All Activity

Hey @Rich! The live version is so so so much better than the computer version. The sadness already contained in your music is a million times enhanced here, as I had listened to both versions and can easily listen the difference! Those subtle tempo rubato would not be possible in a computer rendition at all, as well as the very detailed changes of tones . There's one (two actually lol) question for me, how much is the cost for hiring the entire ensemble and also the production team? They are really professional here! How did you find them in the first place? Thx very much for sharing your precious live recording of your own movements! Hope you will also submit the other movements to them too so we can enjoy (free-ridingly lol) more!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! Henry

At last, I can post the studio recording of my Piano Quartet in C minor. The two movements were recorded in a 4 hour session on 5/23, and spliced/mixed today 5/30. I've learned so much, and am very happy with the result, as solo strings are not good on ANY VST, compared to professional string players. The pianist stepped in on short notice and did wonders humanizing the piano part--the chorale and 2nd movement theme sound fantastic! Now I have a concrete reference for what my writing sounds like with actual musicians. I plan to do another pass over the score, as there are things that need improving on my part. A worthwhile and important step in my DIY musical education!.... The artists: Fantastic musicians, and they all helped me consider my writing, score/part preparation and musical issues in new ways!---- Violin: Dan Winnick Viola: Chloe Thominet Cello: Michelle Kulwicki Piano: Derek Szlauer Recorded and mixed and Big Sky Recording, Ann Arbor, Mich. Geoff Michael, Engineer. 5/23/25 and 5/30/25.

Hello @Eric N! The Invasion sounds like a chic version of a Bach Prelude which I like, with a 3+3+2 rhythm throughout the music. I personally love the eclipse more, it's more colorful with some effects on it. I think you can simply learn orchestration yourself! Never say you are only good at A or B, you won't be good at C had you not attempted on it! Thx for sharing. Henry

You could keep the main line col legno, but switch it to arco sul ponticello or sul tasto (staccato) for the latter part of the melody where the most rapid notes happen. And I don't know if your libraries have these options recorded but there are also different varieties of pizzicato that might also be useful in this situation. @Henry Ng Tsz Kiu would know about that given that he's recently explored Elliot Carter's music which uses different articulations on pizzicato strings to yield different effects. There's also the Bartok pizzicato which is a really strong pizzicato so much so that the string strikes the bridge of the instrument, but that's usually only used in a ff dynamic.

Thank you so much, Peter! Always appreciate your insights. I had purely chosen that articulation of strings from a sound standpoint and had not considered the difficulty of play (should this be turned into sheet music). What better articulation or instrumentation do you think would be best to convey a similar feeling?

Any ideas where I could potentially collaborate with someone to add some kind of orchestration to these pieces? I'm only good with composing piano pieces I don't have much skill with musical software or adding multiple instruments

Hi to all! Here is my latest composition based on an extrasolar planet that may support life. The previous ones were "Tau Ceti" and "Iota Draconis (The Dragon's Quest)". Am planning to combine these into a symphony or suite eventually. The score is designed for midi playback, hence the strange note lengths and dynamics. Think I probably need to allow more time for winds and brass to breathe? Also my bass-line in the celli and doublebass is really boring: so perhaps I should change it? Looking for some feedback on how realistic the orchestra sounds, and what further steps I can take to improve this? I used MuseStrings and MuseWoodwinds with Berlin Brass. Haven't done any stereo panning yet. Think I may have pushed the dynamics too high in the climax at the end, as it sounds like it's clipping to me.

Thanks Henry, I love Hisaishi's music: so that's a great compliment! Watched a You Tube video the other day, about how to write Ghibli style chord progressions. I may decide to perform this in public at an upcoming concert, since it's very nice to play.

Thank you for liking my work!

Hey @Krisp! Sorry for a very belated review. I only remember to review this wonderful piece of music until I see your name on the member list! I love the 5/8 time signature very much, in a sense an omen to signify the premature death of the poet with the rushing rhythm., but also well fit to the poem’s subject of chasing a girl! Your modulation is always wonderful, I love your modulation in b.30 to F sharp minor very much, reminds me a lot of Schubert and Schumann. The 2nd stanza begins will a mellow E major and a soft tone of your voice, matching very well to portray to girl’s beauty. And the hunger for sex is really showed in the next stanza with those forceful chord, signifying the uncontrollable Id and Libido. The cool down and then arousal of sex desire, then the breakdown is so fascinating. Your music is always full of content. I can’t imagine in just 2 minutes you already told us a great poem with all those dramas and structure. Very fascinating to listen to, and thx always for your sharing! Henry

Hey @Alex Weidmann! It’s in no way awful, at least my recording of the 3rd Sonata is Worte with all those tears lol! Besides your playing is nice. Yup I like your rubato! Me neither lol! Maybe we need FF expert @PeterthePapercomPoser or @Thatguy v2.0 or @ferrum.wav here to explain LoL. Nonetheless I enjoy your playing your own work, it really matches your more modal style but here it’s quite like Joe Hisaishi since I watched a lot Miyazaki Animations recently. Those high register and ethereal mood and harmony really makes the music “Above the Clouds”! The ending on C sharp major is quite surprising to me but I enjoy it, making it resemble Japanese anime music more! Thx for sharing your music and your playing! Henry

Hi Pabio @Fugax Contrapunctus! I love the unsettling mood here and how you use all four forms of the tone rows! I like Peter like the piano version more but this one is not your fault, as I always don’t like MuseScore’s Strings sound with those weird portamentos. I love your Bergian and Wozzeckian major ending for sure! Just one thing which lingers in my mind when I was reading sections on Serialism and Schönberg using atonal language for counterpoint and which Taruskin the author pointed out: The rules of counterpoint is maintained very much by the preparation and resolution of dissonance, but in a post tonal context there’s much less differentiation between consonance and dissonance, so the counterpoint rule may be weakened or even non-existent and meaningless. What do you think Pabio? Henry

Hello @张文灏！ Very nice singing and jazzy mood! I like the saxophone interlude after the first chorus. Only one thing: 舞到地老天荒 [Dance Forever] reminds me of the poor girl in the Sacrificial Dance in The Rite of Springs muahaha! Remember to hit the “like” button in the bottom right hand corner of reviewer’s posts so we know that you like our posts haha! Thx for sharing. Henry

Hi to both @gaspard and my baby Peter, I like both your work! To @gaspard’s original: I love the omnibus progression at the beginning and the virtuosic Toccata after it! The ending reverts to opening texture too nicely. To Peter: Your orchestration is masterful! I really love how you arrange for brass for those opening and ending chords, as you transform the opening to something from a mysterious black hole. I love how you strings for the running notes and especially love those bass drums and snare drums for transforming the original piece to a match, possibly to space lol. The running of harps with diminution gives so much colour to the running which I may steal it to my variation on your themes haha. Your buildup to climax with a gradual crescendo throughout the piece is wonderful too, as well as the punching percussion to enhance the intensity till the end! I feel like this one is much longer than just a minute given how colourful it is. Very nice job Peter! Even I say a lot to Peter’s arrangement, it doesn’t mean I like Gaspard’s clavichord original less lol! Thx both of you for sharing! And thx to Gaspard asking Peter for arrangement so now we can kill two birds with one stone! Henry

Well at least I am always corrected by Peter when I mistype piano as piani (not with a gun tho lol!!) Henry

Thanks Peter! Lol!!

Hello everyone, I'm Zhang Wenhao, a singer-songwriter from China. Here I'd like to share with you a laid-back and sultry retro jazz dance song I composed, titled "The Night Is Tantalizing". It tells the story of a couple dancing closely in the dance floor. Welcome to listen. 大家好，我是来自中国的创作歌手张文灏。在这里和大家分享一首我创作的慵懒、暧昧的复古爵士舞曲《夜色撩人》，讲述一对恋人在舞池中相拥着起舞的故事，欢迎大家收听。

unfortunately @user011235 there isn’t any video game in progress. That would be amazing though. i wrote the clavichord version thinking it would be a character select music for such a video game though. So interesting to see what @PeterthePapercomPoser does with keyboard scores. The middle part really shines much more in the orchestrated version in my opinion. I used to do orchestration before the obsolescence of finale and I feel like peter has much brighter and friendlier symphonic takes whereas my ideas usually skewed much harsher. And some of the things Peter knows how to do I never got around to learning. The kid knows what he’s doing!

That's certainly interesting. I actually find the piano version less enjoyable due to how mechanical the tempo ended up making it sound. Though the tempo change between both versions was intentional, I found it hard to slow it down even more lest the overall character of the piece turned way too stagnant for most preferences. Indeed, the moral tonal-sounding final cadence was supposed to generate both a sense of conclusiveness and overal contrast as a sort of referential "wink" towards tonality, much like the ones Alban Berg tended to include in many of his own dodecaphonic pieces. Lastly, thank you for your feedback as always. It's certainly quite refreshing to find out about other pespectives differing from my own on what my compositions may bring to mind this way, without the contrivances and condescending language I have rather occasionally had to endure from other users in this forum less accustomed to the basic etiquette constructive criticism usually demands. Thanks for everything.

Thanks - yes I've had feedback like that about the rests and have since tidied it up - consolidated some of the rests and replaced others with breath marks. I hadn't realised how difficult all these tiny rests would make it for the singers. It might be a bit harsh to say "the whole system is flawed". As it's written atonally (as opposed to tonally but constantly switching tonal centres), I understand there are different and much simpler conventions for enharmonics - but I'm using them for the first time so wasn't sure I was getting it right. It seems that there is no key signature, and the expected enharmonics seem to revolve around ensuring horizontal readability (e.g. avoiding where possible consecutive different notes in the same line). I understand that if looked at through a tonal lens, it might seem overwhelming, but it's not a tonally written piece. I could share the web page where the track in embedded so that it's much easier to hear. I'll bear that in mind for the future, but I'm not sure I'm going to be posting any more music on forums. While I've had some excellent support and advice that's really thrown light on my blind spots and helped me to move forwards, there's also been (not here) plenty of small-minded, finger-wagging abuse, which is really disheartening and demotivating, and sadly, I don't think it's worth it anymore. This seems unfortunately to be the norm, and I've come across several composers who've either stopped sharing or given up composing all together because of it.

Nice Peter! I like the original too @gaspard, is there actually an early music video game in the works? Cuz i'd be very interested in that 👀

Hey @Layne! Very tense track/cue you've concocted! I noticed that you're using col legno/with the wood of the bow in the melody of the strings. I could be wrong, but it doesn't sound practical/idiomatic for the strings to bounce the wood of their bows off their strings as quickly as you require them to in the melody here. The col legno technique, if I understand correctly, is quite an unwieldy technique on the Violin and is difficult to execute with metronomic precision which is why you'll often hear orchestras struggle with staying together when playing col legno rhythms. But other than that I like the mood/vibe of this piece! Great job and thanks for sharing!

Hi @guy500! Your music is very chromatic and richly tonal! It visits so many different key centers that they're difficult to count. Unfortunately, it's because of this that giving you advice about your score would be very difficult, as the constant changes in key make your chromaticism difficult to navigate. It's hard to give the proper enharmonic spellings of notes specific and unique to each given harmonic situation when the whole system is flawed in the first place. For example, if your tonal center is C# (as in measure 110) then you should use sharps instead of flats to express all your scale degrees (such as the Eb in measure 110 - should be D#). If you're in C# minor then this is easier, with only 4 sharps in the key signature (C#, D#, F# and G#), but if you're in the major mode there's 3 more sharps (E#, A# and B#) which is also why your F in measure 111 should be an E#. This is just a small taste of the meticulousness that it would take to clean up your score and make it readable by an actual choir. Another musical quirk you seem to have (or perhaps it's a result of working in a DAW/Cubase) is that your phrases are rarely connected and song-like/lyrical. They are constantly interrupted by what in my opinion are unnecessary rests that break the flow of the music. Of course, it would also be unusual if the, on the flip side, the choir sang constantly without any room to breathe. Btw - in order to be able to listen to your music on Soundcloud, I had to go through an annoying process of creating an account, which I never had to do before. Has Soundcloud recently changed or something? I think it would be way more convenient if in the future you just uploaded your mp3's here to each post you make. Thanks for sharing this piece!

Hi again @Fugax Contrapunctus! It's quite an interesting idea! I know you're working with strict tone rows to have produced this, but my ear cries out for some 8th note or 16th note motion in this to relieve from the constant barrage of quarter notes. I actually like the piano version a bit more than the string quartet because the tempo is a bit slower and allows the ear to absorb the harmonies more. The ending is also unusual and breaks away from the pattern established in the beginning and is more interesting because of that. Thanks for sharing!

Hey @Fugax Contrapunctus! It's great to hear that some old juvenilia of yours can be rescued from oblivion and made somewhat acceptable after you've now gained some more skill! In my opinion, it does still lack some space and comes across as somewhat robotic and mechanical with the constant barrage of 16th notes, but I don't think I can say that about your more recent works anymore. Thanks for sharing this fugue!