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

Composer's Guide to Drums and Percussion: Top 10 Mistakes when Composing for Percussion Instruments How to avoid the pitfalls amateurs make when writing music for percussion.  Real advice from a REAL PERCUSSIONIST. TOP 10 MISTAKES WHEN WRITING FOR PERCUSSION INSTRUMENTS 10. Indicating the wrong mallets for an instrument. Brass mallets on vibes? Try a hammer on a violin! 9. Writing the glockenspiel part as heard. You shouldn't have to climb a ladder of leger lines to read a glock part. Keep it in the staff. 8. When in doubt, adding more suspended cymbal . This is a huge mistake made by arrangers. Yep, cymbals add automatic intensity to a piece, but so can a bass drum roll, a rousing hand drum part, exciting mallet licks, or a hundred other combinations. Well-written percussion parts stand out in the band and church repertoire. 7. Better means more complicated, right? This is my main mistake. A percussion part can be simple enough for a middle school, bu...

Music Secrets: How to Write an Opera on a Budget PART 1 Historically, producing an opera, especially a grand scale epic opera , involved numerous resources, finances, and clout. From getting the opera company to the orchestra, to finding a hall big enough for your musical vision, to finding financiers who didn't mind sinking thousands and thousands into a possible flop of a production, the task to produce your own opera could be daunting.  Then the Internet Happened. And social media. And technology that broke down a thousand barriers to your musical vision. When I composed and produced my opera Libertaria, I took advantage of the Internet and technology and created an epic opera that broke ground as the first original machinima opera and broke ground in its innovative Internet production. I will share some of the ways that I managed to create this incredibly epic opera below. Take a few of these ideas, expand on them, and then make YOUR artistic dream a reality!  I d...

Inspiration and Music: Professional tips for Musicians, Artists, and Writers Creative inspiration doesn't always come easily for artists, musicians , and writers. There are days when you get a concussion from hitting a creative brick wall repeatedly or days when you look at the last month's worth of writing,  hit DELETE, and start all over again. Here are a few ways that I try to push the inspiration along. Take a break. Sometimes hitting the grind over and over only produces a lot of shlock. Instead, take a break from your music for an hour, a day, or even a week or so, and explore other avenues of creativity. Get references. Visual artists often have a scrapbook full of references (pictures and photos of people, buildings, plants, etc.) which they refer to as they are creating their latest masterpiece. For the piece I am composing right now for an upcoming Halloween concert, I bought a book of ghost stories, a CD of scary music and sounds, surfed You Tube for ...

DOWNLOAD THE EPIC AND GROUNDBREAKING CINEMATIC SOUNDTRACK FROM LIBERTARIA: THE VIRTUAL OPERA TODAY FOR CYBERMONDAY FOR ONLY $1.99!  AVAILABLE TODAY ONLY AT BANDCAMP FOR THIS GREAT PRICE!  Available as a music gift for the music and movie lover in your life!  <a href="http://sabrinapenayoung.bandcamp.com/album/libertaria-the-virtual-opera-soundtrack">Libertaria: The Virtual Opera Soundtrack by Sabrina Pena Young</a> Related articles iTunes - Music - Libertaria Soundtrack (Special Edition) by Sabrina Pena Young Fandalism Composer Interview: Electroacoustic Musician Sabrina Pena Young Dishes on Desert Islands and the Trans-siberian Orchestra TEDxBuffalo TOMORROW October 14th Showcases New Opera, Art by Keith Harrington "The Projectionist" and MORE! TEDxBuffalo TOMORROW October 14th Sh...