So I believe a small update is in order.

I will no longer be doing (or rather, be planning to do) shortened demo versions of my music here. The songs would get downrated for being incomplete too much to get any real traffic, so less people will hear about my music, thus putting the chances of my supposed audience hearing this stuff even lower. Furthermore, I would need to be spending way too much time deciding on where and what to cut, then doing said cutting, which would put more work on my shoulders and give me less time to work on making music. Finally, I know that the people who will buy the music are people who support music makers, teachers, and ensemble leaders, who will buy the music regardless of how much of each song I post here. This is just to kind of make a few foot holds for myself in this career and to help me organize my progress, and to try and skimp out on anything regarding it just doesn't really make sense.

On another completely unrelated note, I have developed some random type of tmj, seemingly caused by frowning faces I make so often. I get comments on the ridiculous nature of my silly frowns, so I do it a lot because it's silly and people laugh like infants when you do anything weird with your face. SO I was frowning extra hard yesterday and my jaw made a weird noise. Since then it has not gotten worse, so I read a faq page of a dentist website and it suggested taking meds to suppress swelling, because that's what causes my particular problems. I took the recommended dosage over an hour ago and nothing has gotten better. That is, I still can't clamp my teeth down, one side of my jaw hurts, and jaw movements are generally stiff. Oh well. I figure I should see somebody about it, but I can't decide whether I should see a doctor, a dentist, or a chiropractor.

Also cut my middle finger today. Bled quite a bit. I haven't cut myself in a while so it was a bit weird. Not sure where that was going. Oh well.

Later

Hey guys. Second post in one day! Getting a little saucy over here, I am. Not too saucy, though. I don't want the missuss to be catching me being saucy without her.

Anywho, I got some great advice by a fellow named danicos. They said I should post more. I agree. SOOO I'm going to be posting more. Rather than trying to save topics in my head till the next day, trying to remember them and then inevitably forgetting, I'll just post whenever something important comes to mind. This might make posts a bit irregular, but regularity is for boring updates, and I'll have plenty of those to go around so bleh.

So anyway go check out danicos' profile, say hi, and have some fun over there. I mean there's not much to do over here.

If you are confused about how to do that, follow these steps to get there.

1. Punch yourself in the face for being so stupid.
2. Type 'danicos' into the search bar at the top
3. Next to that should be a scroll bar, in which you can select 'author'
4. Press enter. You should be able to find your way form there.

Anyway. Bye.

This is my first post here on Newgrounds, so it is necessary to get all of the preliminary junk out of the way. Thus, a slew of random facts. My name is Ben, I enjoy games playing games and writing music, I go to Spring Arbor University, and I am a drumline instructor as well as a private instructor for percussion and music composition.

Now that that is out of the way, an update. Or rather, since there is no previous information to update, would it just be a... date? A cross-date? A downdate? Whatever. What I intend to be using Newgrounds for is music. I write music to be used by teachers, conductors, and directors as material for shows, performances, projects, clinics, and whatever else. So far the bulk of my writing goes to the drumlines I teach and the percussion and composition students I tutor. I'm hoping to get more ideas and criticism form the community here at Newgrounds, as well as to bring more material in the classical/education genre to the Newgrounds pool. I just hope it is received well.

Since the majority of my music writing is for classroom purposes, I have started a few CD projects that I hope to complete within the next few years. ---[Specifically speaking, each of these CD projects will be a collection of 8-10 songs written for a specific orchestration, sold along with (or separate from) a full score and separate parts for classroom and professional use.]--- Since I will be selling these to schools, conductors, and directors professionally, I will only have demos of the music here, while full CD versions can be bought from multiple sites that I will have listed somewhere on my profile.

Here is a running list of the projects I had in mind along with their completion level. With every update I'll post a list just like it.

-----CD I: Ten Contemplations for String Orchestra

-----CD II: Ten Contemplations for Recorder Choir

-----CD III: Challenging Piano Solos

-----CD IV: Collections of Intermediate to Advanced level Etudes for Snare, Timpani, and Marimba

As production furthers I will post the actual names of the CDs as well as a track listing for each and how far along they are. CD project updates will probably only come once every few weeks or once a month, but I'll try to update other things and post blogs thingies at least once a week. Not that you guys care. You don't even know me. All six of you.

Anyway. Stay tuned for further progress and coming updates.