Winds off the Atlantic (Yes, you saw right)

Well hello YC :toothygrin: And yes, that is the title. Winds off the Atlantic. Now, for those of you who don't know the story, I got extremely upset and went on rampages because people weren't too thrilled with the piece, and that made me sort of famous around here. HOWEVER, I was only 10 and had never had people critique my stuff, so that's that. Anyways, this is a completely re-done version. I kept the first 2 minutes with some moderations, and everything else is different. I added percussion, horns, and a bassoon. Please critique (!) and comment on this. I hope you'll enjoy it MUCH MORE than that other version! Heckel P.S this is an MP3 FILE!!! YAY!!

Name of Piece	MP3
Winds off the Atlantic (Yes, you saw right)

Bravo!, Bravo!, BravISIMO!!! this is awesome man, wow is so great, congratulations that you could upload an MP3.

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Now, about the music .... yeah yeah.... kinda of... sort of.... .... no, really:

The Harmony is very nice indeed, the overall orchestration is good specially the dialogs between instruments, you have improved that part a lot, since your Hurricane work, or the Chinese 7 up, I don't recall which one...
Just the flow of the language seems to me like too interrupted, would like more continuous phrases,

In page 13, m.64 those triplets look very strange at first sight, I think you can remove the beam between the 3th and 4th note, to make clear the 3 tempos, 1- a black, 2- two 8ths and, 3- the 16th+dotted 8th. Also similar beams can be changed in other passages.

After page 15 the language becomes more continuous in phrases but more strange in harmony language, I'd like the harmony of first pages, with the continuity of these later pages.

Very nice the climax at m.110.

For better score lookng, go "Layout" menu, then "Document Setup" and change to a bigger page size, or better, set smaller staves, I think for letter size and that orchestra size, 5.5mm for staff size is ok. Or set smaller margins, to give more space to your score.
Then when the work is finished, select all score with Ctrl+Alt+A (must trun purple selected) and in Menu "Layout" click "Hide Empty staves" and/or "Show Empty Staves" if necessary to show an empty one hiden for the previous action.

I think to indicate which instrument to play is enough with I or II or I,II a 2 etc, not "Clarinet 3" "Oboe 1"

Thanks for the reply, SYS! Though what do you mean by more continuous phrases?

Thanks again,

Heckel

Look, what I meant, specially in the first pages, is that the instruments speak too little and too short that you don't quite follow what are they doing, where are they coming from, and where are they going to,take a look at this:



In the first page the dialogs are like too far one from the other, and even if they sounded good because your harmony was very nice, there are no continuity because the too short content of each part, and its space between, makes you unable to tie it with the next one, so it sounds like many small ones instead one big and continuous one. Of Course all this is about my personal taste, maybe talking about something like Debussy La Mer or Jeux, or Scriabin Poems.
But that continuous language is very suitable for your already good harmony.

The second part was indeed more continuous but the harmony started becoming more strange, not so "tasteful" like the initial one.

In the picture above, in the second page, those lines become one doesn't mean the instrument keep playing that high, but the phrases become one and keep talking, in another instruments, like I'm speaking now, and someone else continues after me, about the same subjet...

I think is more clear now isn't it ?

I like the effort put into this. I hear a ton of ideas back to back that are individually wonderful. These sections in themselves are well crafted and well thought out. But just like a story book I need a reference point to comeback to. Something familiar. There doesn't seem to be anything for me to hold onto or recall or recognize. What I'm trying to say is that it's one phrase after another phrase. That in itself is fine, but I wonder if you could bring back past moments for the listeners benefit. A main idea that could be restated but varied or changed just enough to be recognized as such but changed in a way to produce some variety might be worth looking into. Anyway, you're sounding awesome these days. Again, congats on your acceptance into pre-college. Have fun!!

Thanks so much for your comment, Ticktock! I'll be trying out some of the things that you and SYS suggested. I'll have an updated version probably sometime this week

Heckel

I'm going to piggyback off of Ticktock. Lot's of great ideas. Pick one and stick it out!

Orchestration is nice. I would caution you on some of your bracketing and triplet figures 1.e. measures 64-65 (you can re-notate that) and also measure 73 and meas. 77. The dotted eighth-note should be broken up and a eighth note tied to a sixteenth. At meas. 77 break up those brackets so it can be clear. Remember, make it easier for the performer to read the FIRST time.

Okay, Maestrowick. I'll try to clean up the score Though I really can't imagine this piece with just one idea.. it's always been a million ideas all in one piece, and I wouldn't know how to reduce it to just one... guess that's just the way it worked out! I can write another piece with just one idea though. In fact, I do that a lot haha...

Edit: New version!

Your rhythmic notation is very confusing at points, for example the snare drum on the first page (m. 8), I would notate as quarter rest, dotted eighth rest, sixteenth note, sixteenth note, dotted eighth rest. A good rule of thumb with notating rests is no not obscure beats - e.g. if a rest needs to last a quarter and three sixteenths (in 3/4), separate the rests by the quarter note. In 4/4 it's generally a good idea to not cross over beats 2 and 3 with rests, so for instance three beats of rest and a quarter note should be a half rest, quarter rest, quarter note, NOT dotted half rest and quarter note.

This is all just to make it easier for players to play accurately sooner. Speaking of players, you have an odd instrumentation here (especially the honky-tonk piano) so getting a real performance will be trés difficult. Writing a bunch of music, even if it's groundbreaking, fantastically beautiful and/or moving stuff, is only part of the job of the composer. You've gotta get real musicians to play it.