COMPOSER SABRINA PENA YOUNG | MUSIC TECHNOLOGY | FILM | CLASSICAL | OPERA

Vampira Queen of the Darkness Interested in some cheesy and fun Halloween pop songs about vampires, lonely ghosts, and all out Halloween spookiness? This year I had a great time creating two fun pop songs for my favorite time of the year. Of course, I'm not much of a pop diva, experimental electronica and awesome classical are my usual musical cups o' tea, but I enjoyed dabbling in some fun cheesy pop for this Halloween! The first free Halloween pop song is Halloween RoboBop at Easy Ear Training. Not only is this a fun and silly holiday song, it also teaches some basic music ear training with a fun lesson in I-IV-V chord progressions. The first part opens up with a super creepy symphonic scary organ with strings, then bounces right into electronica 8 bit silliness with vocal synthesis from Vocal Writer, ending with a fun 50s doowop about a lonely ghost. Download Halloween RoboBop  at Easy Ear Training! Halloween RoboBop lyrics:  Party time, stand up! Halloween H

Sheet Music (Photo credit: jayneandd ) Awhile ago I decided that I would upload the bulk of my music scores and sheet music to sites like Scribd, the Petrucci Music Library , and Archive.org for free sheet music downloads. Some musicians told me that it was ridiculous to give away my music. The truth is that I don't depend on music publishing sales of my scores, and I would rather inspire a young piano student, percussion ensemble, opera singer, grandma, bored music student, or music teacher to play and study my music than hold on tight to my copyrights and let my music scores collect virtual dust on my hard drive.  The Petrucci Library, Scribd, and Archive.org all have dozens of free music scores available for choir, vocal solos, piano, percussion, orchestra, opera, multimedia works, and more. You can see a short list of available free sheet music by checking out the Scores page. You might want to check out scores to my modern opera Libertaria: The Virtual Opera , an ex

Jack-o-lantern (Photo credit: Wikipedia ) Halloween is always my busiest time of the year. For some reason, the stars have it aligned around Halloween. Halloween was supposed to be my birthday, but I missed it by a week. Ironically, my daughter was born on Halloween (10 days after her original due date!). My first real masterpiece, the Creation Oratorio, was brainstormed in an Illinois bar with choral director Michael Engelhardt after the successful premier of my ghostly work virelaan by the Millikin University Percussion Ensemble. This year I created a fun sci-fi homage for the Millikin University Percussion Concert. The premier will be Oct. 25 as part of the extremely popular annual Percussion Concert at the haunted Albert Taylor Theater. If you are in the Illinois area, you HAVE to check out this amazing and unforgettable Halloween event. Costumes and ghosts are encouraged! Check out the event here:  http://www.millikin.edu/kirkland/events/pages/EventDetails.asp

Tolkien's Cover Designs for the First Edition of The Lord of the Rings (Photo credit: Wikipedia ) I've been working on Libertaria: The Virtual Opera for almost two years. Right now the cast is finishing up recordings of the modern opera, and the animation team is getting ready to create the visuals for Libertaria using a combination of computer animation techniques. I have also started writing the novel form of Libertaria . Why a novel? Converting the modern opera into a riveting sci-fi novel floated around in my head considerably when I was writing down the notes for Libertaria in my handy journal. The idea behind the opera, of an orphan girl searching for her lost mother in a world where genetics has gone mad, was originally the notes for a novel that I will never complete. I developed the characters considerably since then. The character Libertaria has developed from an adult geneticist experimenting unknowingly on her mother to a young girl who escapes an evil gene

Cover of Stephen Colbert As you know, I teach a course in Media in Amerian Culture. Maybe my sci-fi opera Libertaria or recently finishing the 1000+ page Atlas Shrugged has me looking over my digital shoulder a bit much, or maybe it's the years of training that I have had in video editing and new media, but I take everything on the Internet with a big grain of salt, and by big I mean a grain of salt that would bury the Statue of Liberty.  I recently had an interesting discussion with a gentleman I respect about a political video's reliability and truthfulness (or truthiness, as Stephen Colbert would say). The content of the video matters a lot less than the blind belief that if it's on YouTube it must be true.  So I thought I would provide a short tutorial on how to know if something is true or not. It is by no means comprehensive or definitive, but it may help. For those that are in the audiovisual experts, this is old hat. However, for those who are not awa

1000 Pennies for Your Thoughts - NARA - 534149 (Photo credit: Wikipedia ) One of my many hats is online university instructor. I teach courses in Media and Music History. In my Media in American Society class, we discuss many aspects of media, including truth in media, media conglomeration, marketing, advertising, and the like.  Today my students had an intriguing discussion/debate online about news and partisan politics. The debate was a healthy one, with some students claiming that they see all sides, others describing their favorite political pundits, and others lamenting the lack of authenticity in the media today. In the end, the fact that there would be no answer to today's questions, largely due to the lack of authenticity and the inability to trust anything in print, online, on a TV, spoken by a political leader, etc. etc., I brought up a short discussion on postmodernism, postpostmodernism , and its effects on American culture.  Here is a small snippet that I though