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This site has music files composed by Ralph S. Gardner II.
These files may be freely copied and used for any NON-COMMERCIAL purposes - all commercial rights reserved.
(Note: please see the 'Quinn Mason' page on this site for information about a very promising young composer!)
There are 3 kinds of files by RSG2 on this site. For convenience, these files are arranged in pages underneath this Home page.
(1) Music files are standard MP3 files (stereo). These use the naming convention of the short title, e.g. 'LordsPrayer.mp3'.
(2) PDF files of the scores for most works are on the 'Music Files' page - these files are useful for anyone who wants to make printed copies for performance. PDF files use the same naming convention as the MP3 files, e.g. 'LordsPrayer.pdf'.
(3) Finally, some of the works have accompanying texts, shown on the appropriate pages.
I also have original Finale format .MUSX files for most of these works. If you wish to see any of these, or would like more information about these works, please contact me at:
I have a cell phone but do NOT answer unknown numbers (too much spam). If you want to talk to me by phone, send email with your phone number first.
For interest, I have included on this page a Word file listing all of my music, with dates of composition and other information.
NOTE: I assigned Opus numbers myself in order by date of (finished) composition. I know that traditionally such numbers were assigned by publishers as works were printed, regardless of actual date of composition (e.g. Beethoven). However, I saw no possibility of ever getting anything published in that way, so chose my own method of numbering my works.
A word about Cakewalk and Finale. These are PC software tools used for music composition.
Cakewalk was very popular with Hollywood film and TV score writers, and was designed for playing music on a keyboard directly into the PC, saving the information; then the player mixed in more tracks and did other fun things to get the final sound, which could be saved as an output file and used in the film or TV process. Cakewalk was specifically made for users who do NOT read standard music notation, and could produce a (rather simple) printout for use by those who can read music. I stopped using it in 2008. I did not use a MIDI keyboard as I cannot play the piano very well, so I had to laboriously create a note-by-note score to get my results. The music score part of the program was not very thorough or useful to me, as it could not produce the multi-staff orchestral scores I wanted to write.
Finale, which I started using in 2008, is designed for those who can read standard music notation, and also has many more useful features such as multi-staff orchestral scores, sampled sounds versus synthesized ones (Cakewalk uses the latter, which is fine for 'artificial' sounds but not very good at 'real-world' sounds). Music educators and other professionals use Finale, so when I learned about it I converted to it. I currently use version 25.
One final note on my musical experience and training: I have never attended music school, although I did take 2 introductory classes at BYU. I have sung in choirs for many years (Haendel's Messiah, Vivaldi's Gloria, J.S.Bach's Magnificat in D, many other works both LDS and non-LDS), and have conducted choirs on a Ward and Stake level since my LDS Mission in 1967-1969 (conducted a Missionary choir there too). I began collecting music scores of Beethoven symphonies and many other works in the classical repertoire starting in 1964, and have studied them for decades to see how past composers handled various tasks. I also have several 'standard' music texts (such as the 3-volume set by Walter Piston on 'Harmony', 'Counterpoint', and 'Orchestration') and have used them through the years.
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