Candlelight Sonata

Hi YC folks.

I've been taking private composition lessons since last I posted, and this sonata-form piece shows my newfound skill at manipulating and sequencing melodies while cycling through various harmonies. It breaks the rules a little here and there, either where it sounded good or inexperience led me astray.

Candlelight Sonata - for cello and piano

I hope it's as much fun to listen to as it was to write. Enjoy!

The ideas in this piece are quite good but I find the "performance" somewhat lacking in expression especially with regard to tempo variation. Well, this may be a result of the tools you had available. Does MusicDNA do rit., accel. and fermata? I think a live performance of the same notes would be quite different as the musicians would add their musical knowledge to the performance.

I did have a brief try with MusicDNA but I find Finale with its standard music notation, while complex and not without drawbacks, is better for me. With sufficient effort to fully annotate a score, Finale can produce a good degree of "musicianship" in the playback.

Euler,

You're right, the performance certainly can't compare with a real one. What MusicDNA produces is a simple MIDI: no tempo changes, fermatas are tough, all the notes are in the duration multiples of 32nd notes. Luckily that's how I think musically: structure, harmony, melody. The musicians should take care of the actual musicality of the piece.

I could have done more with Logic's *excellent* sequencing, but I'm still a neophyte with it. I'm happy I could map the midi to Miroslav and get a reverb going. That only took an hour or so...making it sound like a real performance would've taken forever.

MusicDNA does also produce (rough) sheet music, which could be played by musicians (if anyone would like a pdf copy of Candlelight plz msg me). My comp teacher has a cellist lined up to play it and record it, I can't wait to hear the real thing!

Rienzi,

If the live performance is being recorded, is there a chance you will post a URL to the recording? I would certainly like to hear it.

Sure thing! I'm so happy people are interested. A word of warning, it won't be anything special, we'll just be sight reading it for an hour or two.

What he's doing is way cool, he does a new piece every week:

Accessible Contemporary Music Weekly Readings

Why not a score? The music being simple and non-ambiguous doesn't make me need a score any less!

Overall, the music was very expressive and enjoyable. The rendering was also quite decent!

Rienzi,

I hate to disappoint you and your mass study, but the piece was kind of...well, not incredibly interesting. The opening had all the same rhythm and all the same chords, despite whatever melody you had over it. When you changed chords the first time it seemed awkward and you shifted strangely. When you started the second section, that was nice, and I like your transition back into the main material, that was done well, but again, all you have is just the same-ish chords with the piano doing only a spiced up version of what was there before. Melodic development is actually...here! Most composers don't even bother with development its rather disappointing, but I'm glad you did, so something in the lessons must have paid off . Overall, I suppose it was fun to listen to, and for a beginning composer it was good work, I just disliked the monotony of it all and the extremely amateurish chord structure. Also, the piece had no real climax...all pieces need to have a shape, yours just kind of kept moving, but again, at least it was moving. It did have a sense of direction, another hardly achieved thing in the world of beginner composition these days .

Nice job,
Nico

First let me say, I loved it! It had a really wonderful melody!

Second I have to say that this is very strange. Over the past few days I have been thinking of pretty much the exact same piano part, the only difference was a slight change in rhythm and that you have a cello in your piece. And now it just shows up . Kinda funny.

Very good and very emotional piece.

quite nice,

a score would be great though