UPDATE: And, of course, throngs of composters have labeled the organiser's exaggeratedly kind and magnanimous advice to the useless as a 'tirade' and a 'rant', and have congested his video with vituperative posts and accusations. 

If only he had read his Bible - "Do not cast your pearls..."

Serves him right for not having held the contest with my requirements.

Hybrid entries were eligible, in fact the winning one was such.

Jasen: I would give them made up names but only if I was confident they couldn't discern the music was not recorded with samples. Otherwise, goodbye credibility - if you care for yours with them that is.

Everybody: It's amazing! I've been vindicated! Even one of the organisers of the competition has made a video about the brain-quashing indistinguishability and interchangeability of the entries. Even he felt frustrated enough to do this. Of course he is very nice about it - because he is a nice guy, and he desperately tries in his best way to tell everybody that they are going nowhere by being absolute, unadulterated apes of already bad music (my words of course). He says it more like "Everybody's music was earth-shattering, of really breathtaking quality, however...", and he goes on from there...

What he doesn't understand -he really doesn't understand it, he's not just pretending- is that all these people, all these countless tidal waves of would-bes actually are incapable of writing any other way. It is not by choice they "compose" thusly, it is impossible for them to do otherwise, as any other style requires two things they do not, and will never, possess: a) Talent, b) Proper musical chops. 

If I'm wrong, arrogant, prejudiced, whatever, why don't you hold another contest but deny everyone the percussion section, pre-recorded patches, the arpeggiator, and the spiccato articulation. You do this and I will personally contribute to the prizes!

I have first-hand experience in this, as for some years I was a producer at our national classical radio. It is tough for me to have an -as much as possible- objective take on this, as the target audience is not really fellow practitioners, but conservative concert-goers. I know, for the calls I answered during the season of one of my broadcasts (the one with the largest audience - 2 hours daily prime time live programme), were over 90% from lay people. I wouldn't play anything by, say Cowell (let alone Stockhausen) during that programme.

On the other hand, many local performers and composers flooded us producers with their CDs, hoping we would include them in our broadcasts. Some of the composers' CDs were digitally realised, and I never played any of them for two reasons: a) I thought the compositions did not merit airing, and b) The instrumental/chamber/orchestral simulations were frankly rank... Thinking back though, I think I played some of Guy Bacos' Christmas piano music some Decembers ago. Piano as a percussion instrument is not the hardest to simulate digitally, Guy does a great job of this, he writes professionally for that instrument (or any other), and I loved his variations. Ah! I just remembered, I played Andy Blainey's incredible rendition of Jeux des Vagues once, just to see whether anybody listening would actually realise it was not an orchestra they were hearing. Nobody called claiming so, or enquired about it. Come to think of it, I may have played one or two of Bill's songs - I can't be sure, too many years ago...

So having said that, and speaking in my capacity as a radio producer, I would be open to including sampled performances in my broadcasts, so long as they were of a certain standard of realism and above. Perhaps you can use me as an example Jasen (after all I did work for the equivalent of BBC3 in Greece - not just some local station, we transmitted nationally), and renew your petition to be programmed and, why not, interviewed.

Bill: You are right of course; I should not just target this film-muzak competition. As a 'serious'-music composer I am very familiar with the industrially cloned free-atonal works that are submitted by the thousands/year in 'serious' competitions. There is no more variation there than I claimed for that competition in the first post. Same complexity-without-a-cause, same extremity of ranges, same boring "extended" instrumental techniques (without a cause again). They too actually believe they are expressing themselves, when it is impossible to find one bar -not one- where that is evident. The "winners" of these get council grants, university appointments, and professional performances. And here I am complaining about some film-muzak mouse-riding, inspiration-patches layering amateurs...

There was one such, recently completed with such a large number of entrants (5-digit number) that -without being privy to the competition's due process- I very much doubt the judging panel heard more than a few seconds of each, more likely they employed a great number of lackeys to filter through the entries and provide them with, say 30 finalists (like I said, I'm guessing here, but I can't imagine busy executives spending a month on 24-hour/day listening sessions...).

At any rate, the main winner and a few consolation entrants were chosen, and very significant prizes awarded.

The reason I am posting this here, is that I listened to about 6-7 entries and, except for the winning entry, the ones I heard could have all come from a single entrant! Not only was the style of composition EXACTLY the same (same language, same mannerisms, same "technique", same orchestration, same tempo, same hit-points treatment, etc.), but most were in the same tonality too, so almost mappable note-for-note! Or at least perfectly superimposable, creating no (additional) cacophony...

Are there really so many film-muzak clones out there? And do they actually entertain notions of possessing a unique musical personality?

Scary...

It is always possible to work with a smaller keyboard, not least due to their capacity for transposing very easily, but this is still too cumbersome for fast work. You can always buy a secondary -even smaller- keyboard for your key switches and additional knobs and such. I am a keyboard player so if you put anything in front of me with fewer than 88 keys I feel uncomfortable - especially if they are also not 'weighted'. I have a M-Audio Keystation 88, which also has many rotary knobs and faders, for a complete control setup.

However, it largely depends on your m.o. If your room cannot accommodate a large keyboard, you have no choice. Personally, if put in such a position, I would exhaust all possibilities in order to fit a full-size keyboard in my workspace. Mine fits and slides from under my desk, and I purchased the desk with that requirement in mind primarily. And with this in mind, you can also imagine the surface space offered by this desk, for everything else...

Bill: That's also what I thought, that's why I shared it. Maybe it would inspire some people to improve their basic skills.

Jasen: Good to hear from you too! Sorry about the mayhem outside the window. I won't discuss politics on this forum, however I believe it is safe enough to voice my conspiratorial conviction that this "pandemic" is very much a laboratory product, great for big money to change hands in a lightning-short amount of time (one of many examples: Italy being stripped off its greatest assets very cheaply to outsiders, and hence lose its muscles in Brussels), for China to get the rap, and as a dress rehearsal for something much more sinister, to gauge reactions ramifications, control, etc.

Keep safe, keep sane!

I'm glad you guys enjoyed this clever diversion as much as I did.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A_i8qdfW5u8

There is so much atmosphere in all of these, as well as fragility that rivals John Barry's. Can't you find and post the corresponding scenes from the film here Bill?

Servando was a former cronie of this forum, a proper musician, and well within the top 5 orchestral simulators I have heard here. I do miss him...

Of course. Sorry I forgot to mention that little detail.

We are saying the same thing. I doubt it will ever happen no matter how much I wish it. It took how many years the people in Steinberg to create Dorico after they were fired by Avid, and they were specialists...

I think that someday what we want will be realized and with even truer samples as they get better all the time.

Like I said, I have been waiting for over 10 years. Hopefully it won't be another 10...

This was something I had requested myself, maybe over 10 years ago, when there were two big players on the notation market and integration with such programs was lamentable - I don't think it's really great today either. Not anywhere near the degree it should be. I had made that suggestion with the ultimate dream that through continuous development we eventually we would not need a DAW, tracks and regions and articulation lanes. Everything -or almost everything- would be feasible on the page with as much traditional notation as possible. There'd be nothing better for classically trained composers/orchestrators.

A VSL-specific (or not) notation program (of Sibelius et al calibre) with great VE integration would still be desirable but would not be worth the company's effort and expansion; not when there has emerged a strong third player absorbing the customer base, and certainly not when there are so many more orchestral libraries competing today.

Pity, pity, pity (I feel like a character from an Italian opera now).

All the more impressive!

Great fanfare Bill! It ends before you have even got a grip on what's happening, which is always a plus in this sort of pyrotechnical thing! Are you also responsible for the great visual?

Thanks for replying Stéphane,

It's good to hear that OpusModus is a progeny of Symbolic Composer, and indeed, the ability to monitor notation and sound in real time is a great advantage. I just hope that when you say that this platform is not as abstract as the older one doesn't mean that you cannot program in advance model-algorithms for more harmonically and rhythmically complex, advanced/academic computer composition.

Errikos.

You took me back to my student years - although that was a few decades ago, when the programming was not as user-friendly as it is today, if it is at all.

I never knew of OpusModus, and wonder whether you have had any experience with Symbolic Composer, which is the platform OM reminded me of, and which is also LISP based. If so, how would you compare the two?

Kenneth: Thanks for the information. I knew about the BPO channel but not of this free-special!

Anand: I always encourage people to buy as many CDs and Blu-Rays as they can afford, even though some of the materials are "available" online, in order to do 'the right thing', as well as support the industry. As for having met Penderecki, yes, it is one of those moments you carry with you, one of those moments that you feel more alive because you're closer to the flame, brimming with meaning. There have been other occasions like that, the most recent of them last year when I met and chatted with Terry Riley after a concert.

Bill: Thank you for the wonderful post, you are always a fountain of great information! I had never heard of Thomas Wilfred. I just briefly checked him out, what beautiful and original concepts! I remember how amazed I was the first time I saw screensavers on my first computer, which sported a 17" colour monitor. I was amazed at these abstractions, and that was 1984, not 1930!

As for the soundtracks of the '40s-'50s etc., with faux-Rachmaninov/Wagner/Strauss and later '70's-'80s faux-Prokofiev/Holst/Shostakovich/Mahler, of course that has almost always been the case in film, and to us they were laughable at times when things were taken to extremes. However, the imitators of the great masters, at least they knew the craft. The last two decades of soundtracks have been just 'faux' (the vast majority).

But the last point you make rings very true, and I take solace in it.

Well done Anand! Proselytization is what we really need! We are not short οn professional musicians, especially composers! What we are in dire need of, are cultured audiences! They dwindle by the year...

I also took this opportunity to pay my respects for the passing of one of the two remaining of the 'Last Generation', so to speak. Although I find Penderecki's early period much more interesting, I do own a few CDs of his post-1975 works, and had opportunity to meet him briefly following a concert of his St. Luke's Passion that he conducted. I wish it were the Threnody or Polymorphia, but then I suppose I did have the privilege of hearing a great work by one of the most important of living composers, with him on the podium. I am not complaining.

I thought to append this post to this thread, in the context that most sequencer-composers today do not realize that many of these "Strings FX" (I suppose 'effects' is too long a word...) that they use in their... "creations" by pressing a key on their keyboard - but that they could never notate - were invented by this man who passed away some hours ago, and that they were in themselves a powerful and new aesthetic a few decades ago (now cheapened, and the property of any hack), and it fell to men like Xenakis, Ligeti, Penderecki, and a handful of other pioneers, not only to invent them, but to find cogent ways to convey them in musical notation, as well as to teach them to orchestral musicians. They didn't just press a button or tweak a knob to achieve these sounds ex nihilo, and I believe they deserve a great amount of respect.

So thank you Mr. Penderecki for having expanded my musical horizons, and for some powerful musical experiences.

THIS is what a REAL epic orchestral score looks (and sounds) like: 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_3AiYIxBwD0

Not the catatonic locomotive CRAP that HACKS would have you embosom. And you won't get anywhere near the REAL just by blasting orchestral unisons and chords that somebody ELSE prepared for you.

Molto Sonore indeed Maestro! I sincerely apologize about sharing the piracy, but given the current state of film-music and what passes for it, I am sure you understand.

Congratulations on your ban William! Quite a feather in your cap!

This is the first obituary I believe I have seen in the 18 years of the forum. A painful reminder of how fast great chunks of time pass.

My sincere condolences to Mrs. McGraw for her recent loss.

This is the definition of labour of love, for the composer as well as the 'realizer'. Congratulations and thank you Dave!

You took me back to my student-days, when Sorabji's corpse was not too cold yet in its grave, and I remember our professor introducing this composer to us in class by playing about 15-20 minutes of the Opus Clavicembalisticum and us feeling hit by a jaggernaut of a sonic wave that was his music, as much as by his prohibition regarding performances of his works! All of us being young composers, wondering how we could possibly get most of the planet's population to hear our works, were dumbfounded by such isolationist behaviour coming from a creator of art - I wish a lot of other, more recent composers felt like Sorabji instead...

I smiled reading about the Szymanowski influences here, after having listened for about 20 minutes of Dave's rendition, during which I thought of Skryabin instead (who in turn influenced Szymanowski). It is interesting to see how these musical ideas are so bequeathed down the generations of masters.

Dave, I would love to hear this -and indeed the whole symphony- with the score if you care to share. If not, I understand of course, but would it be possible to take a look at the pages beginning at 6':48"-6':51", and 15':33"-16'? If it's not too much trouble and you feel so inclined.

Many congratulations again!