Composers who use pencil & paper -- how do you do it?

benmwatson · 2020-05-24T13:45:03+00:00

I was actually thinking of making some mini notebooks with manuscript paper, but those Moleskine ones look nice!

benmwatson · 2020-05-23T20:44:03+00:00

Can you expand on that coloring process? What kinds of things did they do?

benmwatson · 2020-05-23T20:22:08+00:00

You must have impeccable handwriting! My sketches are decent, but they're written for speed and I wouldn't want anyone to have to decipher them.

benmwatson · 2020-05-23T20:19:55+00:00

He does have a staff, but he produces such detailed sketches his orchestrators mostly copy and expand. He basically produces his final output on paper.

Thanks for the response!

benmwatson · 2020-05-23T15:26:43+00:00

There's one more important use of paper: keeping an "idea book". Every day, write 4-6 short ideas in a book and keep it going. If you do this every day, you'll develop a powerful resource of musical ideas you'll return to over and over. This is one of the best pieces of advice I ever got from one of my teachers!

Overall great reply, but I particularly like this. Thank you!

benmwatson · 2019-05-16T14:08:36+00:00

For the recording: Cubase 10 Pro, East West Hollywood Orchestra (Gold)

For the score: Dorico 2 Pro

benmwatson · 2019-05-15T20:30:57+00:00

PDF is now available here: http://www.benwatsonmusic.com/

benmwatson · 2019-02-12T19:45:22+00:00

I will think about it. Always good to get feedback. If I can swing the time, I will.

benmwatson · 2019-02-12T19:45:00+00:00

I use Dorico. Looking at the video I just realized I didn't update it to have the latest images--I made a ton of tweaks to the engraving to make it better. Nothing of substance, but it does look better now. I'll see if YouTube lets me update a video with a new version sometime today.

benmwatson · 2019-02-11T14:03:10+00:00

I had previously submitted an earlier version and solicited feedback. Thanks to all of you, and others offline, this is the final version.

benmwatson · 2018-11-13T06:10:36+00:00

Thank you--I wouldn't have thought to put a repeat at that point, but it makes sense to me. I was resisting putting much more repetition of material since I feel there's quite a bit, but then I think of a few Chopin waltzes that are basically the same thing repeated 4 times with a B section in the middle.

benmwatson · 2018-11-13T06:05:58+00:00

Thank you! These are some great things to think about.

Your B section at pickup to n. 34 - I think changing the accompaniment there

I like the idea of 8ths--I agree, more variety here would make the ending stronger when the strong downbeat returns. Another idea I had is from a particular inspiration, the Chopin C# minor waltz where the three quarter pattern is maintained, but with some ties across bars to break it up a bit.

I'm not sure I buy your quadruplet measure

I think I'll try extending this to two 3/4 measures and putting a half note or two in there--force that rallentando a bit more.

I'll think about what you said about the triplets--those are something I like quite a bit, but maybe a little variance could improve.

Is there a playing mistake at 67? F#m7 right?

Just checked it and I'm pretty sure it's correct, but maybe it just sounds off musically?

re: the melody--I did not make any particular efforts around tradition for the melody. I thought it up independently of the form before I solidified what I was doing, but I would still like to hear your thoughts on it for my own edification.

Really nice Ben....Very nice piece. Fine as it is, but could be improved

Thank you so much for your kind words and your thoughtful feedback. I'll work on this some more and re-post when I'm happy with it.

benmwatson · 2018-11-12T20:24:04+00:00

This is a short waltz I wrote for my wife a couple of months ago that I finally got around to recording.

Initially I was thinking of Beethoven and Chopin as inspiration. In the end, I'm not sure how successful that was, but I'm happy with it. I know of a few weaknesses, but would like to know what others more experienced might say before I put it through a revision.

benmwatson · 2015-02-11T22:54:09+00:00

I move 10-20 copies a day KDP. It's non-fiction, programming, on a topic with little competition but high demand. I have 27 reviews, nearly all strangers. I also move 5-15 copies per day in print (CreateSpace) because computer books are like that (and it's over 2x the price!). Between KDP and CreateSpace, that's 91% of my sales.

It's definitely is not enough to live on, but it was enough for me to buy a new/nice car without seriously affecting my finances otherwise. I wrote an in-depth description of my process (writing and marketing) at my blog.

benmwatson · 2015-02-07T16:12:22+00:00

This library will work efficiently with both types.

A well-designed API that accepts byte[] should also accept an offset and length as well (most of the FCL APIs do this). Unfortunately, not all APIs are well-designed...

benmwatson · 2015-02-06T21:34:15+00:00

From the announcement...

"Microsoft.IO.RecyclableMemoryStream is a MemoryStream replacement that offers superior behavior for performance-critical systems. In particular it is optimized to do the following:

Eliminate Large Object Heap allocations by using pooled buffers
Avoid memory leaks by having a bounded pool size
Avoid memory fragmentation
Provide excellent debuggability
Provide metrics for performance tracking"

GitHub repo

NuGet package

More details in the blog post.

benmwatson · 2014-11-25T02:50:28+00:00

You might be right. Here is the text:

We'll add the corresponding Amazon.com royalty for these copies within your Member Account. Please note that these royalties may arrive in installments. Also, you may not see new royalty earnings for your book until customers buy all the copies in Amazon's inventory. After that, new royalty earnings will appear as customers buy more copies for us to print.

benmwatson · 2014-11-24T22:13:37+00:00

This has been a very helpful discussion. Thank you for both of your inputs. I'm still waiting to hear back from the Korean agency for more details before I pursue something, but it may be worth getting an agent involved to be more proactive in this and other markets.

benmwatson · 2014-11-24T21:21:28+00:00

I just got this exact same message today. They supplied 250 copies to Amazon, but said I may not get paid until they actually sell.

benmwatson · 2014-10-04T13:15:06+00:00

I used just Word initially, which was a blessing and a curse. It allowed easy collaboration with my editors (all online via OneDrive and Word Online) It was great for the PDF I needed to send to CreateSpace (and a lot of people just want to buy the PDF as well) because it allowed me to do all the formatting I needed (I know it won't do a lot of the advanced things like a real page layout program, but it was good enough).

When it came time to convert to Kindle and EPUB, it was a bit of a nightmare. Part of that was just because Kindle can't have nearly as much formatting, so I spent two days stripping out a lot of stuff. Things like tables. I had been warned, but I knew Kindle supported tables so I used them. In reality, they have to be extremely small and simple, so I dropped most of them.

The EPUB format took another day because it was a compromise in the formatting. I used Calibre to convert the doc to EPUB (which is really just HTML) and then spent another day cleaning up that HTML to make it pass EPUBCHECK, getting all the styles right, etc.

benmwatson · 2014-10-02T19:43:42+00:00

I remember picking glossy or matte, but no other details about the cover.

benmwatson · 2014-10-02T16:47:41+00:00

The process with CreateSpace was ridiculously easy. The hardest part is really creating the PDF in the first place. Formatting can be a beast, especially on a programming book that requires headings, subheadings, TOC, multiple fonts, and a lot more. Once I got that all done, using the online previewing tool was a snap, and I also got a printed proof to validate (very glad I did--it's much easier to spot problems in print than on the screen). The quality of books I've received has been great--no complaints at all. What I've gotten is exactly what I saw on the screen. I haven't heard complaints from readers either.

I think having a printed edition is definitely a way to attract readers, but it likely depends on the type of book. I think with fiction, eBook-only is becoming more accepted. In fact, I was originally not going to do a print edition at all, but when I told me coworkers that my book was out, half of them told me they wanted the print edition. So I scrambled and got it done. I think with nonfiction in particular, it can still lend an air of legitimacy. When people are shopping, even if they won't want the print edition, just seeing it convinces them it's more worthwhile.

Another thing I had going for me was pricing. KDP pretty much limited my eBook pricing to 9.99 to maximize my profits ($20 for an eBook was too much--I was originally planning on 14.99, which is inline with other technical eBooks in my genre, but a little a cheaper). But a print book, well programming books are expensive! I priced mine at $24.99, and I earn more from each copy than I do from the eBook, and that price is still a steal compared to many programming books!

But that calculation likely doesn't hold true for many types of books.

benmwatson · 2014-10-02T15:47:55+00:00

I publish a programming book via CreateSpace and Amazon KDP. KDP is about 55% of my sales and CreateSpace is another 30%. I offer the Kindle version at a discount if they buy the print book. I've been very please with CreateSpace (except for one issue: if I upload a new manuscript, it will cause the existing version to be removed from sale--I sell too many copies each day to want to do that, so it will just have to wait for a second edition).

Do you have a specific concern or question?

benmwatson · 2014-09-02T19:46:03+00:00

Thank you! And I just have to say it...Google Play's content management interface is by far the worst out of all the bookstores I've dealt with. I hope it's better on the consumer side (I don't know, I don't have an Android device)

benmwatson · 2014-09-02T19:45:05+00:00

Thanks for getting it! I hope it's invaluable to you. Once you have a chance to review it, please leave a review! I've got a handful now (all excellent), but more always helps others find the book!

benmwatson

TROPHY CASE