The First Movement to The Variations for the Healing of Bluebird.

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I am an amateur classical composer as well as a singer/guitarist of mostly folk and blues music.
I studied music during my first year in college at the original campus of Douglas College in New Westminster, BC, Canada in 1980.
I studied piano during my last two years of high school in Salzburg, Austria (1978-1980), as well as taking lessons earlier in my youth.
I'm mostly self-taught with a little feedback and input from friends who are themselves classical musicians.I also listen to a lot of classical music - primarily from the classical to romantic eras.
I currently live in Southern California.  If you are interested in accessing the scores to any of my compositions, please contact me.  It would please me greatly to have a good pianist play my pieces.  Also, I'd like to say thanks to all the SoundCloud composers who have encouraged and inspired me since I first joined.  This is truly a great site to explore what others are doing with composition.  It give me not only great stuff to listen to, but great ideas for future projects.  So a big THANK YOU!!! to everyone.

All of my compositions are created using MuseScore open source notation software.  I support open source software.  MuseScore is the best alternative to the expensive professional notation platforms, and it's free.  The app can be downloaded from the app section of SoundCloud.  If you're going to use MuseScore, I suggest changing the sound font from the default MIDI font to an appropriate alternative.  There are many alternatives that you can find for free on the web, including several from MuseScore.  If you'd like some assistance with this, I'm happy to provide it.

The sounds that you hear on my tracks are the playback from MuseScore (with considerable tweaking for expression), and not my own performance.  You can get quite a natural sound with the right sound font.  MuseScore continues to make improvements to the software such that with the new release, the sound is much more optimal than with previous releases.

I've recently begun to post my folk performances from YouTube.  These songs aren't professionally produced in any way.  I sat down in front of my computer with my guitar and recorded the videos raw using my webcam - mostly in one take.  Some have been overdubbed with extra guitar work and vocals, but for the most part, they're just me with a guitar.  You also get the added touch of dogs barking in the background, and my creaky chair.  I also mess up on the words here and there, but that would probably occur in any live performance anyway.  I enhanced the sound using GarageBand; which came free with my Mac computer; so don't think I'm a sound technician in any way.  Enjoy!!!


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Ross Trottier