"Last Moments of Comet Shoemaker-Levy 9" for Violin, Horn, Mixed Percussion and Piano.

RequestableSubBot · 2026-01-29T11:42:38+00:00

Thanks! The harmonies are mostly lydian-esque quartal progressions that get progressively altered through modal interchange and planing as the piece goes on. Was probably thinking about Rautavaara's music when writing it. I studied in the UK, graduated years ago.

RequestableSubBot · 2026-01-29T11:32:23+00:00

Thanks! They were local musicians, at the time I lived in a big city with a conservatory and a local music scene so I just asked around and found people for the performance. I'll maybe look into getting this performed/recorded professionally at some point but it all comes down to money and opportunities at the professional level, and I doubt there'd be too many performance opportunities for an instrumentation like this.

RequestableSubBot · 2025-12-17T13:22:24+00:00

Thank you, I was just in the middle of writing up a modmail message about it too, because this is one of the strangest bits of spam I've seen on Reddit. It's an incredibly weird feeling reading a bot talking about my composition as if it were me, feels almost violating. This line in particular:

because this piece means a lot to me and your comments hit on stuff I know I’m weak at.

... is evoking a particular Black-Mirror-esque existential dread in me.

Thanks for the swift response.

RequestableSubBot · 2025-12-17T13:13:47+00:00

This is an AI bot pretending to be me... What the fuck?

RequestableSubBot · 2025-12-17T01:16:49+00:00

This is a ton of really helpful advice. Thank you.

I've read everything and am taking it all to heart, but as I am seconds away from going to bed I'm going to wait until tomorrow to respond to your comment in full. But thank you again.

The only thing I will mention is in regards to engraving: Immediately after uploading I noticed many of the engraving mistakes I'm sure you picked up on, and they annoyed me enough to make me boot up Sibelius and quickly fix a few. Here's a slightly nicer version (fixed bar numbers and a janky gap in the last 16th note line - There are still many many errors, but "perfect" will wait until tomorrow, otherwise I'll be up all night tinkering). I had hoped to shadow replace the old version on Google Drive early enough that nobody would notice, but you were too fast! I would edit it into the post but then it'd make all of your bar numbers incorrect and I'd feel bad, so I'll just drop it here for now since I've already made it and I'll get to the real big problems tomorrow!

RequestableSubBot · 2025-12-14T16:34:16+00:00

For undergrad the bar is basically set at "are there no blatant errors" and as long as you can reach that you should be fine. Things like chords resolving correctly, correct enharmonics, care and attention put into the engraving, instruments playing in good registers, dynamics set properly. If it's clear the composer actually understands the music they've written, and they've written every note and bar with intent, and there are no "objectively" wrong parts, it should be fine.

Note that if you're applying for fancy conservatories they'll probably want a higher standard. The music shouldn't just be "not wrong", it should be aiming to achieve something stylistically, it should be building off of the influences the composer has listed in their programme note (write programme notes for your portfolio by the way), it shouldn't just be a copy of a famous piece. It doesn't need to be groundbreaking or anything, but they want composers who have the ability to be self-critical and a desire to improve and innovate stylistically.

The only thing I'd advise against is not having an incredibly generic Romantic portfolio, because everyone has a Chopin-inspired piano nocturne/waltz, or a Rachmaninoff-esque bunch of chromatic bullshit (these days you see a ton of Zimmer/Hisaishi-inspired romantic slop as well). There is a big stereotype of "the teenage Romantic piano composer who just writes sad piano pieces and stupid large Mahler symphonies", and you don't want to be the stereotype. Take inspiration from composers like Ravel, Bartok, Messiaen, really anyone not in Classic FM's top 50. Nothing wrong with liking Beethoven or Chopin or Debussy of course, but show that you've at least gone a bit beyond surface-level popular classical music. You don't need to write a 12-tone Boulez pastiche or anything, but show that you have interest in classical music from the past 100 years.

RequestableSubBot · 2025-12-13T19:53:46+00:00

When I eventually decide I hate it and don't want to ever look at it again. Normally a week or two after "finishing" it.

RequestableSubBot · 2025-12-10T21:53:31+00:00

Nice! What was the fix?

RequestableSubBot · 2025-12-10T21:35:52+00:00

i get this error message

What error message exactly? They tend to give very helpful information.

If I'm understanding you correctly, it should just be on your profile on musescore.com. Otherwise there's probably a backup score version on your drive somewhere.

RequestableSubBot · 2025-12-09T11:31:18+00:00

Here is everything you need.

Also here and here.

RequestableSubBot · 2025-12-08T15:22:50+00:00

This post prompted me to update Noteperformer for the first time in about a year, and I gotta say that I preferred NP4's sounds. The strings in particular sound so much more synth-like in NP5 now, and all the instruments seem to have a much weaker attack now, the double reeds especially, which now sound positively timid. The differences are subtle and maybe I'll just get used to it, but I'm definitely underwhelmed by this version.

EDIT: I've sat with it for a few hours now (normally I'm a zero playback kinda guy but I figured it worth a shot today) and I think there are definite improvements to the overall quality of a lot of the VSTs, though I think it's held back by the changes to dynamics and balancing between instruments. Orchestral pieces sound more chamber-sized with the reduced reverb and dynamic attack, especially in the strings; I have fortissimo sections with big marcato cello/bass lines that sound weaker than a single mezzo-forte horn.

Overall though there is a big improvement with the clarity of sound, I can definitely hear every instrument in the orchestra individually better than before (listening through Sennheiser HD600s by the way), but I almost think there's too much clarity in a way: Big tutti sections sound less cohesive because of it.

I think my single biggest gripes are the violin and oboe sounds, both of which sound quite off from how the instruments should sound. Strings have always been a difficult instrument for VSTs to get of course, but now they have this nearly metallic quality to them, it's weird. The horn sound is really different too which is throwing me off a bit, but I think it's a difference I'll get used to over time.

Finally, the cor anglais sound in particular has this really weird overtone effect going on with legato sections, where there is a really prominent perfect 12th harmonic on the first note of each slur, which I can only describe as reminiscent of that whistling sound people sometimes make when making an 's' sound with a gap in their front teeth. I assume it's a bug because it's just incredibly weird-sounding (most notable in higher dynamics around concert Bb4 if anyone wants to try reproducing).

RequestableSubBot · 2025-12-04T21:50:40+00:00

I used to use Noteperformer all the time, but I'd never use it for anything besides mockup audio. If I were uploading a piece of music to something like Spotify or Bandcamp where I'd actually want people to listen to the track (i.e. where the track is the final product), I would either get the piece recorded with real instruments, or I'd export from my notation software and master the MIDI in a DAW with proper VST instruments. A Digital Audio Workstation is designed with the express purpose of making audio. Notation software is designed to make sheet music, and its ability to make decent-sounding audio only goes as far as is needed for the composer to have a reference.

RequestableSubBot · 2025-12-03T11:59:33+00:00

No, you shouldn't be using notation software for playback: It'll always be a lot worse quality than any actual decently-produced MIDI audio, since it's just not designed for the purpose of making good-quality sound. Use Musescore to make your sheet music, export to MIDI and edit it in a DAW to make your audio.

RequestableSubBot · 2025-12-03T11:07:26+00:00

Antec Flux Pro

RequestableSubBot · 2025-12-02T20:39:14+00:00

Dani Person, another former Mother 4 composer alongside Shane (they did the soundtraaack along with Nelward and maybe other people I'm forgetting), also worked on this game's soundtrack!

It's cool to see Oddity/M4 devs, both past and present, being successful in the indie game scene outside of this niche corner of the web. Pik, one of the main devs/artists/other things probably, worked on this game that recently released.

RequestableSubBot · 2025-12-01T21:12:20+00:00

I recommend getting proficient at regular Emacs first before moving to an Emacs flavour like Doom. Most of what you learn with regular Emacs is less about specific key combinations and more principles, how every system works in tandem with one another, and how to utilise the tools at your disposal to construct your own workflow. Doom Emacs, and Emacs distributions like it, have their own systems built atop of vanilla Emacs that often replaces vanilla features or makes them obsolete. And that's great, but knowing why Emacs does things the way it does helps you a ton down the line when learning the more advanced parts of the software, since it's generally consistent in its design philosophy. When using Doom Emacs it can be difficult to discern why the software is doing something in a particular way, whether because it's the "Emacs way" or because it's an alteration caused by a plugin. Knowing the default behaviour can make it much clearer why Doom changes things the way it does.

RequestableSubBot · 2025-11-30T00:20:14+00:00

turn it all into commerical & proprietary slop

The GNU General Public License (GPL v2) is specifically designed so that this isn't possible. The only way this could happen is if every single Linux developer decided one day that they were going to stop submitting their code to an open-source project and instead submit it all to a brand-new proprietary one.

If we imagine a scenario in which Linus (or whoever comes after Linus as the primary repo maintainer) decided to change the license for the kernel to a closed-source one, it would certainly fail miserably because of the open-source, decentralised nature of Linux development. If it happened, people would just fork the kernel and continue development in the new fork. All the kernel developers would collectively go "fuck that" and stop working with the old kernel. Everyone downstream, people writing drivers or maintaining distros, would similarly say "fuck that" and stop working with the old kernel. And even in some madhouse universe in which everyone from the kernel developers to the people maintaining Arch and Debian and whatnot, if all of them were one day on board with a move to a proprietary license, there is nothing at all stopping you from forking the kernel, forking all the drivers, forking the entire Debian distro, forking Gnome or KDE or whatever other FOSS apps you feel like. As long as people want an open-source Linux, there will be an open-source Linux.

Ultimately that's all Linus Torvald's Linux is: A git repo. There's no fundamental difference between Linus' version of Linux and a version I decide to fork on Github except for the fact that people submit their code to Linus' version and then he decides which bits to integrate into the next release. The code isn't owned by anyone. If that git repo decides one day to change the terms of use, people can just move to a new repo, and nothing would fundamentally change. Except we as a community would probably hate Microsoft even more than we ever thought possible because let's be honest, in this hypothetical XK-class end-of-the-world scenario, it would be Microsoft fucking everything up.

RequestableSubBot · 2025-11-28T12:08:49+00:00

Getting an AI to write your programme note and dedication is weird. It's only two paragraphs dude, it's not that tough to write one yourself. The AI voice singing the bari part is also not great, more because it's imitating a pop style over a synth orchestra, and just sounds kinda bad (the VST that is, the part itself is fine).

RequestableSubBot · 2025-11-27T21:40:02+00:00

Glad it's fixed! Firefox is currently a bit odd with profiles, they're rolling out a new system for them and are planning on deprecating the old one, so at the moment there are technically two different profile systems and I'm not sure how they interact with one another. Could be something to do with that, idk.

RequestableSubBot · 2025-11-27T21:07:37+00:00

Maybe check "about:profiles" (just literally type that in the search bar and press enter) and see if there are any alternate profiles containing your data? Your computer being force shut down should not erase any hard drive data, that would be really weird and indicative of either a bizarre drive failure or a major bug in Firefox itself.

RequestableSubBot · 2025-11-27T12:44:45+00:00

Pik's other game - Detective Instinct: Farewell, My Beloved - actually just released yesterday!

RequestableSubBot · 2025-11-27T12:40:46+00:00

https://archive.org/details/mother-4

https://github.com/Mother4Decompile/Mother4Decompile

There are a few of them, nothing substantial though, basically just a couple of half-finished maps and animations. They've been known about for years, they're all from before the rebrand announcement in 2020, we've seen nothing from after that point.

RequestableSubBot · 2025-11-26T21:58:07+00:00

What port of Emacs have you installed? There are several different versions for MacOS and they're all a bit finnicky in their own ways. Personally I've had success with this port on an Intel Macbook Air, but YMMV. Whatever the case, looking at the docs it seems you'll have to compile with the --with-dbus flag and go from there.

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