# Simple girl with [almost] no issues from The Netherlands



## MariGea (Jun 29, 2020)

The title says it all. I am random girl who accidentally found this forum :x

Playing piano and violin, writing scores. A lot of scores. Huge waste of paper.
Occasionally helping others to write and orchestrate, mostly for violin and/or string assembly.
It is possible that someone here already know me, in this case - hello!

So, why am I here? Well, because I want to read and learn from the best in my continued pursue of "creating random silly beautiful things". Also because I very often do not sleep at night, it`s the best time for me to write whatever, with no disturbance around me and in that night time I do need something else nice to read other than a news feed from FB. Something slightly more useful.

I am open for pretty much anything coming my way as long as it fits in 5-line staves.


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## Patryk Scelina (Jun 30, 2020)

Hi MariGea. Nice to meet you


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## Tice (Jun 30, 2020)

Always nice to see my fellow Dutch people in music places! Welcome aboard!


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## Jaap (Jun 30, 2020)

Welkom!

Nice introduction and this is for sure a great place to read and learn (hanging around here already 13 years and tons of great content and knowledge here).


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## EthanAvry (Jun 30, 2020)

Hey and welcome!

These forums are a wonderful learning tool and I've definitely learned a lot in my time lurking prior to actually joining haha. I'm sure you'll find it just as helpful! Sorry to hear about the stage fright you've suffered there - I can totally relate. The stakes were a lot lower but I used to play in a jazz band myself as a pianist, and our performance for a competition started right away with an improvised solo on my end which scared me to death. The fear really does get to you!

Great pieces you've linked there by the way. Great to have you here!


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## Noeticus (Jun 30, 2020)

Hello and Welcome to the machine!

I like your music!

The best mentor might just be listening to the music you love and then turning up "pattern recognition" in your brain.


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## LamaRose (Jun 30, 2020)

Welcome, Mari! With a small investment in time and money, you could have a mini laptop-studio to record your own pieces... possibly use a sampled piano library, then record the violin(s) live. 

Love the idea of keeping arrangements small and manageable... strings and piano... what else does one really need! Looking forward to hearing more of your work!


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## robcs (Jun 30, 2020)

Welcome! Did you see the announcements about the next version of Musescore? They’ll be supporting VSTs directly


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## doctoremmet (Jun 30, 2020)

Hoi! Wat een gave introductie! Van harte welkom hier, kijk uit naar nieuwe composities. Cheers!


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## Snarf (Jul 1, 2020)

Hey, welkom!

I have a small question, who made that cover art? I quite like the distinctive style


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## MariGea (Jul 1, 2020)

Noeticus said:


> Hello and Welcome to the machine!
> 
> I like your music!
> 
> The best mentor might just be listening to the music you love and then turning up "pattern recognition" in your brain.



Hello! Thank you 

Ahh, the "pattern recognition", it is my very weak spot you talking about. I get super crazy if I see stuff.

But here comes the problem! I get stuck with stuff like this:


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## MariGea (Jul 1, 2020)

robcs said:


> Welcome! Did you see the announcements about the next version of Musescore? They’ll be supporting VSTs directly



Hey! oO, that is interesting. I have made a decision to move to Dorico, but it`s possible I will still use musescore, just because it is the most easy one for me, specially if it will supports other VSTs. For sketches it`s very useful, and something I do a lot - I take the midi`s from musescore to Cubase.


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## ism (Jul 1, 2020)

I can *feel* the expressiveness in your work just trying to get out to be felt beyond the confines of musescore.

There are time when sample are never going to achieve this - the expressiveness of a really nuanced violin solo is only very, very occasionally captureable with samples. But there are elements of your work in which samples really will be able to capture some of the underlying expressiveness.




MariGea said:


> I am not sure how others do this, I am sorry if this looks very stupid to you guys, and I don`t even know how you call it - expressions? But all those tempo changes everywhere is to simulate life playing.



Not at all stupid, but rather what vi-c, at it's best, is for - people trying to figure out how to make actual music with samples, and all the technical and creative and emotional issues that entails.


Given your workflow, you might also like to check out Staffpad:






StaffPad - Now Available for IPad with Major Sample Libraries Available


I have had the PC version for a while and now the new 2020 update is out and for those of you aspiring to do notation by hand (with realtime recognition with Apple Pencil or tablet on PC) it could be a game changer. StaffPad for IPad has been released and for me it is grounbreaking...




vi-control.net





But also - once you get a nice string library, and learn to perform it even very simply with a keyboard and mod wheel, you'll find that there's great expressiveness to be found in samples. There's a learning curve to be sure, but it isn't a fraction of a precent as difficult as learning, for instance, to play the violin.


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## MariGea (Jul 1, 2020)

Snarf said:


> Hey, welkom!
> 
> I have a small question, who made that cover art? I quite like the distinctive style



Ha! Of course I could make a very mysterious face and look very "artistic" and say - It is me who made the art...

But! I am funny nerd girl and instead I will tell you what is up 
There are so many of these scripts online that will make any picture look like art (google, there are even apps that make your face look like Van Gogh made a painting of you :x)
And if you dislike colours, you can trow it in online photo editor - no Photoshop skills needed.
Takes very little time and result is always fun


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## ism (Jul 1, 2020)

MariGea said:


> Hello! Thank you
> 
> Ahh, the "pattern recognition", it is my very weak spot you talking about. I get super crazy if I see stuff.
> 
> ...




These are very cool.

The connection between geometry and music is a very deep one, and not at all simple, and perhaps even fundamental human capacity to experience music as "embodied cognition".



For instance Tymoczko's Geometry of music describes chord as movements in geometric spaces (albeit topological wonky ones). His book is kind of fun, if you're into that sort of thing:




Maria Mannone's - who is also a composer and mathematician, has recently also been developing accounts of how patterns in nature have something to do with music.



This book is a lot more technical though, you probably want some graduate level mathematics to understand it. But she's also interesting in creating music from natural patterns of the world. Like this one which reflect the patterns in a particular type of flower:


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## MariGea (Jul 1, 2020)

ism said:


> These are very cool.
> 
> The connection between geometry and music is a very deep one, and not at all simple, and perhaps even fundamental human capacity to experience music as "embodied cognition".
> 
> ...




Ohhh, these are amazing, thanks! The sound from Maria Mannone - is totally cool. It is of course all about algorithms and creating it. I do have a little math background. But I wonder the methodology: for example picking sounds for the arrangement. One thing is tonal and rhythmical pattern - that is math, another is emotional input - that is art and self expression. And the final thing is an execution - performance or production. Will check it out!

Contemporary art often neglects the importance of last two things (emotional input and execution) and rides alone on reflecting methodology, falling more and more in to pure concepts of art. Contemporary musicians often fall into tech, becoming amazing virtuoso, but forgetting about emotional input. And we have the whole generation of amazing producers with incredible execution, but their music often have no concept or idea, but rather a theme or a genre, and, because of sampling - have "strange artificial like" emotions. That is specially present a lot in modern pop music.

My latest obsession is: Nodal patterns and Chladni`s Figures. You know how some producers have fun with taking pictures and make music out of it: draw pictures with pianorolls or even input pictures in spectrograph. I didn't dive mentally into that yet, but I think (thinking reverse) one can execute sounds from any picture with this idea as well. And unlike artificially inserted pictures, this one actually will hold a scientific value to that, reflecting one of the natural links between graphics and sounds. Lay out, say Mona Lisa, with lines on the plate and reverse the effect and see how it sounds like. Or the opposite: play some random sounds, see what you can draw with it (of course will need some software to adj the positions and directions of the lines, so it will make some sense of sort). I even wonder if, lets say we spread some dust stuff inside of transparant cube filled with some gel that will allow dust to take positions and expose the cube to sound with different tones (expose it to music basically) and see what forms (sculptures) it will make then and the reverse - make a scan of the sculptures with simple 3D scanner and go make some crazy music out of that. You can have a little look in possible math here: https://www.researchgate.net/profil...Revisited-A-Peek-Into-The-Third-Dimension.pdf

One practical use for all of this thoughts might be: light show set up during the performance, as an example. Not at all hard to execute. Need to think about time frames somehow - we do not want public to go away with the headache of course :D Or how about "Concerto for orchestra and solo 3D Printer"? Of course after the concert mini copies of produced art available for purchase :D (one must think of income as well!).

All of that is anyways stupid silly stuff, and of course *someone else already done that before* (I didn't google this specific one yet on purpose, I want to see what I can make of it myself). Actually I think that with holding up "the mysterious" face any performance like that will be considered an art. But the real deal (for me) comes when few or all the boxes checked mentioned above - the concept and idea, the emotional input, the execution, and even more - there is something else, that I cannot describe or catch - a personal touch (a real one, and not the acted "mysterious face" one - this one is very hard, for that you need to know yourself first and then somehow be able to express it). For myself I didn't check any of these boxes yet.


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## Noeticus (Jul 2, 2020)

Hello again Mari,

I think that perhaps I shall have to diagnose you as suffering from being a genius. 

Also, I would love to see what you would do with your "Choices" music is you were to make it all ABBA and zero Tchaikovsky.


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## MariGea (Jul 3, 2020)

Hey, Noeticus!



Noeticus said:


> suffering from being a genius.



Ahahahahahahaha. Not even close! It`s a pattern making, very similar to knitting :D I love to make my own knitting patterns :D So as many housewives and grandmas do. Sometimes people go very far with the pattern obsession. This is one of my favourite inspiring stories about that: https://www.quora.com/Can-an-averag...ibution-to-an-academic-field-like-mathematics


I love ABBA!




Noeticus said:


> Also, I would love to see what you would do with your "Choices" music is you were to make it all ABBA and zero Tchaikovsky.


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## Noeticus (Jul 4, 2020)

What is your favorite ABBA song?

Mine has always been "Knowing Me, Knowing You".

Regards,
Martin
from the USA


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## BVMusic (Jul 4, 2020)

Well done @MariGea The clarity between each instrument is job well done, and through my speakers I can hear a warm low end as well. - Brian


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## bryla (Jul 4, 2020)

Nice to meet you here, Mari, and thanks for sharing your music!


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## MariGea (Jul 5, 2020)

Noeticus said:


> What is your favorite ABBA song?
> 
> Mine has always been "Knowing Me, Knowing You".
> 
> ...



Martin, you are asking an impossible question! How can one name just one?

But. I`ll try. This one, just because it fits the kind of girl I am (and I love the video!):


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## BGvanRens (Jul 5, 2020)

Welkom! Your work sounds great!


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