For those who could not attend the online music forum discussion last night (July 29th at 9 PM) about "Commissioning and Collaboration Etiquette" on Twitter via Musochat, here is the complete list of questions that I asked. I have posted them here so that readers can think about the questions on their own time. Except for one instance when I accidentally mixed up the order with Questions 7 and 8, the discussion went well. 
   
​Q1: What is your name and musical/artistic profession? Which city or town are you based?

Q2: When collaborating with musicians, composers or other people on a new piece, which method of communication do you prefer and why: e-mail, phone, video chat, etc.?

Q3: How often do you think composers, musicians and others should communicate about projects?

Q4: Why should, or shouldn’t, it matter if the person commissioning a new piece of music has a musical background or experience?

Q5: Referring to Internet etiquette, or “Netiquette,” what are the best or worst ways to handle situations where collaborators do not reply to your messages?

Q6: How should you react in a situation where the person who commissions a new work dislikes the finished musical product?

Q7: When is it a good or bad time to address or negotiate a payment for a commissioned work or collaboration?

Q8: What has been your experience with working on commissions or collaborations with strict, timed deadlines?

Q9: When should composers, musicians or others (properly) decline a commission or collaboration opportunity?

Q10: What was the best or worst commission or collaborative experience that you had in recent memory?

I thoroughly enjoyed seeing the detailed responses and criticisms for this discussion. Here are condensed versions of some of the important takeaways from the forum topic:

- Commissions and collaborations depend on the type of project and who commissions them. Commissioners do not necessarily need to have a musical or artistic background to ask for a new work.

- If a person with whom you are collaborating does not respond to your messages in a long time (for more than one week, for instance), send a gentle reminder. Do not, under any circumstances, harass them or publicly write angry posts/tweets/etc. about how they have not answered. Doing so demonstrates unprofessional behavior and is completely unacceptable.

-If a person who commissions a piece of music dislikes the finished product, do not get angry with them. Either accept that the project did not work and that mistakes were made, or try talking with the commissioner to see how similar problems can be avoided for the future.

- Discussions about payment for a commission or collaboration should be completed at the very beginning of a project: usually, in the form of a contract that lets the people involved know how much the commissioner is willing to pay and other details.

-A composer or musician can decline a commission or collaboration opportunity whenever they want to--usually, under the following circumstances:

+ They do not have the time.
+They are not receiving payment for their work.
+ They cannot complete the piece within a given deadline.
+ The performer does not like the finished piece or loses interest in the project. 

More information about commissioning new music is available through other websites, like the American Composers Forum: composersforum.org/resources/commissioning-by-individuals/

After posting my review of the DodecMatrix  phone application on this blog last year, I became curious to see if this program featured any updated material. Recall that DodecMatrix functions as a basic tool for creating twelve-tone matrices, or grids. Taking into consideration all of the missing components in the older version that I listed in the post last year (no pitch-class clock, no enharmonic equivalence, etc.) does the new version address and fix any of its previous problems?

The answer, unfortunately, is that the updated version of DodecMatrix contains more of the same... albeit, with slightly less content than the previous one. People can still create matrices with by picking pitches on their phone screens with the touch of the finger. Additionally, they can play back the tones from the generated rows (It is possible to play more than one row at a time.). They can also save their matrices for future musical use.

One glaring change in the new version of DodecMatrix, however, stems the omission of examples of serial music. Unlike the older version, which featured examples of music by composers from the Second Vienesse School (mainly, Arnold Shoenberg and Anton Webern), the update completely removes these examples from the application. I speculate that this decision stems from issues concerning copyright, because the musical pieces by Schoenberg and Webern are not "Public Domain."

What, then, is the verdict? Should musicians or composers who want to learn about serial music use the updated version of DodecMatrix, or would they be wasting their time? Given the fact that essential features remain absent and that it features no musical examples at all, I would suggest to stay away from it. Far away. One would have better luck finding an online tutorial that explains the purpose and process behind creating a twelve-tone matrix, instead.    

My first experience with the stringed instrument known as the tiple came in the form of my dissertation chamber piece, Estampas de La Isla del Encanto (2015-16). Even though this chamber work and accompanying documented research that I provided concentrated largely on the Puerto Rican cuatro stringed instrument and its connection to the theory of transculturation, I included the tiple with the cuatro and other instruments to try and use the instrumentation of the orquesta jibara (emseble of Puerto Rican folk stringed and percussion instruments) within a contemporary setting. Unlike the cuatro, which sounds one octave lower than written, the sounding pitch for the tiple is written a perfect-fifth lower.

Given this bit of information about the tiple, I must add that this instrument does not limit itself to Puerto Rico. Multiple versions of the tiple abound in other areas of Latin America and the Caribbean: from Argentina, to Colombia (where the tiple is regarded as the national instrument), Cuba, and Venezuela among others. This diversity clearly demonstrates the European Spanish musical impact on these countries.

Several other points also deserve mention, here. The overall shape of the tiple varies in construction depending of the given Latin American or Caribbean geographical region. The Colombian tiple retains the “figure-eight” shape of the guitar, while others like the Puerto Rican tiple have a more angular top. Additionally, not all tiples feature the same number of strings and courses (sets). Some can have at least five strings, to at most twelve. These strings can also be doubled or tripled depending on their construction, meaning that the same note can be performed on multiple strings.

For more information (in English and Spanish) on the Colombian tiple and other versions of the instrument, readers can check out the following links: 

www.liutaiomottola.com/instruments/Alberto.htm

pacoweb.net/Cuerdas/cuetiple.htm