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Yes, it does sound off. One of the main reasons for that is it sounds like the piano chords are voiced too low. Here's how I'd harmonize your melody   But because the melodic movement is weird and since this is basically just these four bars looped, it never feels satisfying with any harmonization that would be appropriate. You have this setup where it feels like it should be a i VI VII progression, which would sound good on its own, but then your melody notes in the last bar don't fit with that. So, one could have opted for the D minor chord in bar 4, but to my ears, especially on loop, this still feels incomplete. F would be the best option, but the F chord strongly wants to pull to the G (dominant in the relative major key), but instead we are pulled back to A minor because of the loop, and we already used G in the preceding bar. We could've used C in that third bar, but it doesn't feel as good of a fit as G does, since in bar 2, you have descending movement from C down to B, which means that the C chord or the G chord would already be suitable choices. I suggest instead, that both bars 1 and 2 are left as an A minor chord so that the B note in bar 2 serves as a passing tone. Put simply: The phrase needs to be longer, and with stronger melodic movement. The strongest options available for the given melody do not create a satisfying cadence, and the phrase is incomplete.  The melody should be what dictates the harmony and not the other way around.

https://youtu.be/Nd9hPcYEbFw Hello, everyone. This is my first submission to the forum, and one of my first attempts at composing music. I really enjoyed writing these, and any feedback you could give would be greatly appreciated!

I omit the downbeats in those measures for 2 reasons. First off, the downbeat is a whole half note long, so it would overlap with the eighth note motif. This would be no issue if I was writing the fugue for piano, but writing for piano in this case would have more disadvantages than it is worth. First off, the transcription alone is hard, can you imagine a pianist trying to play say a syncopated variant of the first theme of Beethoven's Fifth? I would imagine this reaction coming out of a pianist: So, instead of trying to write it for piano, even a piano duet, I thought of perhaps going the orchestra route. More ways to vary the theme including a possible Concerto variation. But on the other hand, ending on the Bb chord sounds more wrong for an orchestra than it does writing for piano. This lead to my final decision of writing for a string quartet. It gives the essence of the orchestra across, while still having plenty of room for more soloistic variations. Can't really get soloistic variations in an orchestra unless, like I said, I went with a concerto structure. But with a string quartet, I can get soloistic variations while still having it feel like a quartet. The quartet also makes it a lot easier for each player than had I gone with even a piano duet. But this leads to another challenge, how to repeatedly articulate the eighth notes while sustaining the downbeat. Typically when a violinist does a double stop and then suddenly faster notes come in, regardless of the note value of the double stop, the violinist stops the double stop sustain. Also, articulating the eighth notes pizzicato while keeping the downbeats arco, while technically possible, diminishes the power those eighth notes have. That is, if the downbeats are on open strings. Eb and G in the first octave have to be fingered. In fact, even if I transposed it so that one of the downbeat notes was an open string note, because violins are tuned in fifths, not thirds, the other note would necessarily have to be fingered to avoid awkward octave changes. So this makes the pizzicato eighths + arco downbeats simply impossible for a single violinist. But then again, while these downbeats could be filled in by say, the second violinist of the string quartet, it is atypical for a second melodic line to already be present in the exposition before the subject is finished. So that means either going unorthodox with my fugue or abandoning the downbeats. Abandoning the downbeats is much simpler and will lead to far less negativity than going unorthodox with the fugue.

@bryla I'm new to writing for strings, but how long would you recommend for each of the up/down bows?

Hey @Samusiq was the link attached?