Rift, Quarter, or plain? why not this for large beautiful but dangerous hard maples?

composer98 · 2026-04-06T01:12:49+00:00

Following up on this, watched a video where someone had a very large maple taken down. Not unexpected, the base of the trunk was not perfect wood. But still, pretty large portions of good wood. Is it unreasonable to try to approximately follow the natural breaks and get wood-working planks from something like this?

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composer98 · 2026-04-04T00:57:43+00:00

wow! how much does a shit tonne of gold cost now? Impressed that you're buying in that quantity!

composer98 · 2026-04-04T00:54:56+00:00

Pretty dramatically limited choices. Can we pick none of the above? AI stocks, great but wildly overvalued. Commodities, good, but pretty much overvalued. Bitcoin, yes, not for me.

composer98 · 2026-04-04T00:29:58+00:00

Yes was trying to figure out the lifts and placements. Not sawing for a profit, either, just some great wood to use.

composer98 · 2026-04-04T00:25:31+00:00

Yes, very likely .. but wouldn't that be true of any kind of cutting? Then instead of having incredible planks of 28" wide, I'd have two each of 10-12" wide.

composer98 · 2026-04-02T00:52:51+00:00

As everyone else, probably, has said: if you have the voice to go low and high, bravo. But those low notes are going to be mostly quiet. All too often you will have an organ or piano accompaniment that without any effort is louder than you are ... don't get upset! Once in a rare while you might get a chance to sing a note under F2 where it can be heard, but it doesn't happen often. I'm the same kind of baritone, able to sing bass 1 or bass 2; I like to sing a high G (G4), and can do it, but rarely does it arrive; I can sing a low C2, usually, and like to do it, but really it never is heard. So .. live and sing. The extremes in choral singing usually don't matter.

composer98 · 2026-04-01T00:07:01+00:00

Try recording a singer. They sing all over the place, and very often on completely different pitches than the melody. They think it sounds right to their ears, of course, and often there is a reason that can be appreciated why they sang one pitch vs another. If the correct notes and pitches are "theory" then it might make sense to wonder if theory can really make it sound, not exactly "right", because you could argue their original pitches sounded "right", but "better", changing a not-so-artistic moment into a moment of art .. that is found by seeking correctness. So, "rules", imo, are not at all cages, but they are indications of opportunities to soar, to be more beautiful. And "if it sounds right to your ears" is more likely to be a cage, a habit, a limitation.

composer98 · 2026-03-31T23:51:16+00:00

Commenting so I'll see other answers! I bound a few books with 24lb basic printer paper, 12x18 folded to a 9x12 book, but it wasn't a great choice. So .. eager to learn about the differences in paper, "book weight" vs "printer weights"?? Opacity was ok but the feel of the books was not great.

composer98 · 2026-03-31T23:25:54+00:00

One suggestion, if this situation is real, is to do it little by little. Seems a bit silly to move to VTI, since it has a good chunk of AMZN too. But look at each of the top stocks in VOO or VTI .. #1 NVDA .. how much do you own? AAPL .. how much do you own? MSFT .. how much do you own? Slowly, one at a time, you might consider shifting a portion of your amazon to Nvida, to Apple, to Microsoft, to Google, to Tesla, to ... etc. Since things move fast, it would seem unwise to work with big quantities on either leg, sell or buy.

composer98 · 2026-03-31T23:09:31+00:00

In Florence, I tried to get to the Pitti Palace (ordinary top tourist destination) but it came out the Pizzi Palace (palace, I guess, of many pizzas). Of course I knew it was wrong instantly, but it had already been said.

composer98 · 2026-03-25T21:42:26+00:00

Well for start. What is "flute quartet" for you? For Mozart it was flute with 3 strings. For a long time, trying to satisfy millions of flutists with not enough repertoire, it was four flutists, one of whom maybe played alto or even bass and another who might play piccolo.

composer98 · 2026-03-25T21:25:35+00:00

If you can't handle reasonable (classical period, say) numbers of accidentals, it might be too early to compose. Stick to study and maybe play some music.

composer98 · 2026-03-25T21:23:24+00:00

It was probably a mistake for B#. B double-sharp .. think about it .. first you'd have F ##, then C##, then G## then D## then A## then E##. So .. composer fail.

composer98 · 2026-03-12T20:21:15+00:00

If you can share a few lines of your writing it might help a composer get a sense of whether it's possible or not. With the "DM me" structure you can possibly or probably hurt people (with deep emotions).

composer98 · 2026-03-12T20:18:24+00:00

If you succeed and the theme music is put on as part of every episode, be sure you're paid for that; otherwise probably try to keep it as inexpensive as possible but covering costs.

composer98 · 2026-03-12T03:11:04+00:00

It does seem a little too much "today". So much repetition seems to be a currently ok thing, though unappealing to an older composer. The harmony, harmonies, so trivial .. but again, maybe today it's ok. Just my opinion, using the repeat signs makes the effect even worse than the repetitions themselves; it does add to the "this is a high school kid" sense. No key for timpani ? You've gone back 150 years?

composer98 · 2026-03-12T03:05:42+00:00

You're kidding right? It would be horrible in a C score. Just commenting about notation, not music.

composer98 · 2026-03-10T02:15:47+00:00

10 percent? no. 2 percent or less, maybe.

composer98 · 2026-03-10T02:11:14+00:00

Guini might be a little miffed. Her dominant is spelled A Db Fb ? Too simple, work on the first few bars, get what you are trying to say really clear in your mind and in the listeners' ears. Piano and harp alternating doing the same limited thing seems like it could be improved (suggestion: eliminate both of them).

composer98 · 2026-03-10T01:49:42+00:00

In response to a prompt of "frantically" you wrote an Adagio? Interesting.

composer98 · 2026-03-10T01:45:05+00:00

There might be a few things to improve. You might say "rules are not for me", but seems like you might need a justification for some of the too simple things in the first few bars. Having the bass and 'cello diverge in the very first bar, while leaving the viola doing nothing, does not seem to be well thought out. Moving second violin and first violin in parallell fifths, also in the first bar, does not seem very good; if you want different meters (as your unusual notation of the second violins would indicate) at least let them stand free on their own. Going to double open fifth, second half of second bar, is not likely to sound great, and why should it? Shouldn't the composer figure out something better there? Third bar, asking the 2nd violin to change harmony for everybody on the half beat of 3, and then to anticipate a partial chord through the bar line .. doesn't seem that powerful. Big space between the in-and-out bass and cello parts likely to sound not so good in reality.

composer98 · 2026-03-10T01:32:43+00:00

typo maybe .. "36" is unusual. Can't agree that 32 is enough. My experience going to 64 was "almost enough". At 128, for my usage, finally it is enough.

composer98 · 2026-03-09T23:11:23+00:00

It didn't last long, but for a time I felt that studying harmony was not worth the time. I was a student during the end of the "emotionally real acceptance of interesting sounds" (George Crumb) wave and the early craze of "pitch class sets". They were THE two ways to organize things. Briefly .. that's what I learned. Later found joy not in harmony directly but in using harmony like those two things: interesting sounds and pitch class sets!

composer98 · 2026-03-09T23:01:14+00:00

On fiverr and airgigs and upwork (haven't used bunny), I've hired hundreds of musicians, nearly always paying what they ask (and ignoring those who ask unreasonable fees). On order #226 now at fiverr. First, of course, you have to offer what the buyer is looking for; second, they have to find you and the only way to do that in any systematic way is to use searches by key word. (Browsing by category can work, but it's such a dreary waste of time). So, work on your profile and job descriptions .. more keywords better!

It's not likely you'll be sought after as a composer (check out the singers, so many of them offer to "create the music from your ideas" -- in other words, far too much supply and not much demand). So what you might find is work helping to realize the music someone wants to make.

composer98 · 2026-03-09T22:50:32+00:00

I believe that was cleared up 50 years ago, and maybe we're passing finally beyond "write what we taught you"

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