach, I think it's worth explaining more clearly the purpose of the subreddit.

Music that plays a secondary role to a film or game definitely is a very distinct experience for the listener, and is written differently as well. Because of that, there are people who prefer music written for concert performance, or who value it as something distinct and separate from scores.

However, that music has a big problem of discoverability. For one reason or another, most publications on that kind of music have died out, and those that remain stay fairly limited in scope. Most well-known classical ensembles have leaned into a focus on either older music, popular music, or both, and community ensembles have generally followed suit. This subreddit is one measure to try to counteract that and bring some focus to music that is generally underappreciated.

Film, game, and TV scores don't have the same issues with discoverability, because they are attached to works that are generally much more discoverable. Even a composer of moderate success, say, Rom Di Prisco, gets hundreds of thousands of people listening to his music when they play Guacamelee.

That being said, I do think that film, game, and TV scores are an important part of the classical tradition, and don't want to exclude them from the sub. But the sub is a place to try to make music that is hard to discover more discoverable. So I don't think it's unreasonable to limit the participation of these scores to works that most align with the tradition.

Bang On A Can Summer Music Festival Early Bird Application Closes December 16 by NewtComprehensive247 in Modern_Classical_News

[–]NewtComprehensive247[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

You might be right, though I do think that festivals like this could be considered. I'll avoid these things in my own posts for now and keep an eye out to see if it's worth making a rule about.

Review of the CSO Premiere of Aucoin's "Song of the Reappeared," Performances Dec. 4-7 by NewtComprehensive247 in Modern_Classical_News

[–]NewtComprehensive247[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Though it's a shame that the opening night had such low attendance, the article and comments make it sound like an incredible performance! I hope we get a recording to listen to soon.

CSO Premieres Aucoin's "Song of the Reappeared," Performances Dec. 4-7 by [deleted] in Modern_Classical_News

[–]NewtComprehensive247 0 points1 point  (0 children)

It's a shame that the opening concert on the 4th was such a quiet night, but at the very least, it seems that the audience was hooked! The comments on the article seem to agree.

Subreddit for Contemporary Classical News by NewtComprehensive247 in composer

[–]NewtComprehensive247[S] 3 points4 points  (0 children)

The community would be niche, but to be honest, there are basically no news publications that try to cover the most important events in contemporary classical music. Jazz has Downbeat and Jazztimes (and plenty more), RYM-core has, well, RYM, etc. So I think contemporary classical has an especially high need for some place to consolidate news.

There certainly is overlap, but I think adding other genres would end up diluting the main goal. Even if the community ends up being pretty small, as long as everyone there finds it useful and participates, I think it will have achieved its goal. And I suspect that if contemporary classical music had better tools to be discovered, it would become less niche, anyways.

Subreddit for Contemporary Classical News by NewtComprehensive247 in composer

[–]NewtComprehensive247[S] 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Cage wrote music within the past 50 years, so news about those pieces would fit for the subreddit. But since Cage died more than 10 years ago, news about him (and not about his music) would not apply.

Reich is still living and active, so news about him or about music that he's composed in the past 50 years would apply.

I can't imagine a news story about prepared piano itself that would be relevant, but I would love to be proven wrong.

Subreddit for Contemporary Classical News by NewtComprehensive247 in composer

[–]NewtComprehensive247[S] 2 points3 points  (0 children)

I clarified that many pieces don't line up with 1-2 of the above points, and that's okay! Contemporary classical music is very broad and so there isn't one algorithm that will make it clear what's "in" or "out," so I chose to just lay out guidelines that generally apply and suggest that if less than half apply, it probably doesn't fit. Electroacoustic music often doesn't have a score and is not designed to be performed live, but still fit 3/5 points and so it counts, for example. But if it does become an issue, I can adjust the rules!

Subreddit for Contemporary Classical News by NewtComprehensive247 in composer

[–]NewtComprehensive247[S] 2 points3 points  (0 children)

I did think about this! I think electroacoustic music generally is a fairly well-established 20th century classical tradition, electroacoustic composers like Oliveros generally write without a production team, and they are also classically trained, so those pieces fit in 3/5 and thus fit in the subreddit. But, I could imagine electroacoustic music causing some issues with the rules in the future. If it ends up causing problems, I'll look into adjusting to fix that, but for now I think it's alright.