Composers' Workshop If you write and record music in a home studio, you'll know that it can be a lonely activity. Today's computer-based tools give us almost unimaginable freedom to produce whatever sounds we imagine, but quite often there's no feedback from listeners to tell us whether we're cooking with gas or whether we've run off the rails into the swamp. I've faced this dilemma for years. That's why I'm delighted to be able to introduce the VImag.net Composers' Workshop. The Workshop is a Web-based forum hosted by Virtual Instruments magazine. This forum is all about sharing your work (finished, almost finished, or still in progress) with other musicians. It's about supporting and encouraging one another. It's also about offering suggestions for ways in which a piece might be refined or ramped up. Here's the introduction to the Workshop as it appears on the site: The VI Composers' Workshop is a place to get together and exchange ideas with other musicians who are composing and recording with synthesizers, samplers, and/or computers. It's about letting others hear and comment on your music -- either finished tracks or works in progress. If you're not ready to let anyone hear your creations, you're still welcome to participate in the discussion. Feel free to post comments in response to others' tracks while working to polish your own. But you'll surely get more out of the Workshop if you're willing to share your work. You can take advantage of free personal web space (suggestions on how to do that are at the end of this message) or provide links to pages on your own website. We have no stylistic axe to grind. You're welcome here whether you specialize in dance remixes, ambient trance, film/tv scores and cues, hip-hop, avant-garde experiments, new age, mainstream pop/rock, or some other genre that exists only in your own imagination. Also, we hope you'll want to be part of the group whether you're an accomplished pro or are still getting up to speed with the basics. We can all learn from and support one another, and sometimes the most naive-sounding questions are actually the most inspired or thought-provoking. The main focus of the Workshop is the music, not the gear. Asking how somebody got that great effect, or what sample library they used, is just fine -- but if you need help with technical problems, the Web is full of other forums you can visit. The Workshop will probably be of the greatest value to people who compose and record most of the tracks in a given project themselves. If you're tracking a live band or writing charts for session musicians, the issues you'll be facing will be a little different. Likewise, if you're a dj who mainly spins tracks created by others, it's not clear that you'd derive much benefit from the Workshop, though you're certainly welcome to sit in and chat. The point of the Workshop is for musicians to support one another and learn more about the art and craft of recording original music with high-tech gear. Many of us work for hours, days, or weeks on end alone in a studio with only a computer and a pair of speakers for company. We could all use a little feedback and encouragement from others who are not only musically astute but know exactly what we're going through. Also, it's all too easy for a piece of music to run off the rails when you don't have a reality-check. The Workshop is an opportunity to share almost-finished pieces with others and ask pointed questions: "Is the intro too goofy? Is the middle section too busy and muddy? Were there spots where you found your attention wandering? Does it sound too much like Depeche Mode? If you heard this in a movie soundtrack, what sort of visual would you expect to see?" We want to encourage a free-wheeling discussion, but we hope you'll refrain from personal attacks on other artists. Also to be discouraged is slamming an entire genre that you're not familiar with or don't like. The moderators reserve the right to delete or censor posts that are judged inflammatory or demeaning. That said, it can be of great value for any of us to hear comments from folks who have little or no idea what we're trying to accomplish in a given style, or have no clue how we went about it. If you can imagine a fruitful conversation between a hip-hopper and an academic composer about what to listen for in their respective styles, you'll feel right at home in the Workshop. It's all about learning from and supporting one another. Technical details: At the moment, vimag.net doesn't have an upload area, so you'll have to find some other way to post mp3s in order to let the Workshop participants hear them. If you don't already have your own website, you might want to look into the services offered by no-cost providers such as freewebs and bravenet. Please do not send large, unsolicited attachments when emailing other workshoppers! Who's the guy in the striped shirt? The main moderator for the VI Composers' Workshop is Jim Aikin. (That would be me.) I wrote record reviews -- first LPs and later CDs -- at Keyboard magazine for more than 25 years, so I've been exposed to and found something to like in just about every style of music, from Tex-Mex to glitch. My most recent book is "Chords & Harmony: A Practical Guide to Musicianship" (Hal Leonard Books). When not writing articles on music technology for Virtual Instruments, Keyboard, Electronic Musician, and other magazines, I write and record my own music in a PC-based home studio. I play cello, too. |
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