Music

I've been writing music almost as long as I remember. Unfortunately, I haven't had access to any form of recording equipment for a long time. Last year I found Finale Notepad which was a free program (they're charging for it this year) and was able to start writing music notation straight to a page and hear it played through the synthesizer immediately. Unfortunately that program didn't have any way of exporting the music, except as notation sheets.

A few weeks ago I decided to buy an upgrade to the software in the form of Finale songwriter, which has more of less the same facilities as Finale notepad, with the addition that the music can be exported as music. I've since been using any spare time I have to start translating the music I have on the old program into the new one. As it doesn't seem to be possible to cut and paste or import, this is quite a long-winded business of writing over every note... and the problem is that I get bored with that, or can hear a way to make the music better, and therefore I seem to be writing new things all the time instead of systematically taking over the music from the old program to the new, which is what I intended to do.

Anyway, this is a long-winded way of announcing that I have music on myspace now. Along with quite a lot of pictures of my avatar, who is half my age and much easier on the eye than I am, lol.

Things I write transmute anyway... I wrote a piece I called Eelco one day, which turned into a folk song about being abandoned by an avatar - I did record vocals for it, but I have such basic facilities (audacity and a keyboard and no talent for the technical side of it) that I deleted them this morning having tried for some hours to record them well enough yesterday. I wanted them to be up, not because I have any illusions about my abilities as a performed, but because I wanted them to show what was intended... I am a composer rather than a performer... I'd love a performer to want to sing my song. Well if I am totally honest I would like someone to record me and make it sound good - but that's a bit of a tall order.

Anyway, hope you like the music... it would be great if someone would leave a message on the myspace page, it's a bit disconcerting that there have been a couple of hundred people through in the last couple of days and none of them has left a message- especially since it seems likely that they are mostly known to me through facebook or SL or RL. Ah well, my son pointed out that I hardly ever leave messages on facebook or youtube unless I know the person concerned or I am really touched by whatever it is... and even then sometimes not.