New Years (music) resolutions

[Paul Halley]

Will anyone have any new years resolutions relating to composition?

I would like to finish the several St Quartets I am working on and my 1st piano sonata, as well as a trio for P,VC and clarinet.

Anyone else?

[H. S. Teoh]

Funny you mentioned a 1st piano sonata. I've just started one a few weeks ago, and now am wrestling with the 2nd movement (which is resisting to be written, but I swear it's only a matter of time!!!). Although this hardly qualifies as a resolution... unless you're talking about the harmonic variety, of course. :-P

And I'm not so sure how one goes about writing a piece for polyvinyl chloride (PVC), but I'm certain you'll figure something out! :-D

[Rodney Carlyle Money]

I love this thread, my first resolution is that Paul and I become good friends. Next, be fully satisfied with the results of the trumpet concerto I'm working on, hear and see some more scenes of the ballet Foret Enchantee I've been working on, write out a piano reduction of a finale to a possible symphony.

[Rodney Carlyle Money]

I actually love the sound of PVC having written for boomwhackers. I actually prefer the sound of them over oboe, lol.

H. S. Teoh said:

Funny you mentioned a 1st piano sonata. I've just started one a few weeks ago, and now am wrestling with the 2nd movement (which is resisting to be written, but I swear it's only a matter of time!!!). Although this hardly qualifies as a resolution... unless you're talking about the harmonic variety, of course. :-P

And I'm not so sure how one goes about writing a piece for polyvinyl chloride (PVC), but I'm certain you'll figure something out! :-D

[Paul Halley]

U just made my day Rodney! Sounds good to me!

Actually the piece is for a clarinet made out of PVC  HS... lol

I may follow up with a piece for a tuba made of wood or a cardboard piano accordion...

[H. S. Teoh]

And I'm working on a tuba concerto, which is TBA ... um... Tba... :-D  Still on the fence about whether it would be a wood tuba, though. Would that be a woodbrass instrument (as opposed to woodwind)?

[Nicholas Kelly]

I've always been intrigued by the process Robert Schumann followed for a few years starting in 1840 or so: writing exclusively in a single genre of music each year and, in the process, becoming highly proficient in it. (So in 1840, he wrote only vocal music; in 1841, only orchestral music; in 1842, chamber music, and so on)

Since I've recently discovered that writing choral music is fun for me (and much more enthusiastically accepted by performers than orchestral music), I'm going to try to write one choral piece each month of 2016. Hopefully by the end of the year I'll have learned from my successive blunders and cranking out choral pieces will be like riding a bike--and I'll have plenty of material to submit to competitions and publishers. It may turn out to be a terrible idea, but now (that I'm out of academia but still fairly young and able to write on my own schedule) seems like as good a time as any to experiment.

If this experiment is even marginally successful, I'll try it again in 2017 with concert band music!

[Stephen Lines]

Resolution 1: Don't get cross with other CF members irrespective of what they say.
2. Try to comment more regularly on others' compositions and give unreserved encouragement to them.
3. Perfect(?) my writing for voices.
4. Compose four more marches for wind/military/concert bands.
5. Win the World Series of golf by a clear margin of 6 strokes!

[Tyler Hughes]

My music resolution involve getting my music out in the world more. Send more music out to competitions, call for scores, and performing opportunities. 

I would also like to just in generally increase my musical output. Not just write more music, but write music for more unconventional ensembles. I have found myself in a very traditional rut in that I write for very standard ensembles, however, most new music ensembles comprise of unique combination of instruments. I want to explore these unique sounds much more like I did when I was first composing and writing for friends of all kinds of instrument combinations. 

Some goals outside of just writing and getting music performed includes starting a groupmuse community in my town. I also want to officially relaunch my youtube channel and finish my writing the lessons for my online course. 

[Socrates Arvanitakis]

1. Carry on more with my creative work (extra-musical activities included) and less with this forum which really sucks all my energy sometimes.
2. Carry on with my re-creative work by practicing my instruments a bit more seriously, and less with this forum which really sucks all my energy sometimes.  - I feel very rusty!
3. Learn to play the PVC, (in all its polyphonic, monophonic, cacophonic and mute constructs )if only to perform some of your scores.
4. This forum sucks! (it does not look like a resolution but still it's a fact)
5. Try to give up smoking and start going to the gym instead. Not really musical but quite important in helping me with previous four.

Thanks for this thread, Paul, really interesting.

[Paul Halley]

Lol and Thanks 4 the replies. Now that hangovers are hopefully passed anyone else with any music resolutions?

[Mariza Costa-Cabral]

Hello Paul.

I don't have any New Year musical resolutions, but I enjoy writing on your threads, so I thought of something (vaguely) related to write here.

This is more of a goal than a resolution.

My goal is to figure out how to write multiple sections of a longer piece, as opposed to just single short pieces.  It's ironic that I should find this difficult because the very first piece I composed ("Offbeat Romance between the Music Box and the Metronome") was a 3-section piece.  Yet now I have trouble.

My pieces have a strong melody line, and I think my trouble comes from the difficulty in matching different melody lines without one of them overwhelming/dominating the lot.

Not that I've actually tried real hard.  I probably just need to set my mind to doing it, and so that's my goal.

If anyone has hints or advice, I'll welcome it.

[Socrates Arvanitakis]

Hi Mariza,

In Renaissance composers were also concerned with the brevity of their ideas and they started developing the technique of gradual (as opposed to abrubt) modulation. I think this technique is essential for every composer, as its historically proven aesthetic results are evident.  A good vocal (sometimes also instrumental) melody can be a minute long. How do we get a ten minute long piece out of it?