Gav Brown's Page

There's nothing funner than ragtime. The Maple Leaf Rag, which was written in 1899 by Scott Joplin launched the ragtime era of music, which spanned about 16 years. It also set a record: it was the first piece of sheetmusic ever to sell one million copies. I started playing piano so I could play ragtime (this is not me playing) >…

Hello all - if you post a link to something offsite which is not your own music, (music or videos or anything else) please consider saying something about it in your post. I am much more likely to follow a link if you describe what it's about than I am if all you do is post the link with no comments or generic comments like "this is great"

Hello everyone, I was so gratified to see that we had a record number of composers (19) participate in the last composition contest (Short shorts), a record number of site members (27) participate in the voting, and also some of the composers have posted their pieces in the Music Dissection forum and gotten a lot of responses, which is just great! I enjoy running contests and am working on a unique idea for the next one. Hope we will continue to see an increased level of participation, and…

It is hard to find anything more beautiful than the music of the 19th century Polish composer Fredric Chopin, who was called "the poet of the piano" because of his lyrical and memorable melodies. I think he's like the Beatles of classical composers. Like them, everything he wrote was memorable and accessible - and short. Here is an example of one of my favorite works by him. The melody is utterly simple, and in the bass, accompanied by divine arpeggios in the right hand. It requires a…