[scrypt]

Yoo-hoo -- any composition students or grads on these boards? If so, Mein Kampf, this morsel struggles toward you.*

Yahs ago, when your lonesome was studying the orchestration manifestos of Piston, Kennan and Rimsky-Korsakov (as well as peeping Russo's Composing for Jazz Orchestra in my ample free time), certain other composition students warbled the praises of Samuel Adler. Today, while contemplating a compositional brush-up involving a non-rancid new mug, I nearly filched Adler's Study of Orchestration before discovering a barrage of technically obsessed vitriol from various irked instrumentalists, arrangers and music profs. For an amusing knosh, nibble here:

http://www.amazon.com/Study-Orchestr.../dp/039397572X

If Adler's crits were a gaggle of zombies from Resident Evil 4, his book would have bought the farm (or the barn, perhaps).

Suffice to bleat arrangers should perhaps crack their Kennan and Piston when necessary. After all, my interest in Adler was merely nostalgic, which is emotional bulimia: Nostalgia is the act of puking in order to savor the bile-flecks of last night's knish.


[size=xx-small](An aside: I've often thought there should be an orchestration check built into music apps such as Performer and Finale. The feature would be the equivalent of a spell-check and would only apply if one conformed the track(s) to basic criteria (perhaps identifying them with strict names so that their values -- not only registration, but also ranges, dynamics and instrumentation combinations -- could be flagged with warnings or, in simple cases, corrected).)[/size]
_______________

[size=xx-small]* Incidently, whatever happened to Morsel (or Hitler, for that matter)?[/size]

 

[scrypt]

Here, purchase the non-curd, is a link to a fairly good list of music books on the Virtual Instruments Composers' Forum, where one might lurk occasionally when considering a lavish leap to the Vienna Instruments Library.

 

[scrypt]

I disagree with the last poster strenuously. She, it or he is obviously some sort of rich communist who has never had to buy her or its own headphone equipment due to her/its/his trust fund or the free distribution of wealth. Obviously, this person or somatic squat-beetle is a threat to the free marketplace and/or the poor. She or it is wow-hooting me off and I wish to follow her, it or him into a dimly lit high-echelon flesh market and/or People's Work Center to give him (but not it or her) a clout on the lobes with this wrought-iron bupkiss. However, I won't, because, frankly, that would be wrong.

It is as obvious as the salted hod on Martha Graham's pleasure elbow that this miscreant is a moral pygmy and must be surgically crimped before she or he stunts all of our growths. Personally, I believe in a competitive market and/or Regular Joe work ethic. I paid smart greenbacks for this growth and wish to comb it and/or recite sock monkey poetry well into late middle ageism.

 

[Jahn]

Always better a moral dwarf than a morel giant, I say!

But in all, Adler comes from Eastman, which is a darn fine tootin' Conservatory, so critics aside, I'm certain there are some nuggets in that tome worth gnawing on.

 

[scrypt]

You, sir, might have something (if it were not plotzing fragrantly beneath a heap of discarded rectal thermometers).

Actually, you do have a point (and let's hope your wife is the sort of woman who enjoys anatomical oddities) -- specifically, your sense that Adler must make a fair amount of sense. Hownervure, his making sense most but not all of the time is what seems to irk his critics. And while a decent novelist certainly has h/e/i/r/s place, a decent orchestration textbook author must compete with the absolute best, since most students study only a few and must depend on their accuracy. T'would be sorta like iff'n ye were a mathematician whose formulae were mostly correctish, h-m-m-m-m?

 

[Jahn]

You know, this book looks really familiar...well what do you know, it's the same one all the Con kids used in Oberlin! You could spot 'em all at the cafeteria easily, they were the ones arguing with flourishes of their corked batons.

Anyhoo, I vaguely recall them tearing this book to shreds (and not just by using it as a sled behind the dorms) - on the other hand, they had something negative to say about all of their inadequate texts. Once you get past their snobbery, you do find a fine layer of truth to their complaints, but with a pinch of salt too.

In fact, I think the profs enjoyed having their students find all the mistakes - not just to pat them on their heads for spotting them, but also to help confirm that they, instead, should have been the last imperfect word to be spread to the collegiate masses.

This reminds me of a class where a professor was teaching out of his own Black Letter Law, and offered a dime to each student that found a problem with it. He gave out plenty of dimes (usually typos he blamed on the printers) but he did give dollars to students who found that some caselaw was later overturned. Personally I didn't think that was a flaw per se, since at the time of printing the law was still good, but all in the name of a more perfect text! I know some guys who still write letters to authors catching corrections, hoping they make later editions. Eh, it's a living.

 

[scrypt]

One nether thing (OT): I'm about to retire (4:55 p.m. will mark my last hour of janitorial service here at the Pudge Institute), but did want to say this first: In the case of most forum denizens, a conspicuously high post count is a symptom of shoddy thought. In yours, it seems an emblem of cleverness.