Hi Fred,

That's right. I'd love to see a lot more activity in this Share Your Music section of the forum. But it's definitely off to a start.

Another good forum/newsgroup in which one can share compositions with others is the rec.music.compose newsgroup, which you can access using Google Groups. There are other music gendre-specific newsgroups also, which I'm not so familiar with. These newsgroups are worth exploring. You might want to submit your compositions there for discussion with other composers, as well as in our forum here.

An advantage of our forum now is that it is intimate. We sort of know each other, and we welcome newcomers. The rec.music.compose newsgroup has some regular participants who know each other well. New folk jumping into the rec.music.compose are probably less likely to continue participating there than in our forum because they are less likely to get any responses the first time they join in, or if they do, it's more likely they'll get only negative feedback than they would in our forum.

I think the strength of this Share Your Music section of the forum will be that it is supportive of the musical creative efforts of the participants. A major goal here is to encourage each other to create music and to find fulfillment in doing that. We can encourage each other by offering positive feedback where we can honestly offer it. And, when the composer indicates that he or she is looking for constructive critical feedback, we can provide him or her another perspective that might be useful.

Cheers
-- Mark