Quid pro musica
May. 9th, 2007 04:59 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
rhuI need to practice my composition skills and get feedback from performers. Since I know that many of you are singers, I thought I'd offer to write a song for you, if you offer to sing it for me. Here's how it would work:
* You pick a text that you'd like to sing. (More detalis on the text are below)
* You tell me your voice part or range, and how difficult a piece you feel up to tackling. (Easy, medium, hard.) If you don't plan to sing it yourself, or if you want a duet, trio, or quartet, please indicate this information for each of the voices.
* Sometime over the summer, I intend (but do not promise) to send you a PDF of your piece and two MP3 files -- one of the accompaniment, and one with the voice part included (for rehearsal, dontcha know).
* You intend (but do not promise) to learn the piece and record yourself (or your designated singers) singing it, and to send me that recording along with your feedback on what about the piece you (dis)liked or found at the wrong difficulty level to learn and sing.
Some boring details:
* The text should be reasonably short; I'm aiming to write songs that're between 1 and 2 minutes long.
* The text should be in a language with whose sounds I am familiar: English, Hebrew, or German. If it's not in English, please include a translation.
* The text can be original or not, but let's keep copyright issues out of this -- if you don't own it, it must be in the public domain.
* You may submit more than one proposal.
* I reserve the right to prioritize based on whatever criteria seem appropriate: first-come-first-served, writing for a variety of voice parts or difficulty levels, whether I know you, whether your text inspires me, the high temperature on June 1, etc. If you propose a text that I feel I cannot set, I will let you know and you may choose another.
Please feel free to post links to this elsewhere; I'll announce a cutoff in the unlikely event that I become swamped....
* You pick a text that you'd like to sing. (More detalis on the text are below)
* You tell me your voice part or range, and how difficult a piece you feel up to tackling. (Easy, medium, hard.) If you don't plan to sing it yourself, or if you want a duet, trio, or quartet, please indicate this information for each of the voices.
* Sometime over the summer, I intend (but do not promise) to send you a PDF of your piece and two MP3 files -- one of the accompaniment, and one with the voice part included (for rehearsal, dontcha know).
* You intend (but do not promise) to learn the piece and record yourself (or your designated singers) singing it, and to send me that recording along with your feedback on what about the piece you (dis)liked or found at the wrong difficulty level to learn and sing.
Some boring details:
* The text should be reasonably short; I'm aiming to write songs that're between 1 and 2 minutes long.
* The text should be in a language with whose sounds I am familiar: English, Hebrew, or German. If it's not in English, please include a translation.
* The text can be original or not, but let's keep copyright issues out of this -- if you don't own it, it must be in the public domain.
* You may submit more than one proposal.
* I reserve the right to prioritize based on whatever criteria seem appropriate: first-come-first-served, writing for a variety of voice parts or difficulty levels, whether I know you, whether your text inspires me, the high temperature on June 1, etc. If you propose a text that I feel I cannot set, I will let you know and you may choose another.
Please feel free to post links to this elsewhere; I'll announce a cutoff in the unlikely event that I become swamped....
(no subject)
Date: 2007-05-10 03:12 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2007-05-10 01:19 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2007-07-04 12:16 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2007-07-04 01:04 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2007-07-04 03:37 am (UTC)I don't have an amail address for you, so I'll just reply here.
Part of why I dithered so long is that I initially said to myself "oh great! I can have him do the 'pledge' part of Ruth!" (You know, the "wherever you go I will go" part; it has special meaning for me as a convert.) But it didn't quite look right once I pulled it out of its surrounding context.
So I offer two (rather different) candidate texts, with the hope that one will be suitable. Of course, you should tell me if you don't like either:
1. Shir HaShirim 2:10-13 from "kumi lach". (I hope that's not too overdone; I don't actually know a setting for it, though I know they're out there.)
2. Sh'ma koleinu from the t'fillah. I think we'd be on halachically firmer ground if you excluded the chatimah, which is fine with me. (I also don't mind if you mutate divine names in the usual ways.)
In terms of complexity, I'd like something you consider "medium".
As for voice part -- you know how a second soprano is like a soprano but lower? If there were such a thing as a second alto, I'd be that. I am very comfortable from the E below middle C up to about the A above; I can add a third to either end without much trouble; I emit notes beyond that in warmups but can't rely on them.
In a performance setting I am most likely to have piano or guitar available for accompaniment. For recording, of course, I'll use whatever's on the MP3 you send. :-)
(no subject)
Date: 2007-07-06 02:38 am (UTC)Sh'ma koleinu is one of my favorite texts. Let's make sure we don't have textual variation:
I don't see a problem setting the chatimah, as long as it's done as a coda. And since this is a weekday text, a setting that includes instruments isn't a problem for me, either.
And my email address is my first name at my last name concatenated with house.com
(no subject)
Date: 2007-07-10 02:38 am (UTC)Chatimah: fine with me; I think we can safely assume that if you're comfortable writing it I'm comfortable singing it.
Thanks!
(no subject)
Date: 2007-05-10 11:40 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2007-05-10 01:17 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2007-05-10 04:15 pm (UTC)I am interested, though there may be some technical hangups as I haven't really experimented with vocal recording on my computer before. But I've been meaning to figure it out, anyway, so this would be good motivation.
I will think about texts and get back to you. It will probably be in English, but I do sort of miss singing in Hebrew, and I like singing in German a lot, so we'll see. Voice part is soprano/mezzo-soprano (I haven't really been keeping up with voice, so my high range is not what it used to be, though I think my break is still in the same place, so soprano is probably technically correct, but I might be more comfortable with mezzo-soprano parts), and I am happy to try any difficulty level.