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

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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

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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.  

Originally Posted by: Dewdman42

This conversation is kind of pointless.  There are plenty of film score composers or wanna be film score composers that don't make any money at it whatsoever and are positively enamored with THAT art form, which is to apply applicable music to picture in a way that supports and/or enhances the film.  I personally know numerous people that never made a dime at it and never will.  Yet they are supremely interested in this art form for what it is...and it IS an art form in and of itself....and I would argue....distinct from that which Jerry brings up about music on its own.    Both art forms have their rightful place in the world...and in the end...people do whatever makes them happy...particularly when no money is involved in the transaction.  Film Scoring is about the story telling process...one part of it.  It is not without structure.  Yes...  if you are doing endless animated series trying to make a living cranking out mindless Ker-plunk music.. I can see how that would be pretty ungratifying after a while.  For myself...that is why I chose not to pursue a professional career in film music.  But there is still a higher form of film scoring that most film score composers aspire to, study about and engulf themselves in aspiration.  To denigrate this as a lessor form of music is unfair and flat out wrong.

That being said, there is also something to be said for writing music just for music's sake...with no picture..and I do agree with Jerry that this is an art form that is dying...we live in a video oriented culture now...and perhaps this is becoming a detriment to full musical envelopment...  no argument there.  There is something to be said for closing your eyes and just appreciating music entirely on its own...and allowing music composition to prosper and grow without being constrained to a supportive position underlying visual elements of a film.

Both forms of art are completely relevant in their own way.

The topic of whether to work at music production for a living is a completely separate question.  We all have to make a living somehow.  Sometimes a hobby we are passionate about can become just another job if and when that is pursued.  That is true with ALL hobbies of any kind whatsoever.  In a job, you do what you gotta do to bring in the money and that's it..  Perhaps you will have a few moments where you can do something truly artful with it...but I suspect that vast majority of people working in various forms of art industry have to, out of financial survival, do what the customer needs first, and consider their art second.  This is just reality.  On the other hand, if you try to make music a hobby while making a living some other way...then music will take a backseat in your life and its difficult at best to develop whatever talent you have into anything bigger and special....while the people scoring animated series every day...as laborious as that may be...do continue to develop their skills and perhaps out of that at some point in their life they will be able to apply those skills to a higher form of art that will make sense to them.  Maybe that can work, but I personally know a lot of starving musicians...so...  You can hear stories both ways...people glad they did that and people that wish they never tried.  or people that didn't try and wonder if they should have, etc.. its just not that clear cut....  we have to work to eat in some way or another....  

its ridiculous to ponder this question philosophically as if there is some great truth to what is the philosophically better approach to life.  There is no right or wrong.  People have tried both ways and some have succeeded both ways and some have not.  I would argue that the ones pursuing an art career have failed more then succeeded, FINANCIALLY...while those who did it as a hobby were more likely to succeed financially and perhaps didn't succeed as much in their art.  Which way is preferable?  Well that depends on the individual and how important their financial stability is to them.  Financial stability is not any less honorable than artistic integrity.  These are all valid values.

Its very few people that have the luxury to pursue their art form without concern for their financial stability.  they are the lucky ones.   For Jerry that means doing music without visuals...raw music.  Musical structures that stand on their own by the music itself and nothing more.  There is absolutely nothing wrong with that!  But there is also nothing wrong with the person that is more interested in storytelling through music.  And as I said, I know lots of people that are obsessed about that art form and have never earned a single penny doing it.

Good points Dewdman, all of them.  But I repeat:  I didn't say film music has no structure (it does); I wrote that in general film cues do not have transitions to other cues that are separated by places in the film where there is no music.  Sometimes, yes, but more often not.  Nor did I say that film music is a lesser form of music.  Also, just for the record, I had a great time scoring animation, there were many episodes that were very enjoyable and challenging to score.  I did however, get a bit tired of it after writing over 750 cues over a period of two and a half years or so and longed to return to writing music for its own sake.  After some 35 years of doing that I haven't gotten tired of it yet!

We are certainly an "eye" culture far more than we are an "ear" culture. This has been true for many decades, and is getting even more extreme.  It's not what we do that's important--it's how we do it.  Well, there are exceptions.  If you design nuclear warheads well, then maybe you should think about the nature of the defective product you're designing because if used as directed it will murder a hundred thousand people.   Just one warhead.  But I digress..

Originally Posted by: William

Jerry Gerber, your definition  of film music is of course correct for most composers, but is completely formed and circumscribed by the commercial practice.  You have experienced that kind of scoring because it is what usually takes place.  But it is not the ideal of film music.  The ideal usually can't be obtained, but it is not to be buried, abandoned or assumed to be non-existent the way you do.  The aesthetic reality of an art medium is NOT simply the most usual degradation of that medium.   And the simplistic concept that you brought up - that film music has no overall structure unlike symphonies, operas, etc. - is DEAD WRONG in the case of a great film score.  To me the greatest film score of all is Herrmann's Vertigo and it is music that is superior to most music in any field written at the time. Including concert hall music.   It creates - as Herrmann himself stated as his goal - an overall structure to the film bound together by musical motifs and orchestrations.   

What you are doing in your comment is reducing an art form to its worst practices and most degraded examples, and then using that to judge the art from. That is lamentably wrong. 

One other thing - you mention that an "amateur" or someone outside of a field is being arrogant in actually conversing and discussing things with professionals.  I totally disagree - some of the best comments on this Forum have not been from a clique of composers who look down on non-professionals, but from scientists and engineers who have fascinatingly objective concepts that are often startling and - by virtue of being outside the usual "professional" discourse - inspiring.  I love the mix of scientific with musical ideas as there are often fascinating parallels. 

William wrote:

Jerry Gerber, your definition  of film music is of course correct for most composers, but is completely formed and circumscribed by the commercial practice.  You have experienced that kind of scoring because it is what usually takes place.  But it is not the ideal of film music.

I agree with the above. There are no inherent technical or aesthetic reasons why the art of film cannot use music differently.  Or why films with excellent scripts and intelligent dialogue are rare.  Of course it's not the ideal, it's the norm.  

William wrote:

And the simplistic concept that you brought up - that film music has no overall structure unlike symphonies, operas, etc. - is DEAD WRONG in the case of a great film score.  To me the greatest film score of all is Herrmann's Vertigo and it is music that is superior to most music in any field written at the time. Including concert hall music.   It creates - as Herrmann himself stated as his goal - an overall structure to the film bound together by musical motifs and orchestrations.  

It's not simplistic at all, it's the usual, normal, everyday way that film music is made.  I gave three examples that deviate from the norm, and you added one.  No need to shout at me by saying I am "DEAD WRONG",   And if you actually take the time to think just a little about what I wrote, you would know that I didn't say film music has no overall structure.  I said that transitions between cues are usually not an issue for film music.  It's always an issue in music as an independent language and always an issue for music in ballet, dance, Broadway, songwriting and opera.. 

William wrote:

What you are doing in your comment is reducing an art form to its worst practices and most degraded examples, and then using that to judge the art from. That is lamentably wrong.

William, please try and get some awareness of your own contradictory statements.  You have said yourself how much you hate film music, and even when you like a score you have stated that you often hate the movie itself.  You use the word "hate" a lot William.   Not sure I trust such vehemence. What I am doing is looking at the vast majority of films and making statements about film music based on the norm.  If the "norm" is meaningless trash with badly written stories, inane dialogue and highly unoriginal music, well, then that's the norm.   I am not "reducing an art form to its worst practices"--filmmakers, movie studios and talentless writers are doing that.

I am aware of deeply artistic films that have been made, most were not blockbusters or highly profitable.  I have never said that film cannot be a fine art form; in the hands of gifted directors and screenwriters film is as much a fine art as any other fine art.   But remember, the conversation was veering toward the idea that the composers who meet deadlines are "heroes".  Does that mean that Debussy, who took 10 years to write his opera, or Brahms, who took 25 years to compose his first symphony are anti-heroes because they didn't have to cope with deadlines that almost guarantee a composer won't write his best music or that he simply hires other composers and/or orchestrators to write under his name?  Deadlines are a capitalist invention.  Deadlines are usually about financial pressure.  Deadlines can even kill--when NASA felt under pressure to launch the Challenger in weather that was too cold, this caused the O-Rings to become so brittle that they failed and produced the fuel leakage that blew up the spacecraft. The O-Ring engineers were warning NASA up until the last minute not to launch the Challenger but NASA ignored the experts who had studied this problem.  If we were not such a crazy species always worried about the passing of time we'd be happier, more productive and the quality of our work would improve.  So all this talk about how deadlines are so manly and heroic is a bunch of nonsense.  Why are we always in such a rush?   Anxiety and fear sabotage the intellect.  Pressure, in just the right amount, can stimulate progress and growth.  No problem there.  But too much pressure (like too much of anything that in the right amounts is good) is unhealthy and leads to mistakes and failures.  This is why there are so many product recalls--too much pressure to makes stuff too quickly, too much impatience, too much greed, too much emphasis on competition and not enough on cooperation. 

William wrote:

One other thing - you mention that an "amateur" or someone outside of a field is being arrogant in actually conversing and discussing things with professionals.  I totally disagree - some of the best comments on this Forum have not been from a clique of composers who look down on non-professionals, but from scientists and engineers who have fascinatingly objective concepts that are often startling and - by virtue of being outside the usual "professional" discourse - inspiring.  I love the mix of scientific with musical ideas as there are often fascinating parallels.

I did not write or imply that an amateur, or someone outside of a field is arrogant because they are conversing and discussing things with professionals. That's so crazy it's hard to believe you'd even say it.  My first reply to this thread was disagreeing with Macker not because he's an amateur nor about Macker not having any valuable comments to make about music, it was in response to a specific thing he said.   I have conversations often with people who come from a science background.  Many of my classical music theory/composition students have come from computer science and medical backgrounds.  I deeply value cross-disciplinary sharing of information and knowledge.  I value people who ask questions and know that there is always more to learn in every field.  I've been supporting people for decades as their music instructor who are amateurs and want to learn more about music composition as well as young gifted students who want to try and make music their profession.

In this thread I sometimes feel like I am dealing with primate-like behavior as I witness grown men unconsciously practicing their online bonding games to gang up on someone who doesn't agree with everything they say.  The silliness of it all...

While some here continue to fantasize, glorify deadlines and in general show a lack of understanding about scoring to picture, I'll give you some first-hand experience. 

Scoring to picture is a very different type of collaboration than writing music for dance, ballet, opera, songs, or Broadway.  In each of those genres, music is a 50-50% collaborator.  Music has an important role in determining the pacing, length, style, form and mood of the total work.  But in scoring to picture, there's a reason it's called background music.  The composer almost always comes on to the project after the screenplay is written, the scenes are shot and the film editing is done.  Not 100% of the time, but almost.  Of course the composer might be hired before all that work begins, and may even start sketching some ideas out based on the script, but the final produced score, whether done with live players or with virtual instruments, isn't usually mixed into the film until late, more likely last, in the process.  The composer must fit the music to the scene, usually to the 1/10th of a second. This requires talent no doubt; to make the music fit and still make sense as music, to capture the mood the director wants, to avoid clashing with dialogue, this requires a certain sensitivity and skill-set.   But putting 20 or 30 or 60 short cues together for a film also lacks certain challenges that music, particularly long-form music like symphonies, sonatas, concertos, must fulfill.  One of those challenges is transitions--creating an entire piece that works from beginning to end in which the music is not just part of the drama--the music is the drama.  Though film and TV cues must sometimes make 90 degree turns and change quickly the tempo, or style, or some other property, there doesn't need to be a holistic connection between cues that are separated during the time there is no scoring happening.  I find the problem of abstract long-form writing to be more challenging and more artistically satisfying to solve than scoring to picture, but someone else may find the opposite. 

My guess is that at least half the composers working in Hollywood would stop seeking "contracts" if they suddenly found themselves with enough money to last the rest of their lives.  Some would continue to score to picture, but get very picky about what projects they'd choose to work on.  If it were a film they'd never have any interest in buying a ticket to watch, they probably would choose not to score it.  Some would turn away from scoring altogether and seek out musical projects like writing for chamber groups, or orchestras, or they'd play in a band or maybe work as a solo performer/composer or conduct.  I chose to invest nearly all my musical time in working with the virtual orchestra, it's been my passion and obsession now for over 35 years.  

There are very few films where music is the primary vehicle for the form of the work. Fantasia, Chronos and  Koyaanisqatsi come to mind, these films are driven by music and are the few exceptions to the rule.  When I scored The Adventures of Gumby, out of 99 short animated films, about 4 or 5 had no dialogue and I could write a continuous score that was like a little symphonic work in the sense that the music had to work as one long piece all the way through.  But the vast majority of scoring situations do not offer the composer that challenge.

There are people around this thread who have not spent a life in the arts; that's fine, not everyone wants to devote themselves to working in an artistic medium.  But if I joined a forum of engineers and physicists and began talking to them like I was in their league, me, a guy who has never studied engineering and who knows next to nothing about physics, I'd be laughed at or pitied if I insisted on asserting that I know as much about their field as they do. And if I started belittling them because I didn't like them disagreeing with me they'd probably think I was just an immature jerk.  I respect people who show humility, who ask questions, who show curiosity and willingness to learn new things.  People who can say, "You know, I'm wrong about that, thanks for pointing out my mistake".  Nobody particularly enjoys being wrong, but those honest souls with integrity admit when they are.  Defending pet theories about the amateur vs the professional in the arts that are clearly wrong is just bullshit. 100% unadulterated bullshit.

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

Originally Posted by: Acclarion

Thanks, Jerry. It is VSL solo strings. Even though it will be played live, I wanted to do a virtual instrument performance. These were short excerpts from various sections of the four movements. Yes, commissions are nice, although managing stakeholder interests (arts organizations, concert presenters, ensembles, and ultimately audiences) can detract from the pure joy of writing. A concert bassoonist I toured with years ago remarked, "when we finally get to sit down and make music, all the b.s. that preceeded it, is erased." Cheers! Dave

Originally Posted by: Jerry Gerber

Dave, this is really nice, I love the energy and momentum and the contrapuntal detail. I gotta ask, Is this VSL solo strings or live players? Sounds live to me. Is this a short movement or just an excerpt? Glad to hear you received a commission to write it.. Always helps. Looking forward to hearing the whole piece. Best, Jerry

Amazing how good you've made the solo strings sound.  You've inspired me to write a string quartet using the VSL solo strings.  I've used them in pieces many times, but not as a quartet.  I'm 2 minutes into the 1st movement of a new symphony and when I am done I want to write for the VSL solo strings.   It will be interesting to compare your virtual version with the live performance recording.  

No matter how we choose to make music, there's always non-musical stuff to attend to.  If it's not meetings with people or promotion or marketing it's managing a studio and keeping everything working right.  We're just damn fortunate we can even do what we do, I can barely imagine what it must be like to be living in Ukraine right now.  Those poor souls make our problems look pretty frivolous. 

Best,

Jerry

Originally Posted by: Acclarion

I'm pleased to share a preview of my new commissioned string quartet, Apotheosis.  

String Quartet 3 Apotheosis by David Carovillano Preview - YouTube

Cheers!

Dave

Dave, this is really nice, I love the energy and momentum and the contrapuntal detail.   I gotta ask, Is this VSL solo strings or live players?   Sounds live to me.  Is this a short movement or just an excerpt?   Glad to hear you received a commission to write it..   Always helps.  Looking forward to hearing the whole piece.

Best,

Jerry

Originally Posted by: Macker

The interesting and revealing part about your contribution to this thread is that you'd not been named or cited in connection with any views stated here (until William rightly took you to task), yet you jumped in like a scalded cat! That's odd. Why not come clean and tell us precisely what it really is about this thread that's upset you, personally, instead of just trying to smear and invalidate people?

William has demolished most of your other absurd nonsense, so I don't need to go there.

I am starting to feel sorry for you Macker.  Are you that bored?

As far as William "demolishing" my "nonsense", the following are William's own words.  From this thread:

"That's a great post by jsg, and so true - the line between amateur and professional is often someone just figuring out a trick of how to sell what was already being done..". 

"I apologize for overreacting like that - started focusing on the wrong things and went off..."   (addressed to me also from this thread).

Originally Posted by: agitato

This is fascinating and if I understood what William is saying correctly it might have answered a question I had for a long time.

Did I understand correctly that since a string instrument has no fixed tuning, (except the G D A E of the open violin strings etc.,.), so that they can choose any 'temperament' they want, and end up choosing the one that is natural to the ear? In that case does a string player always play the natural harmonic scale i.e., simple ratios? if not what scale does the ear naturally "fall" into? Are all instruments other than piano not fixed tuning?

And what happens in a piano concerto? Do the rest of the orchestra make automatic slight adjustments to match the piano tuning?

I am a physicist and should really know this better but thanks for clarifying. I have Helmholtz's 'Sensations of tone' where he spends a whole chapter on various tuning systems. But have never read it LOL

Anand

Yes, string players and singers can intone while performing, meaning they can make slight adjustments to their pitch in real time.  In doing so they gain a fluidity when moving around different key areas that instruments like piano, organ and harpsichord don't have. 

With the Vienna Instrument Pro player, we can "humanize" the attacks of every instruments by creating "random" pitch maps that can detune the attacks of notes slightly, or even not-so-slightly.  Though this is not quite the same as what live players can do, it certainly helps to create at least some sense of fluidity of pitch.

Even the exact pitch of A4 is not universal although A4=440hz is pretty standard.  With our virtual orchestras, we can change that as well if so desired. But some orchestras tune to 441 or 442 or even 432.  It is said that Leonard Bernstein wanted his orchestras tuned to 442.

As a keyboardist I am partial to equal temperament because of the flexibility it allows with modulation, distant keys and polychords, particularly double mediant poly chords.   Then again, as a pianist I am stuck with it unless I instruct my piano tuner to change temperaments but I don't really have a need to do that.

Originally Posted by: William

I apologize for overreacting like that - started focusing on the wrong things and went off...

Thank you, apology accepted.  The thing that really irks me about online conversation is that there are so many missing cues--eye contact, body language, facial expression, tone of voice.   In-person conversations are very different for me.  There's a cafe around the corner from where I live and I often go there in the late afternoon to get outside for a walk and then stop at the cafe for some conversation.  Because I am talking with neighbors, acquaintances and friends in real time, we have really interesting conversations about AI, politics, philosophy, religion, science, what's happening around our neighborhood, etc.  We laugh together, get serious together, and there's a respect and kindness that permeates the conversations.  This has been going on for years. 

Forums online are missing this crucial information about each other.  If the same thread as this one took place in person, I would guess it may have gone differently.  People can strongly disagree with one another and still be kind and friendly.  I see it happen all the time.  But without all the vital information we get about each other when interacting in person, it becomes a bit more tricky.  Some people use that "virtual social distance" to get away with posturing, bullshit, trolling and other anti-social behavior but most people do not.  Sometimes it's hard to tell and of course we all make mistakes. 

I'm signing off now, working on a new composition.  I hope you have a good day, or night, depending upon where you are.

Best,

Jerry

Originally Posted by: William

Wow, that is one of the most arrogant posts I've ever read on this Forum.  Congratulations, jsg.   The ideas presented by Macker were perfectly valid and rather well thought out, and whether you agree you don't have to show off how big a "pro" you are. Who cares?  I couldn't care less. I hate almost all film music by the biggest "pros" now working.  They are nothing to me. So showing your  "pro" credentials is laughable.

Yes, I can be arrogant.  But not quite as arrogant as you.  When we were discussing symphonies a while back you interpreted what I wrote and twisted it around with your own misunderstanding of what I said so you could justify attacking me.  It was so obviously one-upsmanship that I had to call you on it.  And you almost wanted to knock my head off for scoring Gumby with MIDI instruments,  but later admitted you would have taken the job yourself if it were offered to you.  Remember? You even apologized to me because you knew you were being such a jerk.

Macker was beating to death his theory of amateurism and professionalism in the arts and no matter that both you and I tried to explain why he wasn't right about it, he kept pushing.  Read the entire thread again and you'll see how it devolved.  I didn't start the devolution, he did. When I told him that I set my own deadlines when not writing for money, he went "pfft", dismissing my experience in not only setting my own deadlines, but utterly ignoring that I actually meet them (most of the time).  You even wrote above:

"That's a great post by jsg, and so true - the line between amateur and professional is often someone just figuring out a trick of how to sell what was already being done."  

But Macker kept on and on no matter the evidence to the contrary.  I got bored with someone who refuses to adjust his position even when the evidence isn't there.  When you pointed out my mistake in confusing ET with Well-Tempered tuning, what did I do?  I looked it up and admitted I was in error.  I didn't push and push and start denigrating other's experience and defending my mistake.

I became arrogant because he's telling me my own experience is false, that deadlines have to be "externally" imposed or they're not real.  He said that the composer has to feel "external pressure" to write, or it's not a real deadline.  He's totally wrong, it's not that I disagree, it's that he's in error.  I feel pressure to write not because I need the money, but because composition serves a primary function in my psychological, artistic and intellectual life.  I don't feel true to myself if I slack off.  In some ways, that kind of pressure is even more anxiety-provoking than having to meet professional deadlines because it's not merely about money, it's about one's being, central to one's purpose for existing.  But Macker would have none of it.  So I questioned his musical experience because he denies my own.  He doesn't understand the artistic soul.  I do.  I am sure Macker understands many things that I don't. 

And by the way, there are some outstanding film composers, particularly some European ones who are writing today.  I am not always good at remembering names of people that I've heard only once, but there are some highly original talents and very skilled composers working in film.  I don't hate film music like you do. 

Originally Posted by: William

This is totally specious and incorrect.  The reason Bach loved ET was because on an organ or a harpsichord he could play and compose with a lot of modulations. That has nothing whatever to do with orchestral or ensemble playing by musicians that instantly and intuitively alter their tuning based upon just LISTENING.  jsg - they don't adhere to ET when modulating from the key of C major to f sharp minor! Do you actually think that?   What they do is listen as they are playing and adjust the tuning instantly - if they are good musicians - based upon a tuning that sounds "right."  It is  not based upon ET of a previous key,  even remotely. So this comment is entirely wrong and based upon a keyboard player - jsg - who is used to fixed tunings, and making a sweeping statement about all tunings - which has nothing to do with the reality of playing instruments other than keyboards or harps, celesta or vibes, etc. in an orchestra or ensemble. If it's a piano concerto, that is a different matter, because then the players are forced to tune to the ET piano.        

You're right, I stand corrected.   Of course string players and singers are constantly adjusting their pitch, that's a given, I didn't imply that they don't.  As a pianist, I do not have the luxury of intoning while playing, the tuning is fixed.  The facts about ET being tuned as it is (the 12th root of 2, 1.05946 times the frequency of the previous note) is accurate and what I said about modulations hold true.  Where I was wrong was in forgetting that ET and well-tempered are not the same.  They're close, but different.  Here's a link about that from a piano tuner.  Thanks for pointing out my error William.

https://www.math.uwaterloo.ca/~mrubinst/tuning/tuning.html

Jerry