camoshark 2012-08-16 00:28:14

Thanks man, your's is fantasic too, I didn't even realise there were supposed to be bass and keyboards in the mix, as the song already felt complete!

camoshark 2012-08-16 00:31:29

Hey there, glad you're interested in knowing more about me!

I started taking private piano/theory lessons at the age of 7, and from there I've attended to music-oriented schools up to college, where I left after a year and a half to further my learning through private lessons (public college sucks to learn that kind of stuff, even at top-level, which I was).

In any case, I've mostly learned jazz theory, but I've recently been interested in classical music, and I've been mostly self-taught with Adler's Study of Orchestration as well as other theory books.

In any case, that's it for that, you can always ask more questions if you'd like to know something more specific!

Cheers,
Samuel Hebert

camoshark 2012-08-17 01:17:29

Hah, no problem, though the question could be much harder to answer than would appear, for I live in the frozen wasteland that is Canada, and more precisely in my province of Quebec, we have a unique school system that integrates a transitional school called CEGEP ( french for College for General and Professional Teaching) which serves as a buffer between high school and Uni. In any case, I went to Cegep de Saint-Laurent, which is considered by many to be the best in the province for theoretical knowledge, both in Jazz and Classical notion.

As for the Adler, I'd suggest ditching the CD and renting specific tracks (or using the power of teh internetz) to serve as aural support, as it'll cost at least 66% less without, and I didn't find much use in having a live example to perform what I could see, as the passage is always written in the book anyhow.

I wouldn't recommend starting with Rimsky as he uses a much less pedagogical approach to teaching orchestration, and some of the terms and instrumentations are dated, being a late XIXth century article.

I'd also recommend Shoenberg's Theory of Harmony, but once again this was created not for educational purposes, but rather as a collection of researches onto which his pupils could read on.

Lastly, I've been using Sibelius for as long as I've ever written anything, and have only very recently started creating on other platforms such as Reason and FL. I also consider this a vital tool in my creation process, as I prefer having a visual look at the interface onto which every single theoretical aspect of my music can be very clearly shown.

Of course, it depends on people, but I find it absurd to not have 100% control on what is going on inside your song.

Hope that answered at least SOME of your questions, keep 'em coming if you have more! :P

Cheers,
Samuel Hebert

camoshark 2012-08-19 20:23:17

Yeah, even though I prefer the layout of a notation program, you just don't have the same amount of control over every single note played, and you certainly can't go very far audio processing-wise. but once again, it's definitely a much more efficient way to observe your score and get eveything fine-tuned composition-wise.

Thanks again for signaling interest, and good luck in this round!

Cheers,
Samuel Hebert