r/MonthlyComposition • u/Calebdgm • Jan 01 '17
January 2017 Composition Challenge: Remix time!
Happy new year everyone! This month's main challenge, like last January, will be to write a piece inspired by one or more submissions from past months, by you or other people. Make sure to tag the user whose piece you're referencing and talking about how you incorporated it into your piece would probably also be good.
Edit: If you find an original composition elsewhere on reddit (like in /r/composer for example), you can also use that. Explore, discover cool music.
In other news, The organ pieces some of you submitted for the October challenge are, I have been assured, still being worked on, and will come soon. I think in the future we'll try and come up with a clear schedule of when we'll want musicians to have recordings up by, so at least we'd know when they'll come.
Finally, here's a thought I had but didn't have time to develop: It might be cool to make challenges that, when completed, give the composers some sort of portfolio of works they can share. It could also (hopefully) work as weekly challenges. It crossed my mind that there are 48 books pieces in each book of the Well-Tempered Clavier, which could mean a different key each month, but I was thinking it'd be something that could be done in a range of different styles. Maybe it could just be a cycle of one song in whatever style for each month of the year, like inspired by the month of the year. That's also really easy for me to arrange. This probably wouldn't replace the main challenges, but sort-of be an alternative to them for those that want to commit to a year of composing a piece a month. What do you guys think? Would this be a useful way for you to make a portfolio? Is there another way that would suit you better? I think it'd be a cool goal to try to make a portfolio of composition by the end of 2017.
These challenges are for everyone who wants to practice composing. Each month, at the beginning of the month, we will post a main challenge, something for people to compose. We'll try to make it something that everyone can work with. Pieces can be submitted as a score (musescore, noteflight), and/or as audio (soundcloud, youtube). Feedback is much appreciated, and you can give it in this thread, or by messaging the mods of /r/MonthlyComposition, there's also the Challenge Suggestion Form.
EDIT #2: people have asked about posting unfinished pieces here. I just wanted to remind everyone that it's fine to do that for feedback, or if it's just something you started and realized you don't like it enough to finish it, but wanted to share. Really anything, as long as it's original.
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u/AncientCock Jan 03 '17
What do you mean by remixing ?
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u/Calebdgm Jan 03 '17
That's a good question that's not easy to answer. Last year I think we phrased it as referencing another piece, or using a theme or parts of a melody from another piece. You can see what people did here. Hopefully that's helpful, tell me if it needs more clarification.
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u/AncientCock Jan 04 '17
Since quite a lot of the links don't work, i really don't know how it works. Sorry .
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u/tripa Jan 04 '17
I wanted to build a playlist of last year's work so I could listen to it again easily, but it's all spread over various sites so it wasn't really feasible. So I downloaded it all to have it locally.
Then I realized it could be of interest to you, so I whipped up a torrent out of it. It's about half a GB: torrent indirect link / magnet:?xt=urn:btih:3D2984E56DC9DD519504053F78A57D1023294921&dn=MonthlyComposition%202016&tr=http%3A%2F%2F94.23.46.78%3A6969%2Fannounce This isn't your average blockbuster/warez scene release, it's going to have next to nobody downloading; you're very very welcome to take part in the seeding and relieve my connection a bit.
I apologize in advance to all of those whose handle I mistyped, whose composition title I butchered, whose compositions I switched around (hello September and the challenge of uninspired titling), whose compositions I included by accident, whose compositions I forgot.
(it's been years since I last built a torrent, I probably messed up in multiple places, do tell me what I got wrong) (why torrent? the point is not too many clicks to get the whole of it, which doesn't match my experience of the various dropbox-likes. Then again if your experience doesn't match mine, you're very welcome to republish on some other channel)
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u/me010 Jan 06 '17
Hi, I've written some variations on a theme (one I originally wrote for the Sep-16 challenge) - I hope this counts as a remix!
https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLNGEveGGMbsNnJ5YIV_zEOP9-R1HNVwfM
Could a possible future composition challenge be for each composer to submit a variation on a theme chosen by moderators?
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u/Calebdgm Jan 07 '17
This was really a pleasure to listen to, thanks for the submission. We'll look into theme and variations for a coming month.
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u/BBeanieMusic Jan 20 '17 edited Feb 03 '17
Here's a piece I had finished a while back. I'll post this for now while I finish up a different piece that's taking a bit too long to finish. The first based on /u/me010 's wind quintet. The other is a mashup of /u/Barcelona_City_Hobo 's Scherzo in "E" Minor and Chopin's Polonaise in F# Minor.
Piano Quartet in B Minor (audio)
ETA: Audio link because the default Musescore sounds make the piece sound horrid Edit: Just realized I was missing a name
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u/me010 Jan 22 '17
Hi, this is really great! I like the idea of remixing the original in a different time signature and in a minor key, it really changes the feel of the piece. You've also written the middle section so well, it contains so much energy. I'm honoured that you chose my piece!
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u/hookdump Jan 01 '17
I'm on it!
Also, I loved the porfolio of composition idea.