MusicyTechGeek » Sibelius

Compositional goals from 2004

Kyle — Sun, 20 Jun 2010 02:41:48 +0000

Back in 2004, when I really started to consider composition as a major I made a list of pieces that I wanted to write within my composition ‘career’. I put it aside as my life priorities changed, and I found it yesterday. I think it is time that I bring back this list, and hope to start crossing more things off. So that I can hold myself accountable, I want to make it public. This isn’t a complete list of ideas, but as of right now it is a big enough one to always remind me that I have projects I can and need to be working on!!

List of Compositions to complete:

Solo Works
Piccolo
Flute – Romantic style piece, “Jig”, and others.
Alto Flute
Bass Flute – Low Register stuff
Oboe
English Horn
Clarinet – 3 Sketches for A Clarinet (also other A Clarinet pieces)
Saxophone
Viola
Cello
Trumpet
Baritone
Tuba
Marimba
Soprano
Tenor
Bass
Soprano Sax
Tenor Sax
Alto Sax

Solo with Piano:
Piccolo
Flute
Alto Flute
Bass Flute (unamped)
Bass Flute (amp)
Clarinet
Soprano
Tenor/Baritone
French Horn
Trumpet
Marimba
Soprano Sax
Tenor Sax
Alto Sax

Chamber Music:
Piccolo, Flute and Piano
Flute, Alto Flute and Piano
Flute, Bass Flute and Piano
Piccolo and Bass flute
Flute Duo/Trio/Quartet/Quintet
Flute Choir (up to 8 parts)
Flute and Clarinet
Flute and Marimba
Bass Flute and Clarinet
WW Quintet (standard)
Brass Quartet (Trombone)
Brass Quartet (Trumpet)
Trumpet, Trombone, Violin, Cello
Flute, Marimba and Trumpet trio
Sax duets and trios
Sax Quartet (Soprano, Alto, Tenor, Bass)
String Quartet
Soprano and Alto with Piano
Soprano and Bass with Piano
Tenor and Bass with Piano

Bassoon Quartet/Quintet/Sextet

Small to large ensembles:

2 piccolo/3 flute, 2 oboe, 3 clarinet, 2 bassoon, 2 alto, 1 tenor sax, 1 baritone sax, pitched percussion, snare drum (16 musicians).

2 Flutes, 2 Clarinets, 2 Bassoons, and 2 French Horns (double quartet)

Early Bands (Elm. and JH)

Beginning Band (HS)
Intermediate Band (HS)

Symphonic Band (with English horn, Soprano sax, and alto flute) (C)
Symphonic Band with Flute Quartet (Picc, C, alto, bass). (C)

Picc/2 flutes, 2 clarinets, 2 bassoons, 4 violins (2 parts), 2 violas (1 part),
4 cellos (2 parts), 2 Trombones, 2 trumpets, 1 tuba,
3 mixed percussion (24 musicians)

String Orchestra

Full Orchestra

Men’s choir (TTBB)
Treble Choir (SSAA)
Mixed Choir (SATB)

TILT Scoring Contest!

Kyle — Thu, 06 May 2010 01:06:28 +0000

I have been given the opportunity to enter in a competition to get the chance to write music for an independent film collaboration. I found out about TILT by someone I follow on twitter (@philontilt) and decided that I’m at the point in my ‘composition career’ that I need to do everything I can to get my name out there and build my resume by attaching myself to strong people who I’d like to work with now and in the future. I thought that this would be a great opportunity, and I’ve been plugging away at my contest entry for the last couple weeks. Submissions are due by May 15th. I’m really excited to see what type of feedback I get from the people who follow and interact with me regarding my music.

The way the competition will work:

All composers have been given from April 21st to May 14th to score a video (1 video; 2; 2 minute clips) downloadable from Vimeo.

Once submissions are received, TILT will do another blog posting with the entries and people will have until May 31st to cast their vote for which they like the best.

After all votes are received, the top 3 entries will be considered by the TILT team and someone will be selected an offered the opportunity to score the movie. The winner will be announced on June 3rd!
(paraphrased from TILT website)

Here is my entry!

Voting starts May 17th!

To say that I want this opportunity is an understatement. I know that I would do everything I can to give them what they are looking for to score their film, and I hope that I can at least make it to the top 3 so that I’m truly ‘in-the-running’. I’ve talked with Phil, and interacted with other members of the team, and they seem like a great group of motivated and talented people. To be able to work with them would be a great opportunity and a pleasure, and I’d love to be part of their creative team to help bring their vision to life. If you’d like more information about TILT, you can go the following places:

TILT Website
Twitter: Phil (director), King and Keck (writers), TILT on twitter

While working with Camden, the Director of Abandoned Allies, I realized that I really enjoy the process of creating music for someone else’s vision. It is a very different creative process than what I would normally do when just composing music for me and it is something I really enjoy. I’ve had nothing but a great experience working with Camden, and she has been a great motivator for me to move forward to look into other scoring opportunities. I’m still currently working on Abandoned Allies, and progress is being made as the film comes together and more research and interviews are added. I’m really happy to be part of Camden’s team, and as more happens with Abandoned Allies, I’ll post! I’m meeting with Camden on Thursday to see the movie where it stands now and to talk about musical needs. Thank you Camden for your support and faith in me as we work together, now and hopefully in the future!

If you like my entry, when the contest is open for voting, I ask that you please vote for me and my submission to get me in the top 3. Again, I’d love this opportunity to work with the TILT team, and I can’t do this by myself. I need the support from those who like my music and who want to see me succeed in this area of music composition. I’ll be posting updates here as I find out what is happening with the contest, and you can check out other samples of my work at my home page, kyleowen.com!

Thanks again,

Kyle

I’m writing music for a local documentary!

Kyle — Sat, 06 Mar 2010 18:30:26 +0000

Yesterday was amazing! I am now officially writing music for a local documentary with some amazing people involved. This is my first “scoring” experience so it is going to be a great learning opportunity for me. I told myself that I will never turn down an opportunity that requires me to grow and move forward in my life. I will be creating music with a specific tone and that needs to invoke specific feelings. From a composition level that can be really difficult, but I know I’ll be able to do it. There will be some challenges, such as no budget and only a few months to compose, but I know I can work around it with what I have.

In many cases the music I write, writes itself. I do editing and I move things around. Once I got used to the process of composing it has become very natural to me. To write music for “someone else” is a different process. You cater to different needs and you have to try and be 100% objective and willing to make changes when the other people don’t like or agree with what you did. You have to be willing to change things you pour your heart into to make it work. A lot of give-and-take will be essential to a successful project. Fortunately I’m working with people who love what they do and are just happy to have me as part of the team.

Last night I gave the director/producer and music coordinator samples of my music and they listened to it as we spoke music. So much of last night was spent talking about the overall tone of the movie and the roles that the music needs to play in it. My biggest challenge will be taking music from the natives (in the movie) and using it as inspiration for some of the music I’ll be writing. I want to create music to honor them, not insult, so the way I write it will be done with as much research as I can beforehand to insure that tonally I’m where I need to be. This is a fun challenge in itself.

I’m nothing but excited for this project and I will be trying to document everything I can regarding my experience so that I can learn from
It more. I have software that I need to get comfortable with (outside of Sibelius) and it needs to become a tool and not an obstacle. On top of working on my Computer Certification I also have software I need to learn!!! Time to take my notes and start writing music.

-Kyle

Backing up and digitizing my sheet music…(without a scanner!!)

Kyle — Sat, 02 Jan 2010 22:20:03 +0000

I, like many other musicians, have been collecting sheet music for as long as I’ve been playing. Although it is unlikely that a diaster can and will happen, it is something we should all prepare for. In the digital world we are taught that if you only have one copy you are vulnerable to loss. I backup my digital music library in several ways. First, I have it stored on a USB external hard drive for easy transportation to another computer if I need it. Secondly, I have it backed up on my computers internal hard drive, and then I have that hard drive cloned on a back up firewire drive so that I could use it as a bootable backup of my current workstation if something happens. This isn’t a complete backup setup, but I will soon be backing it up offsite so that I don’t have to worry about it if something happens to ALL of my hardware. I’ll write more on that later. I truely feel that I should digitize my sheet music collection so that if something happens and I lose my sheet music library that I can have access to it. Personally, I feel this falls within fair-use because as long as I don’t distrubute it, I should have the right to use the media how I want for personal use. Granted, this is debatable and people disagree, but if I paid for it I should be able to use it in my digital life in the way that best suits me. I have invested thousands of dollars in sheet music, and if I lost it, I would be financially difficult for me to replace, even if I could get most of it back with insurance. I already have a list of everything in my music library, including who it was written by, the price I paid for it, and the place I got it, and that is stored on my MobilMe drive offsite.

I recently got Sibelius 6, where previously I have been using Sibelius 3. It was a great gift from my partner, and it came with two trials of other music software that intigrate with it: PhotoScore and AudioScore. Photoscore is a program where you can scan your sheet music and it translates it into a file that can be imported into Sibelius. This allows opportunities for backup and easy editing and notes for a piece.

My goal: Backup my sheet music library in PDF, Sibelius, and MIDI format for personal use only.

Setup:
24″ iMac (Early 2009)
Canon Digital Camera (see Gdgt list)
Prizmo (Mac Application)
Photoscore Lite (demo version included with Sibelius 6)

I don’t currently own a scanner, and I didn’t want to get one for this purpose. I have a 12 MP digital camera that takes clear enough photos that I really don’t find it necessary to invest in a scanner that would take up much more room when I essentially could do the same thing with software. I started searching on the web, and I found a piece of software called Prizmo (for Mac). I decided to give it a try to see if it world work with Photoscore. I was unsure if it would, just because Photoscore has these requirements for it work with Mac scanning:

A scanner (probably connected to your computer via a USB, Printer or SCSI port), and installed Mac OS X TWAIN driver software (it is highly recommended you visit your scanner manufacturer’s website and download the latest version – also note that classic Mac OS TWAIN drivers will not work). You may need to contact your scanner manufacturer for information on installing a suitable TWAIN driver. If a Mac OS X TWAIN driver is not available for your scanner, you will need to scan using separate software, save suitable TIFF files, and open these in PhotoScore.

After doing some research to make sure that 1) TWAIN was built into OSX and 2) Making sure that I could export the right file type through Prizmo I got home and started playing with both programs to see how well it would work. Currently, I’m only using demo’s of both pieces of software, and once I get the money I will go ahead and buy the full versions of Photoscore and Audioscore (which I will dive more into later). Also, I will most likely be buying Prizmo, sooner rather than later, just because I can start taking the photos of my music now and then have it ready for Photoscore. Below is the differences between the Photoscore lite version (which I currently have installed) and the Ultimate Version (which I plan on buying):

Process:

1) Take a picture of the music with your digital camera.

2) Import into Prizmo, edit and rotate.

3) Export as PDF or TIFF. In this case, I’m exporting to TIFF because the demo only supports TIFF and the full version exports to PDF as well with text. Once I upgrade, I will export to PDF so that I can easily store and combine the PDFs.

4) Import music into Photoscore.

5) Export into Sibelius

6) Backup on harddrives and various places.

Note: The full version of Photoscore allows for text recognition, which means that I would not have to type and put all of that information in manually. Also, I use a sample of a simple score that will work, because obviously the full version can do a lot more than the lite version can. Once Prizmo is upgraded from the demo version, it will also allow for the image to be exported without the Prizmo watermark.

Links to mentioned software:

Sibelius 6
Prizmo
PhotoScore + AudioScore

Once I start the actual process and get it going, I will let you guys know how long it took (estimated) about about how much disk space it took to digitize my sheet music library. For me, currently, this was more of a proof of concept, and just solidified the fact that I don’t need to buy a scanner to do what I want to do!

Thanks for reading!

-Kyle