I made the final decision that when I finally start again at composing that I wont be uploading my music on newgrounds anymore. When the time comes that I will be back will be the same time when I will put my own website in the air. At that website you will still be ably to freely download the music and use it in simple flash projects.
Not gonna give an estimation on when I will be back, but it will probably take a while so better not wait for it.

Here is some interesting news though.
I have become a Link cosplayer (from The Legend of Zelda game series) and start to get better and better at playing the ocarina. I love the ocarina so much that I already own 12 of them. And cosplay is great too!!! Never expected it to be so much fun!

Its been a while.
And I really don't know when will be the next time i will show something again.
There is much I want to do but not much time to actually do all of them.
But I have definitely improved a lot lately.

First cool thing I want to share is the instruments I own right now.
I have made quite a collection of instruments at the moment.
- Digital piano
- 5 different ocarinas (+ an iPhone app where you can play one on)
- Electric guitar
- Violin (decoration purpose)
- Melodica (also known as a melodion or a pianica)
- cajon
- 2 different flutes (decoration purpose)
- A few handcrafted paper flutes (amazing thing is that even though they are out of tune, you can actually play them)

As you can see it increased a lot from a piano only. And the list will most definitely increase a lot!
From all the instruments I have I am currently focusing on two of them: the piano and the ocarina.
Most of you probably know the ocarina from The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time.
Its a wind instrument that doesn't use a tube shape unlike all others.
But there are lots of different ocarinas, divided in two main categories (though more exist): linear and cross fingering. These two categories have completely different fingering patterns. And some ocarinas have multiple chambers in one instrument that increase the note range and can be played independently and together from each other, these are usually for more professional use and usually the linear type.
I have a:
- 12-hole replica of the Zelda game
- 10 hole in the shape of a bird wing
- Small 6-hole (that I always wear as a necklace)
- 6-hole in the shape of an hylian shield from the Zelda game
- Professional double chambered ocarina (Double Sweet Potato in C Forte Style)
- An iPhone app called Songbird (Its amazing how much it feels like a real instrument, and can be played for free)
All ocarinas I own come from Songbird Ocarinas
The ocarina is an amazing instrument!!! And since it is so unique (still a very unknown instrument), it feels even more special to use it.

Then when I start being active again I would really want to have my own website with a blog about my musical experiences. In that case I would also use sites like dropbox and maybe youtube to share my music instead of using newgrounds. Newgrounds just doesn't feel like the place to be for me anymore.
I don't know when I will start this. Might be a short time, might be a long time... but it will definitely become awesome.
Lots of ideas for this, but it will take a lot of time that I can't afford to spend right now.

That's all for now :P

(The picture below does not include all of my instruments,
The ones missing are: digital piano, electric guitar, cajon, 4 new ocarinas, marching orchestra bass drum, and a drum that i cant catagorize)

I made the final decision to take a break for unknown time...
No, im not stopping making music, I am just not gonna share anything even if I already finished something.
I am too busy with school/work/music/friends that I feel a lot of pressure from the expectations everyone put on me (even though I do love the expectations and support). By making it an official break i can rest assure a little more.
In this break i want to focus a bit more on learning to play the piano instead of composing since quite a few of my own composed pieces are already harder then I am able to play.

When I am back I will:
-have made a blog that will follow my musical experiences
-have some pieces ready to share
-have more time to spare on music
-be more musically developed
- - which means higher quality
- - more of the ability to make more aimed projects
- - write and learn pieces at a faster rate
- - easier to improvise (parts of) pieces

Depending on the situation my break might be longer then I am planning to, but I plan to be back next summer. I know, it's a long time including my inactivity of last months, so no surprise if some forget me by that time, but i need a little rest from the pressure...
I hope you are not too disappointed and really hope to see you around when I'm back.

See you then!
Eric van Dongen (Musical Memoirs)

damn my study consumes a lot of time...
i feel like i have no time left to do other stuff anymore (though there still is, but i just simply want to do way more stuff then is possible within a day)
though i shouldnt since my study is already hard, i decided to do a bit more things at music again... though i probably wont be able to spend as much time at music as i used to (else i risk everything again) i will put more effort in music again

i finally started writing sheets and to begin with i started with one of my favorite pieces that im still writing and decided to do it the way it had to be done in the past, by hand
(it would be faster to let a program translate a recording and then correct the mistakes, but i need to be able to do without and its quite a learn full way to think about how to express my ideas on paper)

i can read music, but i never knew that writing music on paper could be quite difficult
i always write on feel so my rithms can become more complex then i expected them to be (if i would have to play a piece alike in my piano lessons it would probably take quite a long while before i would figured it out and to be able to play the piece
its a piece in 4/4 but with whole notes, half notes, quarter notes, 1/8 notes, 3/8 notes, 3/4 notes... in other words nearly all note lengths (except for the smaller ones) are currently used already... speed and volume changes are everywhere... so this is going to keep me busy for quite a while (after finishing i will also upload the sheets to enable other to learn my pieces)

trying to play some music on flutes i made of paper and tape :P
making a good one requires some attempts though
my best paper flute has 6 finger holes but i need to move two fingers to hear a different note, so its still not good enough

some time ago i got some inspiration for a new piece and its amazing
i can still go many ways with this piece, its curently a piano only, but i intended to write this piece as a piece played with an electric guitar and the piano (i have the ideas for the guitar in my head but still need to work things out) then i will ask my brother to play the guitar for me
for now im trying to make it or a piano piece and when im far enough and have all the ideas formed then i will make it into a piano guitar duo piece...

because i have been a bit busy i still havent take the time to set up things so i can record some stuff and try to fix my weird midi recording problem

i wanted to do a big update at once but that way it will still cost me a lot of time to get ready...
so i made the decision to split it in smaller updates after all

and as some might have already noticed, i currently also use my real name
currently it wouldt bring me fame or whatever to use my real name, but it is a way to prove that the name Musical Memoirs with its music belongs to a person called Eric van Dongen, so its harder for people to claim that its their music (sadly things like that frequently happens)

things i will do:
upload new pieces
make a big blog which contains lots of information and will take over the function of the newsposts and will do more then just that
write down all my musical plans and progresses on them (in my blog)
write some sheets (before sharing i will get a protection on it, again to make sure people cant claim that they made the pieces)

---

done already:
uploaded 2 pieces i created on a nintendo ds (1 of the 2 pieces is going to be one of my future piano works)

gonna update everything soon
and im working on a very great piece lately, hope i can finish it soon too

my computer is back!!!!!
going to make some recording sunday or monday, or when i have the time for it to sho some pieces / demos that i have ready to show around

i currently have a temporary computer, though i do have a music program on it, i wont do much on it...
because i can do much more things with fl studio then garage band which is standard on the imac (my temporary computer) and my saved files of garageband cant be used on my pc once its fixed, so making music with garageband would only cause frustration afterwards
because of that my focus will stay on my compositions written on my digital piano

another thing i like to tell is that i have improved a lot in writing and playing music
whenever i play an improvisation i notice that i play more complicated and there are not much big mistakes anymore

also i ended up specializing in D minor for a while (without intending to)
i was learning a prelude from chopin already i D minor and made 2 compositions in that scale
now i started quite a lot of my own pieces and improvisations in D minor. also im trying to learn the pirates of the caribbean soundtrack (in d minor) and the famous organ piece (my digital piano also has an organ in it) of bach toccata and fugue in d minor
but unlike before i started working more out of the scale, normally when i made a piece i never put a single note out of it, now i frequently start playing small parts out of the scale, giving me the freedom to put more feelings in my music