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