New Music Release Thread

[mlooney 3,548]

Some times hangnails on finger suck more than "real" injuries or issues.  Sorta like paper cuts hurt worse than a knife cut most of the time.  Hope it goes away soon.

[ProfessorTomoe 1,324]

I'M ONLINE!!!

My first six pieces are live and available for purchase! Spread the word!

https://www.jwpepper.com/sheet-music/search.jsp?sort=newDate&obsoleteFlag=false&brandNames=Lee Jackson

or

https://www.jwpepper.com/myscore/leejackson

for the version with just thumbnails.

[ProfessorTomoe 1,324]

More info available via my webpage:

https://dleejackson.lbjackson.com/2024/08/myscore-has-gone-live/

[ProfessorTomoe 1,324]

I have just finished uploading everything that I have that was ready to be uploaded to MyScore. Give it a couple of days and everything will be posted.

One piece in particular - "Theme and Tangents" - will not be posted. Why not? Funny story, that. Turns out that the publishing company that I'd submitted all my chamber music to - remember them, the one that turned down everything because it was "too advanced?" - had not in fact turned down all of my music like I thought they did. They were, and are, still considering "Theme and Tangents" for their 2025 Kendor catalog. (Kendor being the imprint under which it would be published.) So, I had to do a quickstep yesterday and get MyScore to do a quick takedown of "Theme and Tangents" from my profile page (they did, and quickly, too). If Kendor turns me down, I'll just put it right back up on MyScore. Otherwise, I'll roll with the punches and see what happens. Huzzah.

[ProfessorTomoe 1,324]

All of the movements of Anton Bruckner's Symphony No. 6 in A Major, as arranged by me for concert band / wind ensemble, are now live and available for immediate purchase on MyScore. This includes the extra copy of Movement 1 that I transposed into G Major to make it easier for bands to play. All are online, with full audio renderings for you to play. Here are the links to the individual movements:

 - Movement 1: https://www.jwpepper.com/11590214.item
 - Movement 2: https://www.jwpepper.com/11590245.item
 - Movement 3: https://www.jwpepper.com/11590324.item
 - Movement 4: https://www.jwpepper.com/11590362.item

G Major 1st Movement: https://www.jwpepper.com/11590218.item

Please at least click on each of these and look at what I've put up. Yes, I know, intentional clickbait. It's for a good cause, though. Trust me. Thank you.

[ProfessorTomoe 1,324]

The 1st Movement of Bruckner's Symphony No. 2 in C Minor is now up on MyScore:

https://www.jwpepper.com/11590425.item

That's all for now. All 11 links are live. Please visit and listen. Thank you!

[ProfessorTomoe 1,324]

I had a little hiccup with the Symphony No. 2 first movement posting (immediate above link) yesterday. I check through my postings daily, just to make sure nothing has gone fubar, and something did with this particular posting - there was nothing showing up for a Score Preview. I immediately emailed them, attaching a copy of the score to my email, just in case something had happened to the copy that I'd uploaded with my submission. Within about 3 hours (or less, can't remember the exact time), the problem was fixed. Good on them, as far as I'm concerned, for fixing it so fast.

[ProfessorTomoe 1,324]

Took a big chance today. I subscribe to a newsletter from a publisher in The Netherlands who specializes in wind band transcriptions. This is the one that someone had referred the first movement of my Bruckner 6th arrangement to long months ago. Well, I got another newsletter a couple of days ago from them with news of a movement from a different Bruckner symphony being added to their catalog. That prompted me to act.

I sent them an email with info on all of my Bruckner arrangements up on MyScore, complete with links. I'm hoping they'll take a hard look at each one of them and consider them for publication. I don't know if they will or not, but nothing ventured, nothing gained.

[ProfessorTomoe 1,324]

While I was in the mood for taking chances, I took another big one. I did a search for music contest lists on Google and came up with some good leads. Specifically, I came up with the entry form for the Florida prescribed music list for high school band students. So, I submitted my chamber music works and the arrangement of Bach's Prelude No. 7 in Eb Major to the selection portal. I didn't submit the Bruckner, because a) it's too hard, b ) it's too long, and c) there's not enough percussion used in any of the movements.

Let's hope they take a look at what I did submit.

[mlooney 3,548]

Do high school bands do any thing other than marching?  Or is this form for band and orchestra as well?

[ProfessorTomoe 1,324]

In Texas, high school bands do the whole shebang. Concert, sight-reading, solo, ensemble, marching, you name it.

[mlooney 3,548]

Of course it being Texas, much like Oklahoma, the most important is playing at a football game.  Not that I'm bitter 

[ProfessorTomoe 1,324]

Don't misunderstand. Do a deep dive into the term "Drum and Bugle Corps," then cross-reference how it applies to Texas marching bands. The football game is secondary when it comes to that activity in Texas. I know, I was in one of the first drum corps-style marching bands in the state (J. Frank Dobie HS, 1977-1981, Pasadena ISD).

[Darth Fluffy 332]

10 hours ago, ProfessorTomoe said:

Don't misunderstand. Do a deep dive into the term "Drum and Bugle Corps," then cross-reference how it applies to Texas marching bands. The football game is secondary when it comes to that activity in Texas. I know, I was in one of the first drum corps-style marching bands in the state (J. Frank Dobie HS, 1977-1981, Pasadena ISD).

Not quite as weird as The Superbowl:

Ranking the features:

  The commercials

  The halftime show

  The actual game

In any other context, commercials are mostly to be avoided, bathroom break time. You don't want to miss the Superbowl commercials.

[Don Edwards 558]

I don't miss them - or the games, or the half time show - at all.

[Darth Fluffy 332]

On 9/5/2024 at 5:14 PM, Don Edwards said:

I don't miss them - or the games, or the half time show - at all.

You make a good point, it's been years since I actually paid attention. Hmm, the Apple Mac commercial came out in the 1980s? Yeah, a few years.

[mlooney 3,548]

I haven't watched a superb owl this century.  Actually I'm not really sure if I've ever watched one.

[Darth Fluffy 332]

8 hours ago, mlooney said:

I haven't watched a superb owl this century.  Actually I'm not really sure if I've ever watched one.

I've seen a couple. They generally have a currently popular singer, and the ads tend to be entertaining. You can catch those segments on Youtube without having to watch the game; indeed you can probably find the highlights of the game as well and view the condensed version in a few minutes.

[mlooney 3,548]

3 hours ago, Darth Fluffy said:

I've seen a couple. They generally have a currently popular singer, and the ads tend to be entertaining. You can catch those segments on Youtube without having to watch the game; indeed you can probably find the highlights of the game as well and view the condensed version in a few minutes.

I make it a game to not know who the teams playing the game are for as long as possible.  My current record is "never", which for several years meant I didn't know who played even after the game was over.  

[ProfessorTomoe 1,324]

One huge thing that bugs me about my laptop RMA is that the latest versions of my Bruckner arrangements are locked away inside the thing, with no way for me to access them. They weren't on the latest backup generation. I've spent a couple of hours tonight listening to a previous Bruckner arrangement a couple of times out of sheer guilt and shame for not having the others backed up. Can't play Terraforming Mars instead, since my son is working at the high school today doing viola sectionals for their orchestra. Sigh.

[Don Edwards 558]

Your backups aren't automatic? You need to fix that!

And your music should be backed up on a very short cycle, probably no longer than hourly. My writing (and a few things closely related to it) is backed up to an external device every ten minutes, if anything's changed and saved since the previous backup.

(That sounds like it would take a lot of space. But with NTFS, and pretty much every filesystem that Linux supports other than the FAT family, it's perfectly acceptable to have a single file with multiple directory entries pointing at it. And modern backup software takes advantage of that. So making yet another backup of something that hasn't changed takes almost no space - or time. I currently have 14 time-stamped backups of my writing, and each one takes a hair under 31MB. 14 * 31 = ... in this context, 33.)

[ProfessorTomoe 1,324]

23 minutes ago, Don Edwards said:

And your music should be backed up on a very short cycle, probably no longer than hourly.

I can't have backup software running in the background. It'll cause my music to glitch, ruining the data that it's trying to back up. Even with as high-powered a system as the one I've got. No, I run full image backups.

[ProfessorTomoe 1,324]

Out of all this mess, some semi-good news. Way back in May/June, I submitted a pile of music to a publisher, all chamber works. All but one were rejected. I found out about the one that was kept for consideration in a roundabout way, back in the middle of August, when I got an email from the publisher telling me it was still being considered and that I should hear something by the end of the month. Well, I didn't hear anything in August, nor did I hear anything in September, so today I took a risk and wrote to see if it was still under consideration. Believe it or not, they wrote back:

Quote

Lee,
Yes, it is. The way our production schedule is set up, we do all the large ensemble music (concert band, orchestra, jazz ensemble) before the smaller ensemble pieces have been selected. I do appreciate your patience, and I will let you know as soon as everything is set.
Blair

In other words, no news is good news. So far.

[Don Edwards 558]

2 hours ago, ProfessorTomoe said:

I can't have backup software running in the background. It'll cause my music to glitch, ruining the data that it's trying to back up. Even with as high-powered a system as the one I've got. No, I run full image backups.

If my stuff were that time sensitive (no argument, music is obviously more-so than stories) I'd add a couple lines to an existing script, which would make a backup attempt immediately fail if the music software is running - before the backup even looks at any of the files. And then have that backup attempt to happen every few minutes.

Or, create a new script that would (optionally: wait until a backup isn't in process,) run the music software, and then as soon as that exits start a backup of the relevant data. Some small dataset - it takes less time to decide to make a new copy of one file out of a folder, than one file out of your entire computer.

And if there's a time of day where you are reliably NOT actively using that software, even if it's still running - 4AM works for most people but not everyone - then schedule more time-consuming backups for then.

Basically, the amount that you have to do over and over again, to make backups happen, should be minimized. Preferably to "everything relevant is turned on and properly connected."

(I'm also wondering why full-image backups. I'd never want to restore a full image of my system - the OS, yes, my own data, no - and it certainly doesn't save any time or space.)