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Thank you!

Thank you very much Wing! I began there because i had a tune in my head that needed to be dealt with! Yes, it is quite remarkable how convincing it sounds, especially at a slower pace. When you try something a bit more complex, it begins to show up the problems but I'm not complaining given how much it didn't cost!

Hi sir, yes, I would be honoured if you used it. Please send me a link when the video is published. धन्यवाद 😃

@@JeffWardMusic sure sir. But sir your music can allow to video for monetize?

​@@worldexplorewild6752 I'm not interested in money - please just use it if you wish.

@@JeffWardMusic thanks

Thank you very much Jean-Pierre

Thank you very much Jean-Pierre. I was very pleased with this but unfortunately TH-cam didn't agree so much! But a choir in northern France will be performing it this year, which is nice..

Thank you very much Jean-Pierre!

Hi Algodemusica, thank you very much for your kind words which I am so glad to hear from a professional musician! Almost everything I do uses only the Musescore 4 Muse Sounds library because I do not enjoy writing music in DAWs using piano roll editing and complicated sound libraries. They take the fun out of it and I prefer using proper notation. The only time I use another library and a DAW (Logic Pro X) is for the choral pieces so I can use the EastWest Hollywood Choir - that sounds much better than Musescore's choir and has a WordBuilder which can sing phonetics but it is very slow to input the text. It actually does quite a good job with Latin! When I do those pieces, I export the WAV mix of the orchestra and the MIDI for the choir from Musescore and then use Logic Pro to mix it with the EastWest choir...it's a very long job. Many thanks again!

Thank you very much! I was quite happy with them too!

His digital lungs are more than capable of such feats!

@@JeffWardMusic The blessed machine triumphs once again.

​@@SmileytheSmile 🤣In all seriousness though, Musescore doesn't respect breath marks on playback (it should put a brief gap in), so you have to end the phrase with a tied demisemiquaver (or whatever) followed by an equivalent rest for the breath. Looks very odd and is a pain so I've long given up putting them in. It doesn't respect slurs either so you can't differentiate tongued from legato, so I don't bother with them mostly either. I'm an oboist, by the way, and I just make my own mind up where to put the breaths and tongues!

Thank you very much Nils!

Thanks very much, I'm really pleased you like it! No, this one is Musescore cello - the real deal comes later, I hope. I'm fine thanks (apart from the back🤣), you too I hope. You'll have to look hard - it's one of those pieces where the percussionists get to spend the evening in the pub and come in for their one crash in the finale (bars 119- 120), then they can sneak out again and go finish their drinks! They'll earn their money in the 1st and 3rd movements though. All the best, Jeff

@@JeffWardMusic 😂, I don’t remember in which Brahms symphony it was, but there is a single crash cymbal beat the in whole symphony, you will get into trouble if you miss your one beat. There are folks that say playing through a piece of music with just a few bars of rest is way easier than playing through a piece with just a few bars of actual playing :)

​@@Imakemusicandstuff333 I couldn't agree with those folks more! When I was an oboist in my youth, counting rests was a nightmare (39, 2, 3, 4,;40, 2, 3, 4' 41, 2, 3...)! Ian related a story to me today of a choir who did a piece with an orchestra with just one cymbal crash at the end, a job one of the choristers took...at her appointed time she crept to the back, lifted the cymbals and came in one beat too late! Oops! Bruckner 7 has just one in the Adagio and the story behind it is controversial, discussed here... www.overgrownpath.com/2006/09/berlin-philharmonics-cymbal-moment-of.html

@@JeffWardMusic that’s why I have possibly over 200 crash cymbal clashes in my second symphony… maybe I should add a few more. About the symphony, it is almost finished except I can’t write an ending that I am happy with. The form is quite unusual for a symphony and it’s very open, harsh and unpredictable. It reflects a lot on how unpredictable and chaotic life (or just anything really) can be, but the ending is where I want to bring the listener to order (that’s also what I am reflecting in the finale, order in moments of chaos and vise versa) and a giant major climax then fade out. I have the vision but I cannot accomplish it so I took a little break from it (the last 2 weeks), hopefully I can finish it soon.

​@@Imakemusicandstuff333 Sounds like you set yourself quite a challenge! I'm sure you'll pull it off and am looking forward to hearing it.. Time away from it is a great way of clearing the artistic block (I took 3 months away from this one before I could work out what to do with the 2nd subject!).

Thank you very much Stephen! Hopefully all things will be possible...🙂

Haha! Thanks! Maybe if we save up enough, we can perform it and you can show off your gift for conducting!

And I can show off my gift for starting lawn mowers....lol.....another triumph Jeff

@@petersmith859 🤣🤣Thanks Peter!

I, peter.smith2413 sent the lawn mower remark....lol....not the other petersmith

​@@petersmith859 🤣 He's a Smyth, not a Smith (not that Mac Mail is capable of discerning the difference!)

It may indeed not be payable Emilio, but since the chances of anyone ever playing it for real are exactly zero, I'm not too worried!

gratias tibi!

Thank you very much!

I didn't even know there was a "send to youtube" button🤣 I could have saved hours of work in Final Cut Pro!

Thank you very much!

Ha! Thank you so much for this and your other lovely comments. It's not often someone takes the time to binge-watch my channel and engage with such generous appreciation, especially when they clearly know their music. Yes, that orchestration would work well. The choice here, however, was quite deliberate (unusually for my random experimental approach to writing!) - I love octave/double-octave piano melodies as they have a lovely bell-like quality to them, and I was trying here to emulate the sound Shostakovich gets in his 2nd Piano Concerto (1st movement). The daft left-hand figure, which was the genesis of the piece, originally set out to try to emulate Rachmaninoff which proved impossible (obviously!) and I ended-up with this, so I plonked the melody on top! Strategy? Nope. Tactics? Nope. 😂

Thank you! I'm a big fan of 7/8 (being a progressive rock aficionado with an unhealthy dedication to Genesis). I love your suggestions here and agree wholeheartedly. I always felt that, although the fugal'ish, fugue-like, not-a fugue but trying to be one, build-up section needed more differentiation as it progressed. But, as always, that takes a massive amount of skill..Maybe one day! Thanks again.

With you all the way there! It was more a failed experiment than anything strategic. I'd wanted to do a fast, fugal variation of the main theme with some wicked modulations, all of which worked perfectly in my head,, but I realised quite quickly it was out of reach of my amateur capability! After battling with it for ages, I conceded defeat with something that sort-of worked and it stayed in🤣

@@JeffWardMusicyou should continue developing/improving this work. It does remind me of Mendelssohn’s Hebrides Oveture. Perhaps you could get some inspiration from it. I think I heard echoes on the Alps.

I'm so glad you are, thanks! Yes, that's a rather good interpretation. I really appreciate it when people come up with a scene in their heads from something I've written as, most of the time, I don't have one in mind. This one, to me, always sounded like dawn breaking and sunrise for the first coupe of minutes, but then it goes awry!

Thank you very much...made my evening! I'm a former oboist and I couldn't agree with you more, all that blowing for no discernible benefit. I still think I've done better balances with my No. 2 and No. 6 poems (I'd love to hear what you think of them if you get the time). O to get a room full of real musicians...now that would be an opportunity!

Thank you! Yes by chance I've already put this one and 2 others on Musescore...musescore.com/user/32381594

@@JeffWardMusic Thank you very much.

Thank you very much!

Thank you very much Jesus! I am always open to constructive criticism. Several more compositions on my channel which I hope you enjoy too! All the best, Jeff

Thank you very much! You're quite right...it started life as an attempt at a baroque style piece but, like so many things I do, it rather drifted off-target during the process!

Thank you very much Kalynn!

Thank you very much Markus! Yes, I think I was going through my suspensions phase at the time and used up quite a lot of stock😄

Thank you very much Alkis! I've got some more baroque pastiches coming, so keep an eye open for them. All the best, Jeff

Thank you very much Robert, much appreciated! I will😀

Thank you very much, I'm so glad you like it!

Glad you like it!

Thank you!

Thank you very much!

Thank you!

Hi John, thank you very much! Yes, it was rather a lot of work but (as you'll probably concur) it is a rather absorbing and enjoyable way to pass the time! This one is pure Musescore 4.0 - all of the sounds are Musescore 4’s free Muse Sounds with nothing added from other sources/VST/etc., so Musescore mix down and export to WAV. I have recently been experimenting with exporting dry (no reverb) WAV sub-mixes (i.e. separate stems, for woodwind, brass, percussion & strings) to Logic Pro where they can individually be EQ’ed, small balance adjustments made and a higher quality reverb added. And the sound improves considerably, as you might expect, so my next video (cello concerto, adagio movement) will using that approach, so do keep an ear open for it! Thanks again, and all the best, Jeff

Thank you very much Chops! Well, funnily enough, I've been asked to write a Mass for a choir in France (who are performing my Ave Verum Corpus this year) but it's a daunting task which I'm still not completely convinced I can handle!

Thank you very much Mark!

Hi! Thanks for commenting so quickly and constructively (as always)! I'm experimenting with this one to see if it makes any noticeable difference to CTR. If this works, I'll change them all next month so I'll have a consistent look across the channel. I'm happy with the look. I get your point about duplicating the MS brand but it looks balanced and it's another opp. to ram the colour and brand home, so I'm ok with it. I didn't do any tweaking to the score since I wrote it a few months back so the percussion experimenting will have to wait until I've finished the Cello Concerto I'm writing for a concert cellist in Europe (no room for big bangs in that!)...watch this space! Have a great week yourself, all the best, Jeff.

@@JeffWardMusic, I have been spending an insane amount of time writing a second symphony, I will probably finish it somewhere in February or March. It has lots of percussive elements I think could help you, I can even send you the score after I publish it. I hope you will take a look at it when it gets published. It’s of course all composed in MuseScore 4. So it’s something you can look forward to. It’s very long, it will probably clock around at a whopping one and a half hours long, (it is supposed to fill out an evening concert program) and it has taken all of my available time since September 2023 of just composing it (and composing some more stuff, but mainly the symphony). Good luck on your cello concerto! I hope you will look as much forward to listening to my symphony as I am looking forward to listening to your cello concerto. I can’t wait to hear the concerto!

Excellent, I'll look forward to hearing (and watching) that! 1.5hrs...wow, step aside Mahler & Bruckner! I'd love to get the score, yes please. My email's in the About section, so drop me a line whenever. Thanks...it'll be a real live cellist playing to the Musescore orchestra...hopefully sound a bit better than MS's solo cello!

Thank you very much R.K!

Thank you very much Devin! Yes, it's straight out of Musescore 4.0 with only Muse Sounds, nothing added, no VSTs, no EQ, stock Muse Reverb. But...it sounds absolutely horrible in Musescore 4.2 with out of tune/time woodwinds and all the other faults they introduced with it :(

Hi. Many thanks again! Very glad you liked it. Long answer coming...You're right but I'm no graphic designer (as if that needed saying) so I don't know the answer either! There's a lot of experimentation going on...I started off with nice bold pics with a bit of sheet music in the corner, and I liked them a lot but they got very poor traction. But that was probably because I wasn't mentioning Musescore anywhere. So I made the fatal mistake of changing 2 things at once - I tagged them all and changed the titles to include "Musescore" and "Original Composition" and, mistake, I went over to sheet music thumbnails (which a lot of Musescore channels use without any further adornment). Views then then took off, but I don't know what did the most - titles, tags or thumbnails! My gut feeling is titles which the algorithm definitely uses to associate the videos with the Musescore community. I would guess that your best video by views is because the thumbnail "I don't study orchestration" is brilliantly conflicting with the title "I wrote a symphony in 2 weeks", which is genius and makes people want to watch it to see what you're going on about! It's actually darned good as well, and your commenters clearly agree. I'm going to give this current colour+sheet music thumbnail scheme a few more weeks to see what happens and then try something else. All the best, Jeff

Thank you very much! Ah…don’t be fooled by the regularity of my posts...I tend to go through really creative phases that can last several months and I can write a piece every few days, which gives me a stockpile to publish from for the times when I run dry of ideas, which last for months. I need to get creative again now but, as you know, it’s not that easy to do on-demand and the harder you push the worse it is! I guess everyone is different but as I’ve only been writing for 3 years, I still don’t really know what triggers it for me. I do know it’s about not trying too hard or I just get frustrated. Keeping a notepad handy is very important - when snippets of melodies or intros waft into my head at random, often inconvenient times, I’ve learned to write them down straight away on my mobile phone so I don’t forget them (which I do almost instantly otherwise). All the best, Jeff

Thank you very much for your response! :)@@JeffWardMusic

Thanks Sir Fondle!

Thank you! Yes, I was an oboist in my youth but, like an idiot, I stopped playing when I left school.

did you really intend everything to be tongued? No slurs at all in the whole piece! @@JeffWardMusic

also, did you intend upper trills first? I'd assume so for classical style. But even then pretty much every oboist does classical trills wrong with bottom note first... the musescore sound is really weird and artificial. The tuning is terrible, articulations are always awkward. I gave up using it ages ago and just use musescore 3 sounds

No! But as Musescore does not perform slurs or breath markings, I don't put them in. If someone asks for a score (which they do from time to time) then I can mark it up. @@Jwellsuhhuh

I used the default trill straight out of the tin and it works for me. I think you can change it with Properties but I've yet to explore that. Yes, it's not a great sounding sample library but if you think this is bad, you should hear Musescore 4.2! Its tuning and timing are a complete disaster! For me, Musescore 3's strings are unusable even though some other instruments are better. Truth is, to do this properly, it should be done in a DAW with a decent sample library, but the pain (and cost) of doing that puts me off.@@Jwellsuhhuh

Mille grazie!

Thank you very much Renato!

Thank you very much Lars!