emilyhopebunny

[emilyhopebunny]

For today's prompt, I started with Native Instruments' Kinetic Treats, one of the VSTs that came with my keyboard when I bought it. After playing around with that for a bit, I found something that worked as sort of a base rhythm, on which I layered some percussion from BBCSO, with crotales taking center stage.

[emilyhopebunny]

Oh no, tomorrow's entry wants to be a fugue 😅

[emilyhopebunny]

Today's entry brought to you by my somewhat questionable keyboard skills! But don't let the level of competence you hear fool you; I had to tweak the timing and velocity of that arpeggio quite a bit to get it to sound as smooth as it does 😅

[emilyhopebunny]

I was going for a sound that's sort of warm and liquid, so horn and vibraphone are obvious choices. I put some trumpet in there because I'm trying to be less afraid of writing for trumpet. I feel like I ended up channeling Copland, which certainly isn't a bad thing! Love Copland <3

[emilyhopebunny]

Happy Notevember to all who celebrate!

I'm kicking off the month with a tribute to spoopy season, featuring a relatively new tool in my VST instrument arsenal, Spitfire Audio's Eric Whitacre Choir! Love those luscious choral sounds.

[emilyhopebunny]

I'm putting together the video files for Notevember so all I have to do is drop in the music as I write it, then upload to tiktok and youtube :)

[emilyhopebunny]

So it seems that the person who chooses the program of the concert I was hoping codename canticum antiquum would be on has decided on the program, and it seems that program doesn't include codename canticum antiquum. That is as definitive an answer as it seems I'm getting.

[emilyhopebunny]

Here's the version of the prompt list I'll be posting to tiktok and youtube, featuring my response to the wander prompt from last Notevember.

[emilyhopebunny]

Are you a musician? Do you want to be creative this November? Here are some prompts for you to write some notes about!

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[emilyhopebunny]

I'm transferring codename canticum antiquum to Dorico, mainly because from what I've seen of Dorico so far, it does seem to be the better software for preparing parts, which I may need to do soon (though I still haven't heard anything on whether it will be performed this year).

Probably the biggest reason Dorico is better for making parts is because it has been integrating parts into the same file as the score for as long as it's been around. Finale only started doing this in the mid 2000s (I wanna say 2005 or 2006?), when I was in college. I remember before that, you had to export all the parts from the score into their own separate files, and edit each one separately to look presentable, and any change you made to the score after that meant you had to re-export and re-edit all the parts. So I remember being very excited about linked parts when they were introduced. But the whole process is still a bit ungainly, and I can't say I was looking forward to it.

So I'm trying it out in Dorico. I was able to import my Finale score as a music xml file, which worked quite well actually. The percussion parts got messed up, but I know that's mainly because the way I wrote them in Finale was kind of messy, and I kind of wanted a chance to redo them anyway. But I'll get to that later. For right now, I'm separating the woodwinds and brass into separate staves for each player. That's how things are done in Dorico, from what I understand. And then later in the process, you condense it down to the standard score format with 2-3 players on a staff, while maintaining separate parts for each player, and Dorico should automatically generate the labels for who's playing when.

That's what I'm getting used to. There's a lot of things in Dorico that happen automatically or are controlled by broad universal settings, where in Finale you control a lot more of the minutiae of notation yourself. I've gotten very particular about how I like things to look in a score, so ceding control of these details to software algorithms is a bit scary. And when I find something doesn't look how I want it, I have to get used to thinking of what setting I need to tweak instead of how to change this detail directly.

All of this will take some getting used to, but I am coming to like Dorico and its whole notation philosophy, even though it's very different from Finale.

[emilyhopebunny]

me (writing a mezzo-forte in my music): motherf-

Me: It stands for Point of Sale

Also Me: Time to head for work at the piece of shit

[emilyhopebunny]

Here's the new Notevember logo! Last year, I drew it freehand, but this time I decided to design it in Canva.

[emilyhopebunny]

It's time for my favorite season! 🍁🍂

I started following Kate Kortum pretty recently because she has such a lovely clear voice, and when she posted this rendition of 'Tis Autumn, I knew I had to write an accompaniment for it in honor of the best time of the year.

When I started working on the bassline, I wanted to see if I could sneak in any quotations of Autumn Leaves, and to my surprise and delight, the whole melody of Autumn Leaves actually fits perfectly with this melody, so that's literally the whole bassline.

Also, if you watch the original video, in the middle of the second verse there's this low humming background noise that is actually a nice counterpoint to the melody, and has sort of the quality of a chill autumnal wind. I wrote a rough transcription of that noise in the cello part, and then also gave that melody to the violins at the beginning of the verse.

Overall, I'm pleased with how this turned out! It's fun to get a little jazzy sometimes :)

video on tiktok

[emilyhopebunny]

Here's a useful and informative video for Finale orphans such as myself.

[emilyhopebunny]

It's funny what random things can be the impetus to start being productive again, because now I'm starting a new tiktok collab. Working on a jazzy violin section part, and I've found it interesting how much dynamic expression that kind of part really requires. I'm not normally one to fiddle with that too much, but look how squiggly this modulation line got:

[emilyhopebunny]

The BBC is releasing over 16,000 sound effects for free download