Category Archives: Compositions

What if Your Student Could Compose a Piece and Have it Performed by a Professional Musician?

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That is exactly the vision behind Music-COMP (formerly the Vermont Midi Project). The organization began in 1995 with the purpose of “encourage[ing] and support[ing] students in composing and arranging music.” This is accomplished via “A community of professional composers, teachers, pre-service educators, and students engage in mentoring and online discussion of student work.”

I had to do a little bit of digging to understand exactly how the program works. (I’m sure once they have fully completed the switch to their new program name and website things will be a little easier to navigate!) Schools or individuals can enroll in the program for a yearly membership fee which provides them access to the online mentoring website where students can submit compositions for critique and reflection. They also have the opportunity to be mentored by a professional composer for an additional fee.

One of the biggest perks of the Music-COMP program is that students can submit compositions for live performances by professional musicians. The motivation for and reward of composing rises to a whole new level when students can hear their work performed by live musicians, not just a computer sound card. This year’s Opus 24 will take place on Wednesday, May 2, in Ludlow, Vermont.

As a huge advocate for expanded approaches to education, I think this would be a fabulous real-world opportunity for any school, studio, or student interested in gaining experience and expertise in the field of composing!

Noteflight Notation Program

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It’s been just about a year now since I first came across the internet-based Noteflight notation program.

I haven’t used the program much in the past year, but several weeks ago it came to mind and has been the perfect solution for a recent situation! You may remember that I’ve begun teaching via Skype, and one of my long-distance students has been working on a composition. It’s been really fun to work on it together over the internet, but I was thinking it would be really cool to get it notated so she has a printed copy to keep.

I could have just done it all in my Finale notation program and then converted it to a pdf and e-mailed it to her, but that seemed pretty cumbersome. Enter: Noteflight. The interface is sleek and intuitive, and I can input notes as we work on it during the lesson. My student has the link to the notated composition and can check it out at any time, listen to it playback, and print it out on her computer. Needless to say, she is thrilled to see her work on the screen and on paper! I think we’re going to be using this a lot more in the days ahead!

Tips for Songwriters

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Professional songwriter Ben Cooper has posted a brief, but insightful article on Songwriting Tips. Usually, my students’ introduction into songwriting comes in the way of The Psalms Project that we put together each spring. I can definitely see the truth of Ben’s statement that, “When creating, we learn by doing, and we improve by repeating the process.” Students who started years ago by contributing a melody that was almost unsingable are now creating lovely pieces that are a joy to sing! Here’s another perspective that I really appreciated:

“Instead of over-analyzing each and every song I write, I’ve learned to figure out what I could do better in the process. Sometimes a song deserves to be re-written, but honestly, sometimes it doesn’t, and that’s OK.”

I can relate to this as an author, too. Eventually you get to a point when you have to finish and leave an article or book “as-is” and learn from it (and the critiques you receive) so that the next writing project is better. Or, as a filmmaking friend of mine put it, “You can’t make your third movie first.” There has to be room to grow. Most of us would probably never let our first songs or compositions see the light of day, but if it weren’t for those, we wouldn’t be where we are today with our writing. The same goes for our students.

I love Ben’s closing sentiments:

“When it comes to this craft, there is no conventional path to becoming a professional (I know plenty of signed writers who never went to college, and plenty of unsigned writers who have a degree). In songwriting, every writer earns his or her diploma through experience.”

Some great thoughts to keep in mind as we work with composing students – helping them learn skills and strive toward excellence, but giving them room to grow as they write songs that are “stepping-stone[s] on the path to the next.”

Noteflight Provides New Approach to Music Notation

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A while back I was alerted to the Noteflight website. Self-described as “Music notation for a connected world,” Noteflight provides an attractive alternative to traditional notation software. It is extremely intuitive and files can be easily shared with the click of a button. I think this provides a lot of possibilities for teachers, composers, bloggers, and students. For example, I can embed a score I’ve created right into this post for you to view, play, and print:

(Plus, I just discovered that if I make changes to the original score, it is automatically reflected in the embedded file!) I’m having fun experimenting with the possibilities and look forward to utilizing this resource more in the future. There’s also quite a collection of shared notation files from other users, but a limited search function makes it pretty difficult to find the useful or relevant files.

If you have any ideas for how you can utilize this site with students, please feel free to share!

MuseScore – A Free Notation Software

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I’ve been hearing rumblings about MuseScore for several weeks, but Joy’s review of it earlier this week prompted me to finally take a closer look. Like Joy, I was very disappointed to find that Finale decided to charge for the NotePad software that they previously offered free of charge. I had quite a few students who used it for their compositions. MuseScore looks like a great alternative (it’s free!). I’ve downloaded the most recent version and look forward to checking it out for myself.

Free Sacred Piano Duet – In Christ Alone

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One of my graduating students asked me if we could play a duet together at her graduation/senior recital. She was especially interested in a duet of In Christ Alone. Well, after searching for such a duet extensively, we finally decided that the only way we were going to come up with something we really liked was to arrange it ourselves. So we set to work!

Composing/arranging is definitely not my strength, but we do have a duet to play now! Praise the Lord! You can listen to our arrangement here. And, if you’re interested, you can also download and print a copy of the sheet music.

For those unfamiliar with this hymn, here are the lyrics. I tried to capture the emotion of each verse as I worked on the arrangement.

In Christ Alone
by Keith Getty and Stuart Townend

In Christ alone my hope is found
He is my light, my strength, my song
This Cornerstone, this solid ground
Firm through the fiercest drought and storm
What heights of love, what depths of peace
When fears are stilled, when strivings cease
My Comforter, my All in All
Here in the love of Christ I stand

In Christ alone, who took on flesh
Fullness of God in helpless babe
This gift of love and righteousness
Scorned by the ones He came to save
‘Till on that cross as Jesus died
The wrath of God was satisfied
For every sin on Him was laid
Here in the death of Christ I live

There in the ground His body lay
Light of the world by darkness slain
Then bursting forth in glorious Day
Up from the grave He rose again
And as He stands in victory
Sin’s curse has lost it’s grip on me
For I am His and He is mine
Bought with the precious blood of Christ

No guilt in life, no fear in death
This is the power of Christ in me
From life’s first cry to final breath
Jesus commands my destiny
No power of hell, no scheme of man
Can ever pluck me from His hand
‘Till He returns or calls me home
Here in the power of Christ I’ll stand

Share Your Music at Sutros.com

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I have been having way too much fun over at sutros.com! A couple of weeks ago I received an e-mail from one of the site developers, letting me know about it and encouraging me to check it out and sign up. I just finished setting up my own page and uploading a couple of my own pieces.

The site is very well designed and very intuitive to use. You can upload your own songs, explore music shared by others, create playlists, and more! You can even copy and embed the code in your own website or blog.

Here is the song “One Heart” that I wrote for my sister’s wedding, taken from the words in Jeremiah 32:38-41:

One Heart by Natalie Wickham

This is a piano arrangement that I wrote for some friends who were getting married. I asked the bride and groom for their favorite hymns and then incorporated both of them into the bridal procession that I played at their wedding:

Tiffany’s Processional by Natalie Wickham

I’m still setting up a playlist and trying to figure out some other things on the site. There aren’t a lot of users contributing music yet, but hopefully we can change that! According to the developer who e-mailed me, they have plans to add many more great features this year. If you do some of your own composing/arranging, you should check it out and set up a page. Just be sure to let me know!

Premiere Performance

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Each year our state association commissions a composer to write a piece of music. This year’s composition, Impressions, is a piece for Quartet – piano, violin, viola and cello – by Miriam Overholt.

When asked by our Commission Composer Chairperson what he could share with us about her, she responded: “A Mom can write music.”


Miriam Overholt introduced the performers and shared a little about the work:
The form is A-B-C-A. It is Intro by cello, joined by piano, straightforward and simple melody
B Section – move into the impressionistic feeling with richer harmonies.
C Section – major key, faster tempo, repetitive rhythmic motif.
Return to the A section, larger, louder and played by the piano, with a cadenza and then the ending.

The performance of this gorgeous piece will be followed by a brief time for questions and answers from the audience. If you ever get a chance to hear this work, I highly recommend it!

SibeliusMusic.com

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So…a while back I had a brilliant idea. I was sure it would be a hit. The idea came to me one day as I was working on a Christmas arrangement for several of my students. Six of my students wanted to play on ensemble for the Christmas recital. They had played a Patriotic ensemble this summer and loved it and wanted to work on something else as a group. I thought it was a great idea and set about to find something for them. Haha. There was nothing to be found. There were several trios – mostly too easy. There is a good selection of 2 piano/8 hand music, but that would be too hard to adapt for six players. But I could find nothing for 2 piano/12 hand at an intermediate level that would work for the Christmas recital. My students told me I just needed to write something for them. Against my better judgment, I agreed. :-) I wrote an arrangement of Hark! The Herald Angels Sing with Away in A Manger. They loved it! They played it beautifully.

Anyway…back to my brilliant idea. I thought it would be wonderful if there was a website dedicated to making available for others all the compositions and arrangements by teachers and others who compose and arrange a little here and there, but probably won’t ever seriously pursue being published (like me :-) ). It would be a marketplace of sorts where teachers could set up a little store for themselves and sell their compositions and arrangements to others who might be looking for that very piece or instrumentation or combination, etc. Of course, the site would be set up in a very clean and organized manner to make it easy for visitors to search the site and find what they are looking for. Thousands of people would contribute and could make a little bit of money selling their scores or they could offer them for free for the pure enjoyment of knowing that others around the world could enjoy the fruit of their labors. And the site operator(s) could take a small cut of all the sales to cover the cost of running the site and make some money on the side. Doesn’t that sound like a brilliant idea to you? Well, apparently it did to the folks over at Sibelius Music too because they beat me to it! I came across their site the other day and couldn’t believe how much it resembled what I had envisioned. So much for that idea…

Boasting the availability of 61,633 scores to date, Sibelius Music is chock-full of compositions and arrangements for nearly every instrumentation and genre you can think of. You can view, play, download and print whatever you want right from their site. And many of the pieces listed are offered free of charge. They even offer the option for composers/arrangers to set up their own store and house it right there on their server.

The site is so vast, it feels very overwhelming and somewhat complicated to find what you’re looking for. First time users should definitely stop by the information page to help alleviate these feelings! For those interested in selling their own scores, head on over to the FAQ page for sellers. The Sibelius Music folks seem to have thought of everything. The only problem is that I’m not a Sibelius user. I’m a Finale user. So, who wants to start a site like this for Finale users? :-)