A great loss indeed. His music was so unique, although seeped in tradition. 

I used to be obsessed with his film scores and melodies, and oddly, his music besides early Hollywood film scores was my first love of orchestral music that initiated my entry into classical music.

I was surprised by a few things I read in his obituary in the NY times. He never learnt to speak English; the Dollars trilogy was in Italian dialogue; and he hated his score "Fistful of dollars" saying that it was the worst film Leone made and the worst score he did! 

Anand

I thought your rendition sounded remarkably good, except for a little "synthy"ness in the cellos/basses. Although in general I wouldn't trade any virtual performance for a real performance of a decent  orchestra, this is not bad at all for a virtual performance. Your programming skills are excellent.

But I agree with Macker. It was unfair to the musicians. Anyways the video seems to be taken down now so its all good.

Congrats in the nice work.

Annad

That was brilliant!

Originally Posted by: Errikos

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

wow Thanks or sharing this piece. I heard an organ live in a medieval church in Barcelona, it was and is the greatest sound Ive ever heard. 

And yes this trounces intersellar.

Anand

Hi Dave,

finally had a chance to go through your video. It was very interesting to learn about your workflow. I do not use cubase but I do write directly in Sibelius and also use that for the playback, despite being advised against that by many here. Part of the reason is my laziness....looking at your video its quite clear how much work it requires to make music using DAW.

One question: it seems you are taking the midi file from Finale into Cubase. But if you include the key switches in the midi file wont that cut down the work overload in Cubase? you would then have to only worry about adding the dynamics and tempo. But I am not sure if there are VSL soundsets for Finale. 

Anyways Thanks for posting this, will sure be helpful when I eventually move to using DAW and stop behaving like an amateur:)

Best

Anand

For those who didnt know, Concergebouwest have been live streamign their Mahler recordings.

Right NOW they are streamings Mahler 5 by Gatti. just fantastic!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=igNAx_Sh5Mw

Hi MMKA

I thought your rendereing was excellent. A very nice piece indeed! I need to listen more carefully to give more feedback, hopefully in a few days.

Congratulations!

Best

Anand

Soundcloud suggested this to me and I thought this was outstandingly well done...posted 8 years ago!

https://soundcloud.com/servandovalero/j-williams-escapades-1

I dont know who this person is but I hope he wont mind my reposting here.

Anand

Very nice rendering, especially the strings.

Best

Anand

The organ surely added the final punch and come in with perfect timing to round the clip very well!

Anand

I just got a chance to actually listen to your piece as I didnt have my head phones.

I agree with Mike this piece is fantastic. Besides the masterful playing of the instruments, it is impressive that there is absolutely no apparent hesiation in either of you as the piece moves along, almost like it was already written. I like how you explore all various modes...like the phrygian just after the first minute.

You must have had so much fun doing this.

Anand

Hi Dave

so nice to hear from you and thank you for the listening to my piece and the kind words. 

Hope things are well with you in these tough times and hat your music making is as energetic as ever.

Best,

Anand

Thank you, Jerry for starting this thread. This should prove insightful for beginners like me.

What Mike said makes a lot of sense to me, regarding the relationship between improv and composition. And the idea of graphing the entire piece is pretty cool. No wonder that helps to create coherent large scale structures. Ive heard that sketching an outline as the approach used by many great composers, from Beethoven to contemporary ones like Corigliano.

I come from a tradition (Indian classical music) where there is no written music and everything is done on the spot. However, there are many predefined phrases from which the artist chooses, and in a way their improv is already pre composed. The more sophisticated the artist is, the more phrases he/she knows and it almost sounds like they are making new musi as they go alone (this also depends on the sophistication of the listener).

So I wonder if 'improv' and 'composition' become more and more indistinguishable when the artist's musical knowledge becomes more sophisticated? So that every new note or chord they come up with is already well thought out, and its only secondary matter of they put it on a piece of paper (composition) or play it on an instrument (when its called improv)....of course this leaves out the element of the sub conscious and spontaneity that makes us so human.

Anand

Thank you MMKA and William for listening and the encouraging words!

Hi Mike

it is so nice to hear from you! I hope you are doing well and even taking time this lockdown to write new pieces....Maybe another symphonic work?

Thank you so much for listening to my piece and the feedback. Followin your suggestions, I think I will take some elements of this piece and work on a separate one, rather than trying to expand the existing one, which I feel was not conceived properly.

I am stil continuing to work on your early advice about learning orhestration, which have been very valuable!

Best

Anand

Thank you Jerry, for listening and the nice comments.

Frankly I feel a little embarassed to post my half baked amateur work and have pro musicians like you listen to it :) 

There are two parts indeed  (more like three in A B A form since I come back to the first theme) but that was more by accident than planning. I was testing the articluations of AS and ended up with some passages, then patched it with the first slower bars. Maybe this is a lesson on how not to compose? LOL

I suppose you mean Elgars Enigma .... I didnt have that in mind for the first part but I can see the connection.

The take home message for me was that Appassionata strings give me what I missed in the orchestral strings...more realism. I am quite happy with them actually.

Of course this could sound much better with better programming and any inputs welcome.

Best

Anand

Thanks to the lockdown, I had plenty of time to buy and play with the Appassionata strings and made a short piece:

https://soundcloud.com/ankumar333/fantasy-for-strings

Compositionally this is very elementary but I had some fun.

I know this also needs work programming-wise (combination of my laziness and ignorance...I just use Sibelius) but just wanted to share, so folks here know where I am musically.

Thanks in advance for listening.

Best

Anand

Thats sounded great. You packed a lot in that 22 seconds! I am sure VSL would love to use this on their website.

I wish I could enter the fanfare competition too but I am afraid I will sound too terrible thank to my ignorance. So I will stand by and watch the entries.

Best

Anand

Hi Ben,

thanks for the quick response. 

I understand the delay and hope everyone in VSL is safe at this difficult time,

Best

Anand

Hi,

I am posting here since I am not getting a response to my emails from VSL support.

I recently purcashed Appassionata strings I standard and the extended library. I was told that I could try these for 14 days and if I decide not to keep them the license can be returned for a refund.

I decided to keep the standard library and return the extended. After a several requests I finally got the deletion code for the extended and deleted the license from my computer. Following that I never heard back from support about the refund. I have emailed them several times for more than a week now.

So I now paid for something which I dont even have, let alone get a refund for it.

If this is related to the current crisis and you are under staffed I would understand the delay, but I would appreciate if you at least respond and let me know.

Thanks

Anand

meant to add...its really cool that you have met Penderecki!

Sad to know about Penderecki. Thanks for telling us Errikos. I would have missed this news in the ocean of other tragic news in these dark days. I will listen to his 'Thernody for the victims of Hiroshima' in his honor.

Ken I did read about the free concerts and was drawn to the Berlip phil's website and videos. I ended up buying Rattles farewell of Mahler 6th on Blu ray, more as a sign of donation since everything is free these days. But this is a great recording and I wanted to own it.

I think many other orchestras including the Met are doing free live streaming.

Anand

Wait, is this "Epic" music? I only want Epic music!

LOL..just kidding. What a treasure this music is and how it stands as a testament against the mediocrity that is so prevalent in film music of today!

A related anecdote. Someone I know (who is not into classical music and does not profess to know about music in general) told me that he recently got into 'epic' music. I pointed to him that classical music is the real epic music and asked if he has listened to it. He said he has heard some pieces and found classical music boring. I promised to take him to a concert that will change his mind.

The next month, I took home to a free concert at the New England Conservatory in Boston. The youth orchestra there played a Mozart piano concerto,  'Barber's symphony no 1' and Rachmaninoff's 'Isle of the dead'...two pieces that are as epic as it can get. And that was my first time listening to that Barber piece, what a piece of music that was...21 minutes of genius.

He was simply blow away and even stunned! He said that he never knew that there was this kind of a sound posisble. Here is a person who had minimal knowledge of music, was only exposed to HZ and other epic orchestral (indeed locomotive) crap on YT, and he could instantly be moved by Mozart when hearing it live and even complex pieces like Barbers Symphony 1. He swore this would be just the beginning of his concert experience (btw he was someone who I had lots of disagreements professionally, and is not easily swayed by what I say)

I've had this experience with many friends of such minimal musical background. They come with fresh and curious ears and I think there is something about live performance that is so uniquely engaging, but is unfortunately diminishing in our modern digital world. People do not have time to go to live concerts anymore and only listen to audio in their little phones.

So my mission is to proselytize 'real' orchestral music as much as possible. 

Anand 

Thank you Andi!

Hi Andi,

I had a related question.

Will the cubase VSL expression maps respond to notations in the Cubase score editor, like hairpin/fp, pp etc., for dynamics and articulations such as slurs or sfz etc.,?  

I hope my question makes sense.

Thanks

Anand