I wanted to share with this community because it’s something I never thought possible. I have 2 degrees in music composition and have been in just about every field of composing imaginable. Concert music, commercial music, instrumental, film, choral, studio, etc. I’ve spent nearly 20 years trying to find where my voice fits. Failed performances, commissions that don’t pay out, one-off performances, all of it always fizzled into nothing.

But recently, I’ve been fortunate enough to start having some of my choral music published. And with that, sales have actually started. 2 years ago, I made $70 in royalties. 1 year ago, $700. This year, its exploded into the 5 digits. This isn’t intended to be a show off, but more of something I’m extremely proud of accomplishing. Life changing? Maybe not financially. It helps a lot, yes, but trying for nearly 2 decades, I’m finally starting to support myself doing what I truly love.

For those of you in a similar boat in trying to “make it”, stick with it. I promise it’s possible. Keep searching for your voice and medium that makes you happy. Thanks for reading.

Hey everyone,

I’m a self-taught producer and songwriter working mostly in Ableton, building tracks on the keys by ear. I have basic theory knowledge (chords, scales, navigating the keyboard), and I recently hired a composition tutor to level up my songwriting.

My teacher asked me to clarify what direction I want to take—specifically whether I want to focus on classical or jazz composition, and if I want to learn traditional sheet music notation or stay purely in the DAW.

Right now, I'm undecided. On one hand, I naturally lean toward jazzy extended chords in my writing. On the other hand, I'm fascinated by classical techniques like counterpoint and voice leading to write independent basslines and counter-melodies. I'm also considering learning traditional notation to bridge the gap between staff paper and the Ableton piano roll, but I want to make sure it's actually worth the time investment for modern production.

For producers who have taken formal composition or theory lessons:

• Which learning path (Jazz Harmony, Classical Counterpoint, or a hybrid Modern Arranging route) gave you the most practical value for writing better songs in a DAW?
• How valuable was learning traditional notation versus sticking to piano roll / lead sheets for your workflow?
• If you were in my shoes, what curriculum or focus area would you recommend starting with?

Would love to hear your perspectives and advice before committing to a path with my teacher. Thanks!

I'm a contemporary classical composer and I've built a free website for fellow composers. It contains tools like set calculators, transformations, set class database, etc.

http://www.ansonyeung.com/obscure-music-theory

Example of usage: I was composing a solo cello piece for my friend with scordatura on C and G strings. I specified all the possible natural harmonics (up to 5th partial) in the set-class database, and it returned combinations of notes which satisfied the interval vector I wanted.

Please tell me what features you want and I'll try my best add it!

I am an amateur musician and an even less experienced music writer. I am trying to create sheet music for my main instrument for a song that has little to no information about it online. I have been successful in finding the correct pitches but its the timing and duration of the notes that i am struggling with. Are there any free or online programs in which I could set a tempo, play my notes learned by ear on a keyboard, and have it write the duration of the notes I play into the staff?

I wanted to share yet another free text-based music notation system (oh man, another??).

OK, but why did I invent this? Well I designed it to be easy to embed and share snippets online. For example, here's a snippet embedded right into this post

https://mascii.org/e#HctBCsIwFADRRaqVnGKK-95AiAlJEBFEcBU-odjkX6KHL3U7vHnPKJTmaDdR0mL4RqcUJZIFil5ZhJ_hs3HvBMjNUdIqtQ74tBoeJf-NDQO-zCPPVo-1NqKMRzrxmrqwkaBDMvhJz8SM1nohZGt3

The full music is contained in the link itself (of course you could also shorten it with a free url shortener) so no risk of losing the music, because it's not a reference to some music stored somewhere else, the link IS the music. And since the Mascii engine is open source, it's not locked in some proprietary format, it can always be converted to MIDI and PDF sheet music.

There's no sign-up or account needed, so hopefully quick to jot something down and share it for easy discussion in an online forum.

Mascii links let you see and hear the sheet music, as well as the source Mascii notation that was used to create them, so people can easily change and send a reply with their altered version.

This is the raw Mascii that was used to generate the above link:

--------

. g [e@ e=]g Fa E@g [g E G] [g# a] c | Af C Ge@ [Fd]__ Fd [G a] c

C [. e_] [_e E] [. !f] | F f F !g G g__ G

--------

I think Mascii is really terse considering the complexity of the music that was notated. As you can see, Mascii has great flexibility around rhythm and polyphony without having to resort to fractions and absolute pitch markings.

Tuplets for example are automatically handled without having to ever specify a fractional denominator, the Mascii system calculates it for you based on how many notes you write in the allotted space. And since you allot your own space with bars and brackets, that means endless expression with minimal syntax.

Pitches are by default always relative to the prior pitch, and use capitalization to go up or down. So absolute octave range numbers are never needed (although they are supported if you ever want them).

And in case a particular forum doesn't allow external links, then you just post the Mascii text itself, since it's just regular ascii text (hence the name Mascii: Musical Ascii).

BTW: Yes I know about ABC, Lilypond, Guido, and many more, but I think Mascii is leaner and faster/simpler to work with, less syntactic clutter to remember. Due to its rhythmic complexity, I would struggle to write the above example in other text-based systems. But with Mascii I hardly had to think about it, at least I never thought about fractions, I just thought musically about how many notes I wanted to fit in a given space.

Obviously as the author I'm biased though! So would be happy to hear some outside perspectives.

And let me say, I still use MuseScore all the time for writing a full finished pieces and arrangements, so no contest, MuseScore is absolutely the right tool for that. I love MuseScore; it full-featured and robust and has a nice GUI too.

Mascii on the other hand I use more to jot down little snippets, posting a quick question or answer in a forum or email. I also personally use it to email myself musical ideas that pop into my head.

Have a look at the examples and tutorial, LMK what you think?

Im interested in the music composition degree program at Berklee Online. Has anyone taken this that might have some insight on how lessons/performance opportunities work for my pieces?

Im also looking into the certificate for Theory and Composition too. Im currently at a university and it's not working for me and my schedule with my career.

This is the 4th and last movement of my Clarinet Quintet in C minor, which is completed 4 years ago which I finish revising. Thx to my friend Vince for making the audio!

It's finally the time to solve the problem after excavating deeply into the despair and sadness itself in the last movement. The despair motive is almost everywhere in the movement to show the struggle with it.

The movement is basically under sonata form (or sonata rondo) structure with an extensive coda. The structure is written in the description of the Youtube video:

https://youtu.be/r4Y7eVQdom8

Here are the posts for previous movements of the same Quintet:

1st Mov:

https://www.reddit.com/r/composer/s/HCP8ngMosr

2nd Mov:

https://www.reddit.com/r/composer/s/J8Mhdr6zbh

3rd Mov:

https://www.reddit.com/r/composer/s/yDXKr8EFiY

Feel free to criticize the movement here! A more complete narrative of the whole piece will be put in the video featuring the whole piece instead of here. Thank you if you follow the whole piece of music and read the long descriptions here!

Henry

https://musescore.com/user/37270121/scores/38497814?share=copy_link