The Extemporaneous Sailor

I am mainly posting this so that it can be accessed for the competition for recorder that is going on right now. But it would also be nice if i got some reviews as well. This is my first real attempt at writing for woodwind, (or really anything other than strings) so some comments would be wonderful.

The name:
The: explanitory...
Extempotaneous: i have never been a fan of the word "impromtu" so I used extemporaneous instead. (Plus it is one of my favorite words. )
Sailor: I always associate recorders with sailors for some reason... so that went in too. lol

Well, I'm not entirely certain how I feel after listening to that. I assume you realize that a descant recorder is tuned to "just tuning" and not "equal tempered" so the modal portions if played on a descant recorder would likely evoke wretching woofing tones and intervals. aside from this instrumentation glitch, I feel that the "impromptu" or "extemporainious" feel, as you put it, has missed the boat a bit(no pun intended) in an impromptu it is supposed to have the crafting and compositional elements of a finished and the performence feel of an improvisation. this piece to me feels through composed with a sort of wild clash of modal and tonal influences that distract from the core of the melodic movement. I don't mean to sound harsh, or like I'm putting you down, but this piece should have been better thought through, I hope this helped some and i do look forward to hearing more from you as you improve(as all composers must) in the future.

Hey, I just posted my own entry to the recorder competition too! It's in this forum as well. Haha... funny I just found this. The deadline was moved to August 15 for the competition if you'd like to lengthen your piece or revise it. You have plenty of time.

So that said... I don't think the "tuning" of a recorder will affect this at all. It's not very drastically relient on intonation. Yes, they are "just" and not "well-tempered" ... but that doesn't mean you can't use modes in just temperaments. Besides, we can adjust our airstream in just the tiniest bits to sway the intonation however we like. Sometimes we can use completely wrong fingerings that give an out of tune "rustic" feel to a note or two that has alternates.

I don't think the issue with this piece was as much the tendency to mix tonal and modal idioms... "tonal" is modal anyways. Ionian mode, you know? Very similar concept. The only things that bugged me about this piece was some of the rhythms didn't seem well thought-out. Measure 32 to the end was delightful, but 18 to 21 seemed a little random and 22 to 31 seemed a little uninteresting.

Hmm... dynamics? The recorder has a hard time with dynamics. If you try to play more loudly you blow sharp, if you try to play more piano dynamic, you end up flat... I really don't like to use them myself. For instance, the piano at measure 12 would not really be possible, in that range of the recorder there are pretty much two dynamics - on and off. That is... without fingering sharp and underblowing or some other trick. Maybe a professional recorder player could enlighten us on that, though. Maybe fingering nuances can help the matter a little, I have no idea. I'm only self-taught. At measure 22, however, I can actually get the dynamic contrast a lot better. It's really odd... I can't really tell where dynamics work without actually trying them myself on the instrument... it's a pain.

It's a nice piece, but I DO think you could improve it a little. And by all means, PLEASE keep writing for winds! You'll get better and better at it, and they're a very fun family with a lot of diversity and interesting techniques available.

Wait...so is the sailor extemporaneous, or the composition?

Well, thank you guys for taking a look at it.
to answer your question Qmwne: The sailor is... (I think this ties into your post also Engineered)

Well, Thank you enigmus, I will definitely take those things into account when i spend more time on this. with that new dead line, i definitely will! lol But yeah, I wrote it in an hour so developement and such are assumeably in the lacking, so... lol

I will definitely take all that was said into account.