As composers, I know we all allow others’ musical ideas to “influence” our own. Does anyone else feel it would be a great idea to have a page dedicated to users’ original compositions - pieces that they are prepared to share as ‘open source’ material?
I’m a mere ‘amateur’ composer and I know that I would find such a thing useful. I emphasize that I’m not looking for an opportunity for bald plagiarism. As we all know, we sometimes hear something - a phrase, harmony, counterpoint, or whatever - and wonder, “how did he/she achieve that?” To be able to answer that sort of question in a Dorico context is what I’m talking about.
I’m also no expert on web-site design but, if the idea were taken up, I would suggest there might be category sub-pages - like orchestral etc., perhaps mirroring the Dorico template choices. I would also look for it to contain Dorico scores, rather than sound files (like MP3, etc), although those might be useful to reinforce a score because of sound library differences.
I’m just putting this out there as an idea. Please don’t Flame me for it!
Musescore has a site for something like that, but inevitably it is full of a large percentage of rubbish. I suggest the best thing is just to sample the huge number of scrolling/paging score videos on youtube.
I’d be prepared to develop and host a site like that, but I may not be the right person because I would insist on curating it to avoid the problem of building up a large collection of poor work.
And a potential blocker is that many commercial composers obviously will not submit, and many composers I know do not allow free uncontrolled distribution their work for obvious reasons. This is part of the reason this sort of site does not attract serious attention from composers - we are talking about people’s valuable intellectual property. I don’t know many professional musicans who open source their work.
If you are interested in contemporary music, take a look at the excellent Score Follower site.
From what I understood, the TS proposed starting the endeavor on this forum in particular. Are there enough amateurs here to turn a topic of that sort into an endless pit of unlistenable junk?
There won’t be anything like that course, but I reckon it would be fun to be able to spot what your fellow Cubasists are doing.
I run several Discourse servers. Discourse does not support file upload areas and storage and so on. It’s not part of the design, and not generally done. You need to set this up on a separate server on a dedicated website, as I suggested.
Didn’t even google Dorico yet to be honest. Is it completely filled with Cubase victims?
This forum seems somewhat obscure, which is why I think a user compositions topic here wouldn’t be a mess of countless hundreds of tracks thrown in every day
I’m all in favour of a page where Dorico users can post their own original compositions for discussion. There are actually surprisingly few examples at present I’m aware of though no shortage of mock-ups of the works of more famous composers, usually to illustrate various sample libraries. Of course there are other websites for amateur composers but one that specifically focusses on our chosen notation software would be most welcome in my book.
I don’t know much about the Score Follower site but listening to the sample composers, it seems full of the most pretentious kind of avant-garde experimentation which isn’t even typical of contemporary composition. Perhaps they’re not typical. Although we amateur composers certainly produce plenty of unlistenable junk, I’ve heard just as much from so-called professionals who worry about their intellectual property. Almost without exception, the finest contemporary works I know are by composers who cannot make a living by composing.
I make no comments about contemporary music quality as taste and interest are very personal. What I am pointing out is the the Dorico forum is not the right technical platform to do this idea, even though it may be nice to have Dorico related stuff all in one location.
If, as the originator of this discussion, I might be allowed to add a farthing’s worth …
When I set out composing, some years ago, I used a notation software called Noteworthy. Yeah, you can all laugh, but it got me started! One of the great features of the Noteworthy web-site was its User Compositions element. I learned so much from that!
As to my current suggestion, I really don’t give a “monkey’s” about those who are so protective of their “intellectual property” that they wouldn’t publish on it. Let’s just take that for granted and move on please.
I am also, as I said, specifically interested in this from the point of view of Dorico - not Cubase or any other diddle-dot software. My focus is very definitely on “what could actually be played by humans”, not electronic pinky-patches, loops and whatever.
This may seem ‘old fashioned’ but, IMHO, if the only way you can record/play your composition is to record it as an MP3 or whatever, then you are making ‘sounds’, not necessarily music.
Please forget any kind of discussion, esoteric as it may be, beyond what would help budding musicians. That’s what my suggestion was about. We have decades of work (by dedicated others) to provide us with the sort of compositional tools that most of us could only have dreamt of in our formative years - and Dorico is, currently, at the top of the heap (IMHO).
Isn’t it sad to think that all we can argue about is “protecting our rights” or how to set up a web-site? How about “Educating a creative future”?
Oh, and I might add that there is no conceivable protection against publishing for “the need for esteem from others”, nor for “the excruciatingly enjoyable need to annoy others”. These are part of the world in which we live today. As to some sort of “artistic moderation”, why would I trust any particular individual/group to keep me “safe” from stuff I shouldn’t be listening to? The answer to that is simple - take down anything that hasn’t been accessed in the last (say) 12 months.
Oh, Andro, I am so sorry if I caused you any offense! It was absolutely not my intent! All I was trying to do was to keep the topic ‘on topic’.
My comment about “moderation” was, in fact meant to be “positive” - use a “democratic” process (i.e. the 12 month limit) to decide what’s good and bad. It was never intended to be an attck on anyone who might be a moderator.
I do agree with you about ‘trash’ - but that is, we all know, subject to the notion that “one man’s trash is another man’s treasure”. In my experience - sometimes - as you work through the trash you find an absolute gem. I just feel that, even with the trash aspect, the facility I suggested might be worth consideration. With a properly judicious set of ‘rules’, I still think this could be valuable - and I fully recognise that ‘somebody has to do the nitty-gritty’.
Again, I apologise most profusely for any offense that you may have felt - it is not in my nature to do that, although I will accept that my choice of words can seem a bit blunt to some. Please forgive me!
I may have misunderstood the purpose of the original post as I don’t see a need to actually host audio (or score) files on Discourse – those of us who have posted original compositions already can simply link to their existing location.
You are right, of course, and I have made a personal value judgement which naturally others can totally disagree with. On the other hand you did say on Musescore that:
I haven’t read all the posts, but if the purpose is to post compositions made through Dorico, so be it! Apart from the guitar (I’m a guitarist) I compose everything through Dorico. I think it would be interesting to share (and I don’t see anything wrong with it) your own compositions made through Dorico. I link this composition of mine from my newly born channel, where apart from the acoustic guitar, everything was made through Dorico, also the other pieces on my channel were made on Dorico except for the mixing and a minimum of editing done through Reaper. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6YW0zpVhhXw
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=89lFpeVBaLQ
](Back To XII Sec - YouTube)
Actually I find it interesting that on the forum for the first notation software with full VST support back in 2005, namely Overture, there are a quite a lot of user compositions and I remember enjoying some of them. There are a few of us Doricians who at one time used that software – perhaps I’m not the only one who occasionally misses the exchange of works there was (and still is) there although Dorico has a much wider scope in the professional arena and is used to a much greater extent by educators, publishers, arrangers and others who do not necessarily compose original works and wouldn’t be interested in participating in something like this.
Sibelius had SIBMus which became Sons of Sibelius which for a time was quite active with competitions and the like, though this has virtually died out now --a shame. So I think there is a place for something like this in Dorico for enthusiast composers.
Fabrizio, beautiful pieces! As a once-upon-a-time guitarist, whose fingers now simply don’t respond as they should, I can truly appreciate them.
To get back to my original post, what interests me is seeing, in Dorico, how the pieces were written (notated). There are some very interesting elements that I would like to understand how to notate.
So, that’s why my original suggestion was for somewhere to share Dorico scores, with sound files mainly used in support of understanding the score.
Ok, thank you first of all, now I understand your point of view. My way of using Dorico from that point of view is anomalous, in the sense that I pay much more attention to playback than to formatting and graphics, so in my typical Dorico file you couldn’t find anything good from that point of view. … of course the score and the notation are correct, but if I had to print them to give them to someone, I should definitely pay attention to all the graphics. In this sense, in this forum there are some real professional transcribers that I know Dorico perhaps even more than the programmers themselves!
However, if a specific space were created where to post your own compositions (obviously made through Dorico) it would be really interesting.
