Some Non-Musical Notes

The logo I designed to use my scores.  Can you identify all of the musical elements in the image?  (answer below)

At some point last semester, in the midst of taking a class about using the music notation software called Finale, I decided to put together a logo for my music.  The result is the snazzy image you see above (if I do say so myself!).

Why “bmpark Music”?  Well the more obvious reason is that my first two initials are B and M, and my last name of course is Park.  More importantly, “bmpark” was my username while at MIT, where I really began to get into music (but I picked my username based on the first reason, namely that it was a form of my name, so if that’s what you were thinking you get partial credit).  “bmpark” is also the domain name of this website.  So it all fits together.


In the past several days I have done a couple other “composer things” that aren’t explicitly about writing music but are important nevertheless.  The first was to create a YouTube channel which will hopefully eventually be filled with videos of my music and hopefully other interesting but related things, too.  My new channel is bmparkMusic (not to worry, all the wacky videos I made during freshman year are still under my other username elbenito87).  There’s only one video posted right now, but it is a MIDI realization of the choral piece I just finished (Nishmat), which you can read a little more about in my last entry.  I have set things up so you can follow along in the score while listening.  The video should be updated when I get a recording of real humans singing in a couple months.

The other big thing that I did was applying to join ASCAP, the American Society of Composers, Authors, and Publishers.  I applied both as a composer and as a publisher (so bmpark Music may soon be an official entity).  What is ASCAP?  Their website (accurately) describes the organization as follows:

The American Society of Composers, Authors and Publishers (ASCAP) is a membership association of more than 400,000 U.S. composers, songwriters, lyricists, and music publishers of every kind of music. Through agreements with affiliated international societies, ASCAP also represents hundreds of thousands of music creators worldwide. ASCAP is the only U.S. performing rights organization created and controlled by composers, songwriters and music publishers, with a Board of Directors elected by and from the membership. 

ASCAP protects the rights of its members by licensing and distributing royalties for the non-dramatic public performances of their copyrighted works. ASCAP's licensees encompass all who want to perform copyrighted music publicly. ASCAP makes giving and obtaining permission to perform music simple for both creators and users of music.

Once I am approved, I can register the compositions I complete, and should they ever get performed (or, more optimistically, when they get performed) publicly, I’ll earn some royalties (which are split between the composer and publisher 50-50, hence the reason to apply as my own publisher).  But being part of ASCAP (or one of its “rivals,” like BMI) is also important in the sense that your music becomes more accessible and part of a database, etc.

The timing of all of this is related to the fact that I just finished one project and am starting on another.  What will I be working on next?  Stay tuned... (I know, but I’ve got to give you some reason to check back soon...)

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And, as promised, here are the musical elements used in the logo:

• The “b” is a flat sign
• The “m” is comprised of two fermatas (but without the dots)
• The “p” is a half note (with the stem pointing down, as is the case if the note appears higher on a staff)
• The “a” is a slightly rotated F clef AND a whole note.  The “a” is my favorite letter in the logo.
• The “r” is the stem of an eighth note, slightly warped so it resembles an “r”
• The “k” is a double bar line followed by an accent mark.
• The letters are all place on a five-line staff (my apologies to some early medieval composers)
• And finally, the arc above “bmpark” is a slur marking.