Moseph

That's what computer music is, or at least what academics mean by the term "computer music." You'll find the same thing in any school with a computer music program. These programs follow in the tradition of the people who were experimenting with tape loops and early synthesizers in the mid-20th century, and the compositional emphasis tends to be on sound design, interaction between performer and computer, digital manipulation of acoustic sounds, and that sort of thing. These things appeal to a lot of people as a way to get away from the relative rigidness of traditionally notated acoustic composition and explore things that are impossible to do within the acoustic tradition. Which is to say, it's an acquired taste. Are you looking a program that focuses more on things like traditional film scoring, sample library use, and commercial recording studio tech? These may go under the names music technology, or music for media, or music production and engineering, or something like that. My undergrad program (Western Carolina University) was sort of like this -- it was basically a hybrid of traditional music study and recording studio stuff. I think Berklee has a lot of programs like that, although I'm not sure if they're graduate level. In general, for these sorts of programs, look for professors with music industry experience rather than academic credentials. Another possibility would be to do a traditional composition degree but try to find a school that emphasizes the particular aspects of computers and music technology that you're interested in. I was probably too hasty in trying to compare composition time as a grad student to your current available time. My estimate was more as compared with undergraduate study or a 9-5 job. In your situation, you're probably right -- you probably will be more motivated and productive in a school environment, but it still may not be as much of an improvement as you'd like. For me, the things that were most beneficial about the school environment were the deadlines and knowing that I had to come up with something every week so we'd have something to look at during my composition lesson. More than available time, that was what tended to motivate me. For you, what is the computer side of things? You've already established that the things places like Peabody are doing aren't interesting to you, so what exactly is it that you want to do? As I mentioned above, there are different programs that focus on slightly different things, so you should do some looking around to figure out exactly what part of combining computers with music appeals to you and then try to choose a program based on what you're specifically interested in. Just keep in mind that when your two years are up, you're still going to be more marketable as a software engineer than as a musician. Networking might happen in school, but an industry job is in no way guaranteed to graduates. Especially if you're specifically looking for composing gigs -- composition is basically a freelance thing, unless you're in academia. The industry doesn't even care whether you have a degree, so the degree in itself won't get you anywhere -- it's about any contacts you manage to make, having the skills to produce things quickly, being in the right place at the right time, and marketing yourself well. If that's the dream, then by all means go for it. Post-grad school, I'm working foodservice as a day job, trying to get started freelancing, and scouting church musician jobs. I wouldn't have it any other way. And I'm sorry if I come across as being really cynical. Grad school's really not as horrible as I'm probably making it sound. But most new grad students have, I think, somewhat unrealistic expectations and rarely have people in their lives who will discuss their prospects with them frankly, aside from other grad students who are in the same situation that they are.

I considered a computer music master's (and was accepted to Peabody's program) but ultimately ended up getting a traditional composition master's (not at Peabody). My undergrad degree was commercial/electronic music with a computer science minor -- pretty similar to yours. So seriously, why do you want to spend two more years in school? They're going to ask you this when you apply, and "I want to focus on music and work on my portfolio" isn't going to cut it. What happens after you get the master's degree? You'll have a degree and a portfolio, which is exactly the situation you're in right now. Are there particular aspects of music making that you feel you need to work on that you think grad school will address? Do you want to teach? Are you just avoiding the real world? Grad school, especially at a place like Peabody or Indiana, isn't like undergrad. It kicks your ass. Ask any grad student. You're not going to have any more time to work on your portfolio than you have now. You'll likely have less time for composition. You will be busy with coursework, and reading, and possibly TA duties, and more reading. Specifically, the musical benefits of being in this environment (which is what it sound like you're really interested in) are 1) you have a support network of friends who are doing the same thing you are, 2) you're gaining knowledge about music and encountering new ideas that change the way you think about things, and 3) you have the school's performance resources at your disposal. Numbers 1 and 3 go away after you graduate. Number 2 stays with you and is the most important. If it helps, the reasons I decided to get a master's degree were firstly that I thought my composition skills for acoustic instruments weren't as good as I wanted them to be and secondly that I was interested in going on to get a doctorate and teaching at the university level. (The reason I didn't go into a computer music program was that the curriculum seemed too close to what I had already studied as an undergrad.) The result of my studies were that I gained confidence as a composer, I picked up a lot of knowledge about music theory that hadn't even been on my radar before I started, and I discovered that I didn't want to teach. It was worthwhile, but only because I received a tuition waiver and stipend that allowed me to stay out of debt. If I had gone deeply into debt to get the degree, I would currently be second-guessing my life choices. Out of curiosity, how was Peabody's recital a turn off? My recollection of the program and the music that people were making there is that it was all pretty much what you would expect from any computer music program.

It sounds to me like white noise with a high pass filter on it or some kind of electronic cymbal hit. EDIT: Sniped!

Can you post an example?

My parents gave it to me. By which I mean, I use my real name as an artist and my forum name as an internet person.

You just need to download the 64-bit version of PLAY, assuming you're using the PLAY edition of the library. Also if you're using PLAY, they just updated Choirs so that the wordbuilder is part of PLAY and not a separate program -- this probably means that FL users no longer need a workaround.

http://www.audiogang.org/ I don't think there's an OCR thread that deals with guilds and professional organizations, although you could start one.

I don't know the piece specifically, but it sounds like a Chopin waltz to me.

Try transposing some stuff up an octave. The mix itself doesn't sound bad to me, but a lot of your instruments are really in the same midrange areas of the frequency spectrum. The bass synth is kind of blah -- it lacks punch and tends to get lost among the other instruments, especially after 1:22. I think you should maybe replace it with something that has a less complex waveform and/or sounds more like a bass guitar.

Yes, can you rephrase the question? I don't understand what you're asking.

It's about 67 or 68 bpm. There are a lot of triplets and such that make the tempo less than obvious, but listen to the two sustained notes at the start -- you can hear a slight pulse in the sound, and that's the tempo the whole thing follows. Each of these two starting notes lasts four beats, if that's any help in hearing it.

For whether solo or ensemble patches are more realistic for building chords, the answer is that in a real orchestra, there are a fixed number of instruments (say, four horns) and anything that causes more than that number of instruments to sound at the same time is "unrealistic." If we assume, for example, that there are four horns in our orchestra, and if the horn ensemble patch is four horns playing the same note, then building a four note chord with the horn ensemble patch means that there are actually sixteen total horns sounding at the same time. This is not to say that you can't do this, or that it even necessarily sounds undesirable. It's usually extremely difficult to discern exactly how many instruments are playing in a ensemble patch, so you really have quite a bit of leeway in how you voice chords with them. Generally, if you want a really thick sound, the ensemble patch will give you that, although excessive layering may end up sounding over-saturated. Usually I don't play more than two notes simultaneously with a given ensemble patch; your mileage may vary. Another way to look at it is just to assume that there are a whole lot of horns (or whatever) in the particular orchestra you're using.

Yes, as far as I'm aware. Also, just since I feel obligated to mention this any time people express interest in EWQL Choirs, the wordbuilder is very difficult to use well. You've been warned.

Spinal Tap: Trollin' before the trolls were born.

Oh, okay, the Terratec is a legit audio interface, so that's probably not the problem. Have you been able to record without clipping at an extremely low gain, or does it clip no matter how much you turn the inputs down? If you can get a clean recording at a very low volume, you might be able to use compression/limiting to make the recording usable, although you might then have trouble with line noise. Barring that, though, miking an amp would probably be the best way to make it sound good, short of being able to put a compressor pedal or something in the signal chain before it gets to the soundcard (although I can't really say anything for sure since I haven't messed around with your setup myself). One other shot in the dark question: have you tried lowering the pickup on the bass so that it's farther away from the strings?

The distortion problem might be related to the quality of the soundcard. Is this one of those integrated cards with an 1/8" input jack? If you're going to mic a bass amp, one thing that you should keep in mind is that to get a good sounding tone, you may have to record a pretty loud signal. I've heard of people having okay results by draping a blanket over the amp and mic to cut reflections, but I haven't tried it myself. You could also patch directly from the amp to the soundcard, but if the soundcard is causing your recording problems, you may still encounter them. Does the Alesis Miclink accept 1/4" input or just XLR? If there's a 1/4" input you could run direct from the amp's output jack into that.

Just a thought on Steinberg Virtual Guitarist -- have you tried installing with UAC turned off? I've encountered some pre- Windows 7 programs that won't install properly on Windows 7 unless you do that.

An i5 with 4 gigs is probably sufficient unless you're doing really large scale orchestra mockups. Maybe bump it to 8 gigs if you're still concerned about the specs.

Wait, so you're going to mix in 5.1 but you don't have a 5.1 setup?

I have no idea whether you should switch. Are you dissatisfied with specific aspects of Live that you hope Pro Tools handles better?

Yeah, the reason you can't find the type of information you're looking for on the hypo (plagal) modes is that they're not relevant to modern composition. Plainchant in modern notation looks extremely mundane. This, for example, is the Dies Irae melody, which would probably be classified as Hypodorian because the melodic range extends below the final (which is D). Since there's no reason I can think of that this particular range issue would be of any concern to you, the distinction between Dorian and Hypodorian really shouldn't matter from a compositional standpoint. Probably also worth pointing out, if it isn't already obvious, that the term mode meant some different things back then that aren't implied by the way the term is used today. If you're looking to emulate the sound of chant, it'll be easiest to use the white-key Dorian, Phrygian, Lydian, and Mixolydian modes. The actual modal theory that plainchant uses is fairly complicated and probably isn't worth getting into unless you're doing academic analysis of chant or are just really interested in the music. For compositional purposes, you'll be better off listening to chant and imitating what you hear, or just taking melodies directly from existing chants.

The classification of music as being in one of those modes is based more on finals, reciting tones, and combinations of species of fourths and fifths than scale patterns per se. For the most part, those modes are going to look like white note scales similar to the non-hypo versions but starting a fourth lower -- the "tonic" degree or final is not the lowest note, though. Wikipedia has entries for them. Out of curiosity, why are you interested in them? EDIT: This may be more clear: the classification of, say, Dorian vs. Hypodorian is basically an issue of melodic range, not scale construction. You really don't need to know anything at all about the distinction unless you're studying plainchant.

Not an album per se, but Live-A-Live was used for a round in the People's ReMix Competition a few years ago, which resulted in four mixes from the game. They can be found here: http://doulifee.com/prc/PrcSong/prc.php?prcid=74 Better than nothing.