Marius

Alrighty, so I've taken a look at your draft and I'll leave you with my comments and your next task.

What you've done here is a wonderful job of expanding the piece to fit the given ensemble. Your choice of which instruments to mix together where is actually quite good. I see that you've already started working in some dynamics and such, which is good too - it shows me that you already have a vision of how you'd like the performance to sound. I enjoyed the syncopation you've got going on between pages 4 and 5; keeps the motion of the piece feeling fresh.

Now let me gently tear it to pieces for you so that you can see what you need to work on for the next draft:

First off, a specific little thing: get rid of the bass marimba line in the slow section, starting right near the end of page 6. The reason is that the percussive, woody sound completely screws up the mood you've got going on up until then - throws off the mellow feel.

Now the biggest concern I have is that you've done very little actual "orchestrating" with this draft. What you've done is take your original musical lines and copy and paste them into various different instruments. As I mentioned, the combinations themselves are great, but for the wrong reasons.

For this next draft that you need to do for me, I'd like to see you take this foundation that you've made and start doing some orchestrating. Here's what I mean. Start with some rhythmic variation - all you've got going on here are two or three different rhythms MAX through the full spread of your ensemble. Have one instrument hold a nice low legato line while another plays with accenting stabs while another chimes in with the occasional brief arpeggio while another carries the melody while another comes in overtop with a simple but effective countermelody while another....you see my point. Don't limit yourself to what you've already written.

Now that you're writing for more instruments, you need to make sure that you spend time on each individual part and give it a personality all its own. Make sure that when your performers get their part, they're each happy with it. Every instrument in your ensemble should have a defined role, at least at some point within the piece. If it doesn't, then get rid of it.

So basically what I'm saying is, your next step is to start thinking in terms of individual instruments within the ensemble and go over what you currently have. In the end, you should have massively revised the individual parts to make the orchestration interesting, rhythmically-diverse between parts, harmonically thick (where appropriate) and interesting.

This step should take a while because I really want you to pay attention and do a detailed job. If you need me to work through some of it with you, drop me a line. Any questions, same thing.

Good work and good luck!