Joseph, Look and See – SATB & Piano

There’s nothing I love more, musically speaking, than finishing a new piece. Today I finished a new Christmas choral work called Joseph, Look and See. It was composed for friend and director, Chris Latta.

I try to tailor works, as closely as I can, to an ensemble’s needs. JLS turned out very well, even while sticking to certain requirements. In fact, sometimes it is actually easier to write given certain criteria, because it helps to focus the compositional process. I was particularly happy with the interplay between the piano and choral parts. Generally, I try to make both equally interesting and complementary.

The following example uses a string sound in place of the choral MIDI sound, because I find the strings to have more in common with the texture of real voices than most synthetic vocal textures seem to.

Score samples can be found on the Detail Page page or here.

Next, I will move on to my big project… Transcribing the orchestral version of Chorus of Psalms to be performed by organ and chorus. More on that topic later…

Busy, Busy, Busy

Wow, haven’t had much time to post. I’ve been doing a lot of writing, studying and prepping for a graduate recital… And that’s after spending a lot of time with family. Doesn’t leave much time for posting.

Today I had the pleasure of studying organ scoring do’s and don’t with Evan Becker. He is a fine organist has already imparted much knowledge. However, it is clear that I will want to keep my hands on the organ as I continue to perfect the organ reduction of my choral symphony. The organ is such a complex beast in all it’s subtleties and sometimes lack thereof. In order to do it justice and fully exploit its many pipes and stops, one must give it respect and allow enough time to really understand it’s capabilities, limitations and sounds. One thing is for sure… I think I could easily become addicted to studying the organ. There is just something about its raw power when you pull out all the stops, especially the 32′ stop!

A New Look For My Website

Please be patient with my website experimentation, but I always like to try to do things myself… That means a lot of trial and error. The good news is that my home page loads a heck of a lot faster now and I like the new look. The other pages will be changed one-at-a-time as I get to them.

Check The Speed of Your Internet Connection

Let’s face it, all of at some point or another question whether they are really getting the download speeds that they paying for. Especially at the premium prices bandwidth is going for today, you might want to check.

I have Comcast’s 12Mb/s download speed using a cable modem. That does the job pretty well and http://www.speedtest.net/ confirms this. However, it also revealed a pretty pathetic upload speed. They get away with this because most people are using a lot more download speed than upload. The problem is that interfaces like eJamming.com need a heck of a lot of both. In fact, we have had to come up with alternate means to stream our live performance of my new hip-hop beat for our grad recital partly due to this fact… However, I will say that decision was made mostly due to the fact the eJamming seems to be designed with a Mac in mind, not a PC. It’s just way too buggy.

You might want to try peak and off-peak hours too. Here are the results from a few of my tests within minutes of each other:

Here’s what speedtest.net thinks:

What?! Below Average?!

OK, if that wasn’t enough fun for you, you’ll want to check out http://www.pingtest.net/ also. This one actually tests the quality of your internet connection, not just your speed. Both are vitally important. How does Comcast rate here?

Not another bad grade. Come on, I want nothing less than an A+!

Some online games won’t perform well? That just won’t do. Oh, wait… I never have time to play those anymore. Too much music writing and blogging, I guess (those are only done with free time anyway).

Speaking of which, I’ve got other things I need to be doing right now, so you’ll have to go and test your internet speeds while I take a little break and re-group.

Christmas Choral Music Scores – Package Pricing

ANNOUNCEMENT:

Christmas choral scores now available through D. M. Gardner Music at a package price.

SAVE 20% off retail prices by purchasing as a package!

This full-spectrum choral selection features pieces for all ranges of your choir, highlighting the full range of talent your choir has to offer.

This package includes:

The First Noel (SSAA)
Precious Child (SATB)
Christ My Savior (TTBBBB)

Note: This package contains only a cappella scores.

Visit this link to take advantage of this great collection of Christmas scores or to learn more about these pieces.

Blogger: Text Formatting Fix

QUICK TIP #1:

As with any program you use frequently, you can eventually find something to complain about. For me, it’s the fact that pasting text into Blogger from another source, such as Microsoft Word, is a real pain, because it messes up all of the formatting you worked so hard to standardize.

Here’s how I avoid this problem:

1) Copy all the text

2) Open a blank Word page and click on “Paste Special” from the drop-down paste menu

3) VERY IMPORTANT! Click on the HTML tab in Blogger for your new post (or it’ll convert your “unformmated” text into some html mumbo-jumbo when you paste, thus formatting your unformatted text?…)

4) Paste as “Unformatted Text”

5) Add the proper formatting and make it look pretty. Don’t forget to add any links that were lost
(5a) I just right click the links in the Word Doc and “Copy Hyperlink”
(5b) Next I highlight the text I need linked, click the link button in Blogger and they’re back

SUMMARY: Paste unformatted text into the HTML tab for new posts.

Trust me. You will thank me later.

Internet2: How Fast is Really Fast?

My class is giving a graduate recital Nov 30th that will be streamed live on the internet. To further compliment the concept of music used with technology, a few of us are trying to work out combined performances from remote locations. At least one of the students is planning on using Internet2. Here is an official definition:

Internet2 is a collaborative project by over 120 U.S. research universities, working with partners in industry and government, to develop a new family of advanced applications to meet emerging academic requirements in research, teaching, and learning. This collaboration is addressing the major challenges facing the next generation of university networks by:

• First and most importantly, creating and sustaining a leading edge network capability for the national research community,
• Second, directing network development efforts to enable a new generation of applications to fully exploit the capabilities of broadband networks, and
• Third, working to rapidly transfer new network services and applications to all levels of educational use and to the broader Internet community, both nationally and internationally.

Here’s what it really means: It’s really fast. As much as 6.63 gigabits per second (Gbps)!

Why do we need these kinds of speeds? The Tim the Toolman Taylor theory would simply be, “We need more Power!” And really, that’s not too far from the truth. Scientists and Universities are ecstatic, because it takes that kind of computing power to come up with crazy quantum equations and to stream live video and audio from around the world with near zero latency (delay).

For example, scientists keep building fun things like $10 billion particle accelerators, such as the Large Hadron Collider (LHC). This bad boy will produce 15 petabytes of data per year for scientists to analyze. Here’s how the math works (to simplify things a bit [ha,ha] I am using an extra fast 10Mbps home download speed for my example):

First, you should know that 8 bits = 1 byte.

A megabit (data transfer) is a mere 1,000,000 bits.

A petabit (data transfer) is 1,000,000,000,000,000 bits (1Pb = 10^15 bits). That’s 1 Quadrillion folks (I.e. million, billion, trillion, quadrillion…). In other words, a petabit is 1 billion times greater than a megabit! 1Pb/1Mb = 1,000,000,000 bits.

A petabyte (data transfer) is 1Pb/8 = 125,000,000,000,000 Bytes (1PB = 125^12 Bytes). So, 1Pb x 1/8 = 1PB.

The LHC is supposed to create 15 petabytes of info a year!

With those kinds of mammoth numbers in mind, it is easy to see why there is an endless need for speed. A fairly fast home internet connection (cable modem) will offer about 8 megabits per second (Mbps) or 8,000,000 bits per second download speed. I’ll be honest, I tried to do all the detailed math on this and was never 100% sure I had the right numbers… There quite a few digits to deal with here, and one slight miscalculation throws the whole thing way off. …But it looked like to me it would takes hundreds of years to transmit the same amount of data the LHC can produce versus only several months at about 10Gbps. Lets just say, I wouldn’t hold up any other plans waiting for it to download right now. If anyone out there is a math geek, feel free to drop me some real calculations… I just do music.

On a sort-of-related topic, this gargantuan amount of information that will be produced by the LHC will be delayed at the very least. While I was researching the LHC, I discovered that while it came online in September 2008, it had to be shut down due to a problem with two superconducting bending magnets. It is scheduled to come online again in November. But here’s the weird part… Though no connection has been made or suggested, a researcher and his brother working on the project were just arrested on charges of terr*rism. They are suspected of passing information to al-Q*eda. It kinda makes you wonder, doesn’t it?

Article on LHC researcher arrest

LHC Description

More Detailed LHC Info

Why I Self-Publish

I have only attempted to publish 4 of my works outside of D. M. Gardner Music. Of those 4, all were published successfully. However, I quickly began to have emotional issues with signing away rights to my compositions, as I have invested many hours and potentially shortened my lifespan significantly by writing them. Much more than a product, I wanted to market my music for what it really is… A deeply personal, introspective expression of various aspects of faith, love, family, humor and life in general.

One of the pieces that I think best exemplify this is Annette. I wrote this piece as a gift for J. Roger Wilson’s and his wife, Annette’s, wedding anniversary. It was hard not to be moved by the beautiful words that Roger had penned, making it that much easier to write the music.

I rely on friends, associations, networking and a few good Google searches to get my work out there. Except, of course, for those ensembles I am specifically writing music for, everyone else trips upon my music by word-of-mouth or happenstance. While I sell significantly fewer scores this way, I make significantly more on each sale, allowing me to invest 80+% of profits toward the creation of new music. So, instead of people supporting the welfare of publishing companies, they are supporting only the future of compositions by D. M. Gardner (me).

Pieces like Precious Child have actually received solicitation by publishers and have been very popular overall, receiving numerous performances. Precious Child is the perfect example of the type of music that could potentially sell in much greater numbers through a big publisher. …And though I have not completely ruled out that possibility, I am currently content to sell to those people who happen to come across my site. That way, I am sure they picked this particular piece because they liked it, not because it came in a package deal with a bunch of other scores.

This is probably as close as I will get to becoming a court composer for the wealthy, as that concept seems to be a bit antiquated. It’s a good thing I am not in this for the money. Unless, of course, that means spending it on my passions rather than making it. My philosophy on spending money business-wise is that if I don’t make it, I can’t spend it. Therefore, it is imperative that I see a least a little profit from sales of my music, or I will eventually have to stop marketing my music all together.

The good news is, I will still continue to write music even if I end up broke doing it. That is because my passion for this medium of expression far outweighs any potential gain I might receive from writing it. And as I said, I am still making sales and commissions, so there is hope for further development of my self-publishing concept. In the future, I hope to help others publish their music as well.

Classical Hip-hop

I am always a little puzzled as to why so many people out there don’t seem to like classical music. It is the basis from which pretty much all of the music today is formed. We wouldn’t enjoy most of the movies we can think of without it… Taking a greater interest in the foundation of western music can only serve to enhance one’s musical endeavors.

Recently, I received an email from my kid’s teacher asking for help motivating the students to go to the symphony on a field trip, as they all seemed to think it would be boring. Even I will admit that symphonic concerts are often way over-programmed, but the music is beautiful, exciting and intellectually stimulating none-the-less. Leave at intermission, if you must. I’ve talked to many people who seem to have nothing good to say about classical music, but I wonder how many of them would tell me they actually hated listening to Dvorak’s New World Symphony or Rachmaninov’s Second Piano Concerto. I think people secretly like a lot of classical music (or would if they heard the right selections), they just don’t know or realize it. Maybe no one has the patience for it in this fast-paced society in which we live. It would be a very interesting experiment to take a random group of people and subject them to a selection of great classical music to find out what they really think of it.

Some artists have, of course, already successfully merged various style of music, including classical. Miri Ben-Ari comes to mind as an obvious example of success in this arena. Her classical/jazzy violin style do a lot to add to the texture and enhance the quality of music she is performing. Here’s what Wynton Marsalis has to say about her work:

“Miri’s playing is wonderful, beautiful, exquisite, unpredictable, original and spontaneous. Her creative energy can set a band on fire and it does!” -Wynton Marsalis

Visiting her website, you will no doubt get the impression that she leans a little more toward Hip-hop than classical, at least in wardrobe… One thing for sure in the world of pop music in general is that image is everything. Perhaps the greatest obstacle faced in my case is that I am definitely not the popular image of anyone associated with this kind of music. I’m am certain I could never pull that off. Is there a category of Hip-hop for nerds?

With all that in mind, I embarked on a collaboration with a fellow artist known as Phoenix Jay. He is a Hip-hop artist, and I am obviously a classically trained musician and composer. I wanted to see how much I could manage to fuse his art with mine and still make it work. As mentioned in previous posts, this was a much more difficult task than I had supposed it would be. At first, the two mediums seemed incompatible, but once I learned the standard forms used by the Hip-hop artist, the kinds of sounds and orchestration they require, and what a “beat” is in Hip-hop terminology, I was good to go. I rather enjoyed the challenge and will likely try to compose some more beats in the future. Hopefully, this sort of collaboration will not only yield a fresh, new sound, it will also give those out there with a low opinion of classical music a better perspective on it’s usefulness and validity.

HostMonster.com Review

I have used hostmonster.com as my web hosting service for several years now. From day one, they have demonstrated excellent customer service and service reliability. HostMonster (HM) offers many services from email to ecommerce. For me, I am interested in the basic services and a reliable, affordable way to host my website.

I researched several web hosting sites, but settled on HM based on reviews. I also discovered that Bluehost (BH) is pretty much the same company/service as HM. A BH forum states it this way:

“all of us know that hostmonster is a bluehost subsidiary with same plan features except for: *unlimited domains”

HostMonster Review

BlueHost Review

You will note their ratings are almost head-to-head, with only a few differences. BH is rumored to be on better servers, but costs a bit more monthly. HM seems to have slightly better opinions about their customer service.

But enough comparison. Let’s talk about HM.

Reliability – I have had no significant issues with HM. Once or twice over a few years I have had brief service interruptions. Average customer ratings, according to webhostinggeeks.com, are 2.9 stars out of 5. Currently, I would give HM around 4.5 out of 5 stars overall.

Email – I am very pleased with the versatility of the email filtering system. I have created several different accounts and filter individually, as well as globally. This allows me to use them for very specific purposes, eliminating nearly all spam from my inbox when used in combination with a few filters on Thunderbird (a free Mozilla email application which I happen to also be very happy with). By using addresses other than my default, I can avoid a lot of spam.

Tip: Never use “webmaster,” or your default username as your email address. You will just be asking for junk traffic. In fact, I would avoid common addresses like “orders,” or “customerservice” as well. Personalize them instead by adding something like company initials (advice that I have not yet taken myself but might soon). For example “DMGOrders” or “DMGWebmaster.” Once you’ve done that, avoid using any of your addresses for account registrations or anything other than official correspondence.

I redirect email incoming to my new main address, then to other categorized addresses. So if I get order inquiries, they go to a specific address. The specific addresses, however, allow no other types of traffic. So, I get only the inquiries that I want to receive. To further eliminate the chance for spam, I use Postini, an email filtering service offered through HM’s control panel. This service comes with a small fee, but is nice because it prevents bad messages from ever reaching my computer. It also sends me an email summary of blocked messages each day, so I can deliver mis-flagged mail or permanently ban addresses. I don’t know about you, but I am always convinced filters are deleting, mis-delivering or incorrectly flagging my email. With the nice Quarantine Summary emails, that is never an issue. I use Postini for my main address only,allowing my filters to redirect and eliminate any remaining unsolicited emails.

Price, Web Space, Bandwidth and Domains – The price is reasonable for the services offered. I cannot afford to put a lot of money into a web host, and HM offers enough stability, bandwidth and space for expansion in the future. Currently, I use such an infinitesimal amount of the available bandwidth and space, I should start hosting other sites on the unused portion…

Tech Support – HM has helped me iron out a few tech issues along the way. They were responsive, friendly and helpful. So far, my problems have all been solvable.

Customer Support – Again HM’s support staff is very courteous, sympathetic and generally helpful. I really never have to wait long periods of time for help or response to my questions. I have used their live chat feature and find it to be very helpful when facing problems that might require me to look a few things up and report result. …Particularly when it concerns messages or computer lingo that I can just cut and paste into the chat interface.

Overall, I am very pleased with HostMonster. It has allowed me to affordably set-up my website and not really have to worry about it. I can set up my account to pay automatically or simply notify me when things come due. I can easily configure my email accounts and filter-out unwanted mail. It is low cost and low hassle. That’s exactly what I am looking for in a web host right now.

CheapTargetedWebsiteTraffic.com – You Get What You Pay For

I have recently been interested in finding ways to increase web traffic to my website. I have started looking into website submission, optimization, keyword optimization, pay-per-click advertising and targeted versus untargeted website traffic. Of these options, I had originally only submitted my website to Google and used a free submission program offered by Statcounter.com. While, not huge traffic generators, they did generate a small amount and made my site fairly searchable. Somehow, I have still managed to make sales on my website even with such low volume traffic.

So, the next logical step was to try some other version of marketing. I had some money from sales in my account, so I decided to give cheap traffic generator a try. I knew it was probably a mistake, but it was purely for experimentation. Cheaptargetedwebsitetraffic.com (CTWT) offers a guarantee of 10,000 site hits in 30 days for $9.95, referring to this as a “campaign”. I seem to be having a hard time finding reliable sources of information when it comes to marketing one’s website, so I gave it a try. Now I am only a few days into the campaign, but I have already decided what I think of untargeted web hits… At least from CTWT… THEY ARE USELESS!

Why are they useless? Well, generally speaking, I am all for international relations… But of all the hits generated so far, NONE have been from the United States! Reviews suggest that targeted traffic would be much more useful. I can’t say I disagree, but I am hesitant to use CTWT to get it. Unless I decide to do more experimentation purely for the purposes of writing about it here, then you can expect that I will be trying something else.

First off, if you are not careful you will think you are signing up for, I don’t know, cheap targeted website traffic… Indeed, the home page options for traffic are their UNTARGETED versions. So, for only $92.95, you could find yourself soliciting 150,000 useless visitors.

To add to the “get what you pay for” concept, CTWT has a pretty pathetic interface. It is ultra-simplistic and, initially, I couldn’t figure out how to log in because I never received a confirmation email or instructions on how to do so. Here’s the scenario:

I clicked on the link to view untargeted web traffic and it takes you to a log in screen. Nowhere does it tell what your login should be. Forget got your login details? Never knew them in the first place, so I clicked on it anyway. This, indeed sent me a password. Problem? Still no user name! So I guessed enough times to figure out that it is just the name of the page you are promoting, no www. and no .com, just the name by itself.

They claim regular web counters cannot keep up with the large volume of traffic generated through CTWT. This is apparently true, given that elogicwebsolutions.com only shows I have received 150+ hits versus the 1,601 that appear on CTWT. I have checked the stats actually generated via my web host, and they are supposed to be more accurate. However, I have no idea what number is supposed to correlate with the data I am looking for. Too much info here!

Dang it, Jim! I’m a composer, not a marketing specialist!

If you are reading this and many obvious suggestions are coming to mind right now, feel free to let me know. What I lack is a reliable source of information on how to go about all of this. As I learn, I will share here. Overall, I give CTWT an unsatisfactory rating. However, to be fair, I will revisit this topic once the campaign comes to a close.

Too Much Inspiration?

OK, so I went through my little period of writer’s block, and now it seems I have more inspiration than I can handle. Classes have started, and I am enjoying my studies right now. We are putting together an online graduate recital. It will be interesting to see how that turns out, particularly since a large portion of the class attends online… A rather important impact technology has had on education. Online students, such as myself, attend virtually. We see and hear the class via streaming video, participate live via chat and/or calling in. I have given several presentations and it really seems very similar to actually attending class in a lot of ways. Sometimes we can get ignored for a few minutes in chat, but then I start typing in all caps and that seems to get everyone’s attention.

You may have heard this before, but taking these courses online can actually be much more difficult than physically being in class. For example, I can’t just turn in a big final project on a disk, like a 2GB audio and video presentation, I have to figure how to convert it to the proper format, preserve the quality, reduce the size and upload it to a finicky server. All this can add quite a bit of time to the project. Of course, communicating with the professor via email can cause a few delays in info exchange, but there is always the telephone. The two things I miss about actual class are hanging out with the other students and playing with any trinkets (like the Theremin) they might bring in. I suppose I wouldn’t mind hanging out in the technology labs either, but at least I have some equipment here. I actually think overcoming these sorts of obstacles is a very valuable experience, giving me a much greater understanding of education through technology. After all, that’s kind of the point of this degree anyway…

Not only have classes inspired me, but so have my friends. This year I have concentrated on writing music for people that have helped me in my musical endeavors in the past. I just finished a string quartet and have already moved on to a new choral piece for another friend. Not to mention, I’ve been working one other adventure/experiment in the world of hip-hop for a friend. I am attempting to fuse his world and mine in one cohesive piece of music, know to him as a “beat”. He is writing the lyrics and performing/recording it, so you don’t have to worry about that part of it. Ironically, of all the work I have been doing, this has by far been the greatest challenge for me. …For two reasons: One, I am way out of my element, so there is a huge learning curve… And two, Sonar 8 has been driving me insane with synth glitches!

Finally, I have been planning out my projects for the next year or two. As soon as I finish the projects I mentioned previously, I will dive into finishing the long-time-coming organ reduction of my Chorus of Psalms. I will have the privilege of working with a very fine organist, Evan Becker, in order to yield the best results possible. While I have written pieces for organ before, the size and significance of this work (to me anyway) demanded that I step it up. I don’t want to lose too much of the essence of the piece in transcription. Post transcription, I will be working on a set of SA choral pieces for a friend in Boston.

One more thing… I realize getting people to read your blog is difficult when I decide to suddenly take a month or more off, but I needed some time to refocus. One of the items on the list for next year’s planning is a blogging schedule. With so much to fit on my plate, I need to first organize the menu. Besides, the last thing I want to do is sacrifice actually creating and performing music just so I can write about it!