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Shane Cartledge @WritersBlock

Age 33, Male

Curtin Uni

Perth, Australia

Joined on 1/8/07

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A little disappointment

Posted by WritersBlock - August 25th, 2008


Okay, I had a performance last week, an original composition for solo piano (see previous blog) and my old music teacher suggested that I enter it in a national youth composer competition. The issue I had was that it was for solo piano. I checked out the requirements today, and it turns out the piece has to be for between 3 to 5 instruments. So now, I have to discard my ready made track for something new. I've opened up Finale Notepad, and I've created a project for Viola, Cello, and Piano. I've set the time signature to 4/4 and the key signature to C minor. The title at the moment, something angsty, to capture my feelings at the moment, "Vulgar". Yeah, fuck you Sibelius and your rules I hadn't read yet.
The competition is split into 2 age groups, secondary students and tertiary students. Secondary students require the length of their compositions to be between 2 and 5 minutes long and tertiary 5 to 10 minutes long. I left school last year, so I'm assuming that I'll be placed under the "tertiary" umbrella.

According to last years results, there were over 200 entries, so it looks like I'm in for a tough challenge. Sure there have been MACs with turnouts like this, but these people have been studying classical music and they'll probably have teacher-approved entries, ie. a much higher overall quality compared to the MACs. But I'll give it the old college try and I'll hopefully have something done by the deadline of September 15th, not October 26th, that's the date when the winning pieces will be played live over national classic radio. The poster was misleading, and now I'm on a real race against time, and with the MAC (which in all honesty, I probably have a better shot at winning) due at near the same time, and I'm taking a holiday from 5th to 13th for my coming of age, so I'd say I'd have to be done and entered before the 5th, otherwise I'll be trying to finish up after partying hard on the friday. But the prizes look pretty sweet. If I'm good enough/lucky enough, I might find myself with some cash, a copy of sibelius and/or an M-Audio keyboard/hardware and other software stuffz and "opportunities". So I'd be a dumb fuck to not even try.

I might as well do a bit more advertising for the competition, for anyone interested, if you're Australian, and you can make a 2-10 minute classical song comprising of 3-5 instruments in a short space of time, give this competition a crack, who knows, you might find yourself on the national airwaves alongside me. ;D


Comments

Don't you have to fill in some papers that includes the requirements? :S
Most of the time it shouldn't be something easily overlooked.

And... I'm not austrialian :'(. And on a sidenote, i can't make classical music anyways so.. :D

I didn't know anything about the contest until recently, the paperwork comes later.

aw man, that sounds like pressure, you might not be able to get both that and the Madness Entry done on time, hopefully though you'll be able to whip up something good, and hopefully you don't have to supply your own musicians, I'll be rooting for you, and listening to Gustav Holst's THE PLANETS (and your stuff too of course)

...

if you did actually get a contract with some record company, would you stop posting your productions here so you might maximize your profits? something for you to ponder, considering that these competitions might get you noticed

I've got one madness entry done, although it could use a makeover, I'm working on my second entry, which is sounding absolutely kickass especially since I've only used stock samples from fruity loops and FL native effects so far (at the moment it sounds like a soft train piece). I'm thinking of how to turn it into a dirty great madness tune...
The competition will provide the performers. There's not way I could organise that in the time I've got. I've made a good start on my piece, it's not a piece without it's flaws, but I definitely think that it'll be something worth listening to in the end, with my rather aggressive contemporary approach.

If I won the contest, I doubt I'd land a record deal. I'd get some cash, some sweet software and/or hardware, but as far as I'm aware "opportunities" would be more along the lines of getting a scholarship with a uni to study music or if there were any sort of deal going on, it might be writing a brief film score or something like that. In which case they'd take no notice of my non-classical works, so I'd stll do the electronica stuffs here, and some classical for fun, but I doubt if I got the opportunity to write a song for a film or a videogame or anything commercial, I doubt I could post it here.

So that's the direction I'd love to take if I get the opportunity. I'm just not the mainstream radio hit performer or underground electrnica artist, the music industry is cut-throat, and the only way I see myself getting anywhere with a music career is on that classical side, and that's the only way I'd want it. ;D

does classical include banjo?
I can see someone doing a classical "one man band" technique :P
big bass drum on the back, little cymbols on the knees harmonica at the mouth, playing a guitar or violin
that would be awesome

Classical does not include banjo, and it typically doesn't include guitar either. Or the harmonica. :-/
I'm going with viola, cello and piano. And not all played by the same person. =P

what?
no kettle drums?
bummer

NO >:(

:'(

Aww...
<3
C|:-)
lolhat

If I ever meet you I shall give you a noogie!

If I ever meet you, I shall fart in your general direction.

battle of word is it now?
then a battle of words you shall get!
old Mcdonald was dyslexic E.O.E.O.I

Oh, is that how it is? Well, I would apologise, but you don't have any feelings so I won't.

man...
I wonder how do you get these snappy comebacks
I wish to learn about these
where may I get a subscription to your news letter and theorie on life?

http://audioreport.newgrounds.com /
But don't go telling anybody. It's a sekrit, k?

hmm....seem more of a way to get more publicity to the underdogs
but it is a worthy cause

It's not just for the underdogs, it's got a whole bunch of neat stuff. Just you wait and see...

I'll write a song about throwing shrimp on the barbie.

Srry, ur t22 cneddehen 4 da kompactishenn

Dunno if Sibelius has a Canadian ver. of the comp. You could look it up.

I'm waiting but a see shit
it is like trying to comb the desert with freaking huge comb!
"I see shit!"

That's because the first edition isn't up yet!

hang on a sec
"comb the desert!"
"have you found anything?"
"I found shit!"

D=<

if I had my PC, I would listen to your 3 latest songs, bloody wii browser and it's flash player 7...

lol, the first one is pretty average, the second one could be better, and the third one is not madness enough.

Oh gosh.
Made me wish I was Australian :P

Yeah, but I doubt I'll have anything ready by the end of the contest...

Aw man that's a shame D:

Yes it is, but then I find that I appreciate life so much more when I stop putting myself under these extreme pressures. I might still finish the song, just to see what happens, but it'd be just for Newgrounds, I might show it to my old music teacher just to see how he'd react ("you SHOULD'VE entered it you shitfuck!" or "well, it's a nationwide competition, and it's for the real serious composers, but good on you for trying!").

I've become comfortable going on long arduous journeys without any reward at the end. It doesn't faze me anymore...

Arduous Journeys? You mean like.. Making a song to push your skills to the limit?

Yeah, or spending 7 years learning guitar and piano, with 5 of those years also learning theory, studying for the year 12 exams, only to pull out with about 4/5 months to go because I wasn't up to the grade.

Whoah man, you sure put a lot in this! O_o
What exactly do those exams consist of?

Well, there was 2 parts, a performance and a theory part.
The previous exams I'd done over the last 2 years, I was lucky to get over 50%, but the theory was a bit better.
Theory was split into 3 sections, perception, literature and composition.
I always did pretty well with the composition part, that was just arranging a particular tune for 4 instruments, nothing original. Literature was remembering a ton of shit about composers and eras and the songs we studied over the year, such as the 16 minute programmatic orchestral work "Till Eulenspiegel's Merry Pranks" by Richard Strauss, or a selection of 4 songs from "Dichterliebe", a song cycle based from Heinrich Heine's set of poems about being rejected (to put it bluntly). I was a bit touch and go with Literature, although I can remember a ton of stuff now that I don't need it, such as the German names of the songs from Dichterliebe or the meanings behind some of the things in the songs, like Till Eulenspiegel's death, with the strings representing his body's final twitches as it hangs from its noose. Perception... well, the phrase "Perception is the devil" was tossed around A LOT last year. Picking intervals by ear. Picking chord progressions, melodies, rhythms, and not simple ones like "Mary had a little lamb". It was kind of Mozart-esque, write down a melody after only a few listens. It was tough for me, although I had my moments. There was a lot to learn, and although I didn't finish, I did learn a lot from it. I mean, some things are kind of hardwired into my brain now, whenever I listen to a song, I automatically split everything down to the different instruments, pick out the different parts of the song, the melodic phrases in the vocals. I thought that I had decided against a career in music, but since thinking about it, now I might reconsider...

Perception seems like a bitch, though really usefull at the same time. It's my weakness, but I bet practising that could make you so much better.. I'd like to practise that actually XD

Perception in that sense isn't terribly necessary, especially when you'll always have a keyboard handy to refer to, whereas in the tests we didn't have anything to tune it to. But, yeah. It is still damn useful.

look carefully at this blokes face
<a href="http://www.funny-games.biz/images/pictures/585-cretin-number-one.jpg">http://www.funny-games.biz/images/pic tures/585-cretin-number-one.jpg</a>
does he look like wade?

He looks exactly like Wade.

oh the sarcasm floods in...

No, you're confusing that with New Orleans.