September 2011 Blog Posts (15)

Hi everyone!

I am so excited about becoming a member here!! I am excited to blog and participate in discussion, and listen to everyone's pieces!!

I have afew burning questions for you all.

My questions are: How would you go about presenting extreme personal works composition lesson? Are these pieces even appropriate to bring to my lesson, or to even write? Are there any composers who have written personal pieces and are open about them?

By…

With a little luck, today should be the day that I finish version 2 of the mix...

On a separate note, I have rediscovered an old composition from 10 years ago and somehow I was able to open it in Sonar X1, my DAW. The tune has a lot of potential- the lead guitar track sounds good! It'll probably be an instrumental, but maybe I can design a melody for a lead vocal.

Prologue

Yes! It's the return of my blog posts and their awful puns for titles... I can never resist them! Recently I'd been investigating some orchestral scores from favourite composers and realised that some of my favourite sounds and devices were achieved by using the harmonic minor scale as a resource but in a non-traditional way. Eventually I felt I had enough material to dedicate an entire blog post to it. Hopefully this will be…

I've decided to journal my listening habits as a way to track my daily (weekly, monthly) listening patterns.  I believe this to a be a strong way to process and utilize the influences around us. 

Today it is:

Shostakovich Symphony #10

Ensemble unknown

Conductor unknown

This is a recording I picked up from a  friend of mine and downloaded it onto my iTunes playlist. 

I have always admired Shostakovich for his use of…

Suffering from what I call “contrapunctitis” (you won’t find it in the medical dictionary) I am naturally biased, but I believe free counterpoint to be one of  mankind’s greatest achievements. As an expressive device, it is without parallel in any other language with the possible exception of mathematics – its nearest relative. Of all its practitioners, Beethoven pips the others to the post. From the simplest diatonic devices of the earlier works through to the late fugues, no other…

There is this huge problem, i can never name my composistions when i finish them! i always name them like "Sonata,etc in the key of" haha anyone else have this on going problem?

I am a music teacher.

I feel like saying that is like starting a 12 step program...

Anyway, I noticed that some days I feel like the students are giving me a harder time than others.  I have come to realization that it is me that is coming to the situation with a confrontational attitude, not the students. I know that this is not a revelation to start a new renaissance in music education, but the reason I bring this up is that I have noticed this fluctuation…

Hi,

Thanks in the past for the nice comments from various members about my 1994 piece 'Threnody,Song For Sarajeyvo'.

Just to let you know that James Mason an American photographer who documented the war gave me permission to use a montage of his work with the music.It's up on youtube now.

Just google my name youtube and the title of the piece.

Paul Mitchell-Davidson

Page 3 is where I've placed some of my compositions

my website

I got a deal of £99 for the making and hosting of this website - quite pleased with that.

Hi!

I want to thank those of you who left great and inspiring comments! I have been so busy as of late and so I apologize for

not being apart of the community. My real name is here so I figured I better get a start on again! Its not cool to Google and Bing your name and see "your neglected site"just sitting there. So here I am again! I am traveling alot....

I am going to NYC

then Colorado

then in two months to the Middle East for an…

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MtOTamJOWv8

A difficult mixing task is the problem of separating the frequencies of a kick drum from the frequency range of the electric bass. I've been placing the kick drum lower than the elec bass in the frequency spectrum. Using drum replacement software (in Sonar) has allowed me to transfer the audio kick track, to a MIDI track, which I then use to trigger a sample. I've been using  a kick drum sample in my D4 sound module. It has very strong low frequencies, around 43 hz.…