Back in August I came here to share my son's "How to compose a piece of music" video that he made as an entry to the county fair. Some of you wanted to see the music he wrote (and entered in elsewhere in the fair). Sorry I can't produce that. Due to a recent competition, where I had to email the music, I was given the rights to it. (My husband has this network set up and I am just not good with getting to stuff...) So, I thought I'd share my son's contest entry instead. He took 1st place. Whether there was any competition or not, I don't know. In my very unprofessional opinion, this piece is much better than the fair piece. As a recap, my son is 9 years old. He's been studying piano since he was 7 and studying composition (his true musical interest) for 4 months. I hope this link works: Flight My son is working on playing it. He has 22 more days prior to the performance at the umta luncheon. I do have a youtube video of him playing it just for curious friends and family who can't read music. He needs some work and I'm sure he'll play it beautifully when the time comes.

Hi again, Christine,

I am glad you were able to post a sample of your young son's work. I really enjoyed his presentation of how composition works from a prior thread, and now this.

Would you (or he) be willing to tell us how he develops these pieces? Is he actually playing this at a(n) (electronic?) piano, and having a software program generate the score, or are there some other steps?

Sincerely interested,
Ed

He has an old ebook with musescore and finale notepad installed. He sits and writes music into one of those programs. (depends what he's doing which program he chooses to use) He sometimes runs over to the piano to plunk out some music, but he mostly just writes it in the program and has it play back to him to hear what it sounds like. His playing abilities are not good enough yet to sight read the music he writes.

Thanks, Christine. I am really not familiar with how much "composing intelligence" exists within those software programs you mention, but this does help put things into perspective for me.

Ed

I have Finale Notepad. It does not help a person write music. Think of something like WordPerfect or MS Word for writing words. It even restricts some of the things that you might want to do unless you find a work-around. You do, however, get to hear what you wrote. The best way to see what this young man is working with is to download a free version and try to write some music into it, to help you assess what you're seeing, and what is coming from what.

Christine, do you think he is applying any of the theory ideas on motifs and such that were in his presentation? In education there is a thing called "integration", which means that something that is learned also ends up getting used practically (integrated into your practical doings).

Yes, I know the difficulties. I use finale and muse score to "easily" transpose music. notepad does not do partial measures. Musescore does, but it is not very easy to work with. I attempted to put in a violin concerto to transpose down a 5th and change to the alto clef (for viola), but I could not input the notes for the cadenza. I can't do grace notes or cue notes. Recently I entered some very simple music into notebook and then attempted to transpose for my husband to play on clarinet. The music ended up with flat on all notes except the ones with double sharps! My husband fixed it on print music, but we are only allowed one copy on one computer. It's on my husband's and he works at home. I was at a music store today and saw prices for the academic versions of sibelius and finale 2010 (I see from a google search that there is a finale 2011 out now.) I was thinking we might be able to spring for one. I'm sure a 9 year old could use the academic version of the program. I just briefly googled and I don't know which program to choose! The guy at the music store said he liked sibelius best and the price was lower. I like lower prices, but my family only knows the finale product, but if sibelius is easier, that might be nice. There are times my husband is stumped with print music, then again, the full version is supposed to be able to do more. Anyway, music software is something I am starting to look into.



I don't know so much about composition. My son told me that his motive was the sixteenth notes that the right hand plays, but that was before I made him revise the music several times. He had that nice little melody in the left hand, then made the left hand play whole notes in a scale. I told him that was boring. Then he repeated the melody a few times with variation, then came the B section, which sounded completely different. I suggested he do a recap of the A section so we could remember that little melody, so he did. I know the end has some cadence. He has just begun to study counterpoint and polyphonics. (3 weeks ago) I have not looked at his latest composition to see if he incorporated that into his music.