It's been WAY too long...
 

Oh my gosh.
Hey everyone. I'm an old face here, I wonder if any of y'all remember me... I used to post about 2 or 3 years ago (I was about 17) quite frequently, then just sorta fell off the tracks... anyway, I've missed the community here, and felt like reintroducing myself with a little piece that I started about a week ago and finished tonight. Its just a little study in composition, very etude-like, very short, and... I guess neo-classical would be the genre? Y'all tell me. :D I know the first reaction you'll have is that it is VERY short... don't worry, I realize that and I'll probably expand in some way or another.

I will be honest... I don't use Notation Composer that much anymore, but thats simply because I had to get either Finale or Sibelius for college. I'm using Sibelius now, and writing from it. Please don't judge me ;) I hope I can still be accepted for the fact that I'm a Notation veteran, and that I could never have been where I'm compositionally without it. :)

The pdf is only a partially cleaned up score.

Re: It's been WAY too long...
 

Hi Daniel,

Welcome back! I've been wondering where you got off to ;) My daughter (an aspiring and mainly self-teaching pianist) has a couple of your earlier pieces on her "working on it" list!

MakeMusic (Finale) and Sibelius have both been fighting for the collegiate teaching market for some time now, so that's only expected that you'd have to get one of those if you're pursuing advanced studies.

You may not have been around when Mark implemented MusicXML export in Composer. That means that you can compose in Composer, and then export the score for "polishing" in Sibelius if you want to. If you have a 2.x version, but don't have 2.5.2, you can visit the redownload page at www.notation.com/Redownload.php and get the latest installation file so you can export MusicXML if you'd like.
If you have the 1.x version, you can buy an upgrade for cheap at www.notation.com/UpgradeOrder.php
We'll also have a new feature in the next update (due in a few weeks) that allows you to record without a metronome, and then go back in and adjust barlines and beats so that you get playable sheet music and still keep the performance. We're excited about how that will help folks to compose by improvising without having to maintain a lock-step with a metronome. (As well as all those found-files out there that are created without reference to a metronome.)

We still love you of course! ;) And it's good to hear that Composer has been beneficial to you as a composition helper. That is a big part of its mission!

Your etude is short (just fulfilling your prophecy here ;) ) but a good one for getting chordal and independence movement under one's fingers. I can hear Mahala now .... "Mom, can you print that one for me, please?" :)
Thanks for including the pdf as an aid to the exported .mid file. Sibelius and Finale are excellent scoring programs, but don't have as faithful a .mid export for transcribing back to the original.

I'm looking forward to hearing more of your recent work, and how things are going for you!

ttfn,
Sherry