I have to post this. I need to post this – because if I don’t, I’m going to go crazy. So here it is. No backing out now. I’m committed.
I’ve been working on this piece since the start of February. I finished it in about three or four days, and then completely obsessed over the instruments, the mix, the overall sound, and numerous other things since then. That’s the way it goes with computer music projects.
We tend to get a chip on our shoulder and obsess about proving to ourselves that our projects are as real as genuine instruments and musicians. But in the back of our minds, we know that argument is bunk. As beauty is in the eye of the beholder, music or rather, musicality is in the ear of the beholder. And the ear is blind – it doesn’t need to see to know if something is good. It just is.
This audio project was produced from a musical score made available on the MuseScore website. MuseScore is an open-source application used for typesetting musical scores. It’s a popular program for professionals and enthusiasts alike, as commercial music typesetting and publishing software can be spendy. I’m not a music publisher nor musical composer (learning some classical composition skills is on my bucket list) but I am a consumer of those scores.
The score for Beethoven’s ninth symphony was imported into Cubase. Cubase is a DAW, or Digital Audio Workstation used for music production. It can handle audio recording and playback, it can play back and record MIDI musical data, and can even be used for composition.
For the moment, though, I’m simply happy that I can stop obsessing over this project. It’s out there now. In a future post, I’ll go over the hairy production details, the agonizing choices, handstands, backflips, and other contortions I went through to make this production sound the way my mind imagined it to sound. I’m glad I didn’t listen to an actual audio recording of an orchestra performing Beethoven’s ninth symphony before starting this project, or I would have obsessed trying to match that. But this one’s from the heart, or rather, ear.
Enjoy. It will sound best on large speakers, studio monitors, or headphones. Typical PC desktop speakers won’t do it justice. The version presented here is in mp3 format and can be downloaded. You can get a version of it from me in .wav format if you would like one – just ask. Just know that this is an entire hour of audio.