I've posted various movements from this composition so I thought I'd post the entire symphony for those that might be interested.  It's a a big ask, I know, it's not a short piece and will take time to listen to.  I believe it's worth your while if you enjoy complex and accessible music. 

PLAY

Jerry

I now have added text to the images so people can know what they're actually looking at!

Best,

Jerry

WATCH

Originally Posted by: Klavaus

The melody floats literally above the rhythm. I like that very much. Reminds me of India. Thanks for making your music available here. I always enjoy listening to it.

Thanks for commenting and listening Klavaus...

Jerry

I made some improvements to the video and timing.  Here's the newest version...

https://www.jerrygerber.com/video/Creation.mp4

I hope this article on MIDI sequencing gives some insight and tips on how to improve your virtual orchestrations:

READ

Jerry

https://www.jerrygerber.com/video/Creation.mp4

Enjoy!

If you live in or near San Francisco, California, this might be of interest to you:

Composer's Group

Here's the adagio for the new virtual string quartet I'm working on.

PLAY

This is a work-in-progress, the 2nd movement of my Quartet for Virtual Strings.

Produced with VSL Solo Strings..

PLAY

A work in progress, 1st movement only (2023)

Scored for VSL solo strings

PLAY

This work was completed in October of 2022. 

I   10:03

II   5:56

III  6:25

IV  8:38

Composed for VSL Orchestral Cube and various softsynths.  The 4th movement was recently accepted into the 2023 New York City Electroacoustic Music Festival (festival has time constraints so I couldn't submit entire work).

A friendly reminder--I am not seeking online critiques, I'm posting for others to enjoy.

PLAY

Originally Posted by: Jos Wylin

Hi Jerry,

It's been such a long time...

But here I am, treated with such a most extraordinary piece. A truly fine composition in all aspects, accompanied with really de-light-ful photography. The whole is absolutely a piece of art: fine music, flawless performance and most appealing images!

Many congrats!

Jos

Hi Jos,

Glad you enjoyed the music video!   I decided last autumn to do something I've long wanted to do, study the art and science of astrophotography.  So the adventure began and now I am planning to make a series of music videos based on astro-images and my music.  I am very excited about it but this activity is very weather-dependent, and it's been raining like crazy in San Francisco for months so it's not often I've been able to get outside to get more astro-photos.   But hopefully in the spring that will change.  Thanks for watching!

My best to you,

Jerry

A 6 minute music video which features my music and my astrophotography.   Enjoy!

PLAY

Genre/Style: Modern Classical/Virtual Concerto

Creative Vision for the Track: To write a 3 movement concerto featuring a virtual oboe (I’ve written 3 other concertos using a live soloist but the pandemic made that difficult so I wrote this one without a live player)

Composition Details (Tempo, Key, Main Chords etc): Score included, you can analyze it if you want

Main Instruments used: Vienna Symphonic Library Orchestral Cube and softsynths Zebra & Dune

PLAY

Genre/Style: Contemporary electronic orchestration, modern classical composition

Creative Vision for the Track: To balance out a four movement symphony with a dynamic, energetic final movement that incorporates virtual orchestral instruments with softsynths into a unified, integrated composition.

Composition Details: Too complex to list here, I included the PDF score.

Main Instruments Used: Vienna Symphonic Library Orchestral Cube and softsynths Dune & Zebra

PLAY

Genre/Style: Contemporary classical composition using the medium of computer-based orchestration

Creative Vision for the Track: To give expression to the mystery and beauty of life

Composition Details (Tempo, Key, Main Chords etc): PDF score included

Main Instruments used: Scored for VSL orchestral instruments and East West choir library

PLAY

William has, on a public forum, accused me of threatening him with legal action. 

The so-called "threat" was this:  I wrote him a PM in which I asked him to avoid me, avoid commenting on my posts and comments and, mutually, I will do same with him. Over several years, I became tired of his bellicosity and his passive-aggressive sarcasm and insincere apologies. I don't associate with personalities that are toxic to my well-being and emotional health either in my offline or online life. I also clarified to him that the PM I am sending is private, and I asked him to keep it private.  He chose to interpret this request as a “legal threat”.

I wrote him a PM rather than a forum post because I was trying to de-escalate our online conversation, in which he was growing increasingly combative.  My intent was to not embroil and distract the forum with negative energy.  I wrote in the PM that maintaining peace on the forum is important, which is why I think it best for he and I to avoid interacting with each other. This infuriated him, he then began writing multiple PMs to me, each one getting angrier, escalating into slanderous invective toward me and then my music.

I did not respond to any of these hostile PMs. By not responding William apparently got even more furious, so he decided to take his outrage public.  It was at this point that he suffered a moral lapse in judgement and chose to lie, saying I threatened to sue him or seek some kind of legal remedy. I haven't even bothered to report his hate-filled PMs to the VSL moderator, let alone involve myself in some pointless legal hassle. I spend all the time I can writing and producing music, not involving myself in stupid lawsuits with people I’d like to avoid.

In his PMs, he denigrates my music with such vehemence that I have to wonder whether William has any credibility.  He clearly doesn’t remember what he has written about my music over the years:

Posted on Sun, May 13 2018 15:42

by William

Joined on Sun, Nov 24 2002, USA, Posts 5675                

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That is a really interesting, complex composition and a lot of the performance sounds just about perfect! 

Posted on Sun, Oct 25 2020 17:37

by William

Joined on Sun, Nov 24 2002, USA, Posts 5675                

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jsg - That sounds excellent, and an impressive amount of work! Very interesting also using the synthesizer addition. BTW sorry about my criticism a long time ago about the Gumby score - if offered that money I would have done the same thing and done no better.  I remember using gleefully any synthesizer or keyboard I could get my hands on...

Anyway, it is good to hear these different artistic compositions here on the Forum, and a wonderful benefit of VSL allowing composers to realize works that are otherwise either difficult or impossible to get out into the world.

Posted on Fri, Aug 24 2018 01:57

by William

Joined on Sun, Nov 24 2002, USA, Posts 5675                

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It has some very interesting harmony in it and also shows how integrating a synthesizer with analog instruments is a very fruitful approach, even though it is not done very often these days.  In old Hollywood scores the electronic instruments would be added to orchestra for the expanded timbre and effects, but today one usually hears all acoustic, or all electronic.  Especially with sampled acoustic instruments.  

Posted on Thu, Jul 26 2018 00:53

by William

Joined on Sun, Nov 24 2002, USA, Posts 5675                

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This sounds really good.  I like the overall "medieval plainchant" feel (if I can express it that way).  Very good sound and intense emotion in it.  It makes me want to hear it live with the choir.  Also I really like that combo of the flute and English Horn and harp.  Congratulations on this! 

Even more astonishing and hypocritical, William is compelled to try and undermine the credibility of even those who review my music.  How damaged must a man’s self-confidence and self-esteem be to do that?

I doubt anyone on this forum gives a damn about this dispute, which is how it should be. I hope it's forgotten the moment people are done reading this. I am clarifying what happened because I think the forum should know who is trying to stir up trouble by lying about a fellow forum member. There's no legal dispute here, but William has crossed an ethical line that regrettably must be addressed.  I am asking William only to stop lying and badgering me with insults and private emails.  I hope he is willing to exercise such self-restraint as it would be to his benefit, to my benefit, and the benefit to this forum.  I wish peace to us all.

p.s.  I don't know what the computer gibberish is below.  It's not in the body of the text and it's impossible to delete.  Please ignore...

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I am pleased to share with my forum colleagues a new review from the upcoming edition of Fanfare Classical Music Magazine.  

Read Review

For those interested in reading the interview with Colin Clarke it's also available here:

Read Interview

Originally Posted by: Acclarion

After It's Over for Violin, Cello, and Piano depicts how innocence can be upended. With a recurring, uplifting theme, constructed with a pattern of 12/8, 6/8, and 9/8 bars, the music moves along with a seemingly joyful exuberance, until the piano interjects with its threatening and ominous presence. The valiant struggle to drown out the sound of violence continues, leaving us to wonder what will be, "After It's Over."

play on youtube

Thanks for listening. I'd love to hear from you!
Dave

I like this piece and think it's well written.  Very complex and moody.  Production values, as usual, excellent. 

To my ear the piece sounds more optimistic than pessimistic.  Which is just fine for me because in spite of this world being a confused and violent place, evolution on all levels is still happening--social, moral, intellectual, spiritual and technological.  The progress we've made as humans always seems to take a back seat to the darkness and evil.  If we survive climate change and a 3rd world war, which we very well may, there is grounds for optimism.   I hope.

Thanks for posting Dave!  

This is the 2nd movement of my 10th symphony for virtual instruments, on the album Earth Music

PLAY

Jerry

This track is on my album Home & Love. Kira Fondse is the featured soprano.

PLAY

Jerry

Originally Posted by: Macker

But it seems we're expected to conform to the opinion of a certain contributor here, otherwise he'll go on and on and on; trying to smear, belittle and invalidate the "opposition"; playing the victim; playing the BIG BOSS who will brook no contradiction; and generally reminding everyone - grandiosely - that nobody else has his status or can possibly understand the absolutely unique work he does, and that his opinion MUST therefore prevail. All without providing anything substantive to help win others over by means of fair, well informed and respectful debate. Moot, it seems, doesn't exist for him. His game is zero-sum.

Macker, enroll in an anger management class, don't give yourself a heart attack.  Your pride has been injured and you are sounding like a guy who's revenge fantasies knows no bounds.   Learn mercy and compassion.  They will serve you well. 

Originally Posted by: Errikos

To be a professional instrumental/orchestral composer in the western tradition (film or otherwise) you have to satisfy at least one of the following two requirements:

A) Your work has to be of professional standards, as those are recognized internationally,

and/or

B) You get paid regularly for your compositions.

A superlative sounding mock-up, one where nobody can tell whether those are real strings/brass/woodwind playing, is NOT - I repeat, is NOT an orchestral work of 'professional standards'. It is a work consisting of treated synthesized sounds. I want to see a score! Everybody will judge a score! That is where people will determine whether you are professional instrumental/orchestral composer or not. That is where they will determine your orthography, they will read your trombone lines (which a sampler will perform perfectly at any speed), and whether those are possible. That is where they will read your harp scoring and how possible that is in real life. That is where they will see how sensitive you are to the Eb Clarinet intonation issues, whether you know the trumpets' useful notes (which don't begin at the bottom of their range), horn scoring, approaches to different ranges, dynamics considerations, true balance among the sections (your mock-up probably consists of about 200 strings, 16 horns, etc.), the list is virtually endless...

,ow few measures it takes one that knows music to discern from an actual orchestrally recorded cue (not a mock-up) whether the composer of the cue knows music or not, even if the composer has made more money from that cue than most will ever see.

Bottom line of argument? If you want to be taken seriously, be serious.

Dear Errikos,

When I was creating scores for my acoustic music I took every pain to create scores that were up to current professional standards.  I don't have particularly good handwriting or graphic skills so it was difficult for me. But as I became more and more committed to the virtual orchestra, I began to question why I was even creating scores at all.   I realized there are other reasons to create a score that is not intended for live performance.  Here's a a brief article I wrote on the subject if you are interested:  https://www.jerrygerber.com/markings.htm

Your definition of serious orchestration is that you've defined (and perhaps limited) working in the virtual medium to being a "mock-up".  Have you considered it possible that for some musicians it may be a legitimate and serious artistic medium in its own right, deserving of exploration, commitment and developing techniques that are indigenous to that medium? 

Maybe I am misunderstanding what you've written, but it seems you've created an either/or situation:  Either you're a trained orchestrator and write for live players, or you don't know the first thing about orchestration and work with sample libraries, sequencers, MIDI, etc. I see it as normal and possible to be both.  For every technique a traditional orchestrator has to master, the musician working in the virtual medium also has an equivalent number of new techniques that need to be mastered. Synth programming itself is an art-form that one could do and spend a lifetime exploring the possibilities.  Sequencing a melody that has expression, gesture, nuance, dynamics, the right attack and releases, the right kind of note connections--this is a time consuming and very detailed process that someone attempting to "mock-up" a piece probably won't engage in.  Then there is mixing, mastering, maintaining a studio, troubleshooting--these are all related skills that go into producing recordings using relatively new tools.  And this is in addition to one's knowledge of harmony, counterpoint, form and structure and composition.  No wonder one lifetime is barely enough.  No wonder I sometimes still feel like a complete beginner when I sit down to work.

Technology has given us new ways to make music, new ways to record music, new ways to edit music.   There are some that are going to approach these new tools seriously, some will ignore them like the plague, and some will dabble in them from time to time.  These differing approaches to new music technologies have nothing to do with one's knowledge of music, one's musicianship, or one's seriousness as a musician.   Some excellent composers are simply not facile with technology; other than using Sibelius or Finale they are not interested in what computer-based instruments can do.  That's fine, there's room in this world for every and any approach.  Seriousness of intent is not determined by the tools we choose to make music with, that's how it appears to me. 

Originally Posted by: Dewdman42

I saw this recently, which might be applicable:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ag4iFa6E_yY

It's applicable.  A composer I know once remarked "Music sells everything but music".   

Listening to music without visuals, without games, without jogging, dancing, doing homework or talking with friends--I have no idea what percentage of the population regularly engages in this activity.  Maybe some people, whether professional musicians or not, are just more interested and more sensitive to music, and can feel a sense of satisfaction listening without distraction of any kind.   Those are the people I write for.