3 Compositions

Hello.

HEre are three of my compositions. I am 14, so I would like some feedback so I can improve. I have had hardly any feedback on my other two submissions, so I hope putting three into one post will help.

Trumpet and Rhythm is a piece i started composing at school, and then finished at home. This took me at least a month and a half to two months to complete on and off, and I'm most proud of it. A group of guys at my school and I were practising it, but then for some reason, we stopped It consists of trumpet as the melody (this could be replaced as a singer if there were lyrics), acoustic guitar, Piano, and drum kit. I orginally wrote the chord symbols in for the guitar, but, so people can listen to it basically how its supposed to be played, i used sibelius's "Realise chord symbols" plug-in to notate the chords for guitar. This also saves people from muting the guitar when it switches form melody to chords, as i had notated the rhythm of the chords on a B.

Coconut took me about 2 days to make. The name speaks for itself.. it has vibraphone, shamisen, keyboard, bass guitar, antique cymabls, bongo, conga and drum kit.

Horizon i made yesterday, and it was just something quick i threw together in an hour. Clarinet, violin, acoustic guitar, piano and drum kit.

Hope you like them...
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Considering your age, I thought the trumpet piece was excellent.
It has a rudimentary structure and emotional cadences, like a lot of the soft-rock ballads you hear on the radio, but is a really good example of that style of writing. Well done.

The other two were thrown together, as you say, each containing unexplored germs of ideas that could be expanded. You would do well to listen to lots of string and brass arrangements and try and begin to incorporate them into your ideas.

Your rhythmic sense is fine, but don't pour energy into something until you are sure you have at least one very strong melodic idea ( you knew you had it in the trumpet piece ! ).

I would be interested to know what instrument you play, and if you write 'on' it.

Thanks so much for that great feedback! The other two, aren't totally finished, yes, they are mainly ideas, but I thought I'd put it up just as a way of seeing firstly, if they're good, and secondly, if I might have missed something, or something sounds wrong.

I play clarinet and piano. A lot of my songs start out by me playing around with some chords, then melodies on my piano, and I have made two pieces for it. However, I wouldn't consider them very good. I have also started to write some pieces for the clarinet with piano accompaniment. Seeing as it is VERY unlikely any performers will play my stuff anytime soon, I think its much better for me to write for my own instrument, so I can actually play my own pieces, and they are not playing back mechanically on a computer. Also to see how they sound in real life. But I haven't really wrote much for my instruments yet.

What "string and brass" arrangements do you suggest specifically... Is there somehwere I might be able to download some, or are there any CDs you suggest?