Daniel

OK - attached are the midi and pdf files of the combined three exercises.

Now I will make some comments, but I will try to focus on basic principles rather than individual parts of the music.


Exercise 1
Mostly quite good. Be careful only to use one note per voice in this type of writing. If this were written for three singers, well an alto can't sing two notes! The appearance of an extra note makes the listener expect an extra voice, so in this type of writing, keep to one note per part. (Especially here, it is not saved by voice leading, as your F does not resolve to an E).
Another point: don't make the music too busy. If one part is moving quickly, it is often wise for the other parts to move less quickly. (This of course applies not to all situations).
So, for example, in measures 3 and 5, the alto needn't have had all those quarter notes.
That exercise was quite good, on the whole, though. You obviously have some grasp of harmony; we'll work on getting a little more-in-depth knowledge.

Exercise 2
Quite good.
The harmony of your second phrase is almost exactly the same as the first phrase, which makes it a little boring. Watch for this in future; boredom is the bane of music.
I expected you would continue more with the little motif, of which much use is made in the first phase. Think about what you would have done with that little motif (the dotted quarter, eighth, quarter motif which you use once in the 5th measure of the second phrase).
Again, try not to introduce an extra voice to the right hand; the first phrase used only one. The problem with this is consistency, as I mentioned regarding Ex.1. In the 6th measure of your second phrase, do you see the problem? The right hand has D C B, and with the G below, in the bass, those notes imply a certain dissonance (C above G) resolving to the G major chord (with B above G), but you have a B already in the left hand. Remove that B and listen to how much better it sounds. The problem is the clash between the C and the B, and the B ruins the nice suspension - resolution that the right hand gives over the G in the bass.
You did stay in character for the piece though, and it was fairly convincing, so a good attempt!

Exercise 3
Well you've really just copied and pasted it into a string quartet here. Nothing much to say. It would have worked equally well for voices, or woodwind quartet (if you transposed it), so this was not really orchestrating.
I will give you a tougher exercise next time on orchestration.
By the way, was the piano supposed to go with the string quartet? Because that does not make for a very good ensemble, when the piano is playing in such a 4-part hymn style.

Good work anyway. I will prepare another exercise.

Attached Files

	Jair Exercise.mid (2.3 KB, 16 views)
	Jair Exercise.pdf (51.9 KB, 42 views)
All music files uploaded by this user