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Melodies Themes Motives Harmony Chords Textures Form Development Structure Time Originality Creativity Score Presentation Instrumentation Orchestration Playability Execution of Given Challenge Taste 10 8 10 10 10 9.5 10 9 VERY fun melody, highly original, clear structure and clearly able to create that Halloween vibe in a fun whimsical way! And I love the way you are able make use of your instruments to your advantage to help progress the piece. The breaks in your music also feel natural, and help build the suspense. Melody and Harmony: Beautiful melody, it's perfect! The supporting harmony is fun, clear, and helps move things along. Form and originality: Your music reads like a book, it has a clear intro, body and ending. The natural breaks are equivalent to paragraphs, and you build suspense this way much like a novel. Score Presentation & Playability: Good structure, clear music notation, reasonable tempo and natural breaks all contribute to the high score presentation + playability metric. Execution and taste: Personally I enjoyed the full piece, and the general mood reminds me a lot of a lighthearted Halloween dance! The breaks in this piece also contribute to the mood changes, which helps accentuate your catchy melody.

yeah i could see that actually. a large part of the main theme consists of a downward sequence of the motif. yet, the part that teases it repeats the motif a lot too. so, i get not catching the first statement of the main theme. though i've tried to signal it by putting it after the climax of the intro with dynamic and textural contrast this is actually parts of my weakness i've been trying to work on: letting themes breathe more with rests or signalling the end of a part clearly. the time limit is also a factor here cus i'd give longer rests to more sections if there was more time.

hahahaha, OH THE SHAME WILL BE SEEN

Your caliber of writing deserves to be entered with all the others, you're great! Thanks for the recommendation, I'll check out his music

Hi! Drive links are fine, but you can also just drag your files here and they will be automatically shown. Welcome to the forums! In fact it seems like a work with five movements according to the PDF itself, but the OP submitted 3 here. Multi-movement works are fine, it's a shame you had to split it up. Do not hesitate on publishing the rest anyways! On the engraving plane, I would recommended you to mark the beginning of each movement with its subtitle. Just a detail, but a neat one if you ask me! There are some overlaps here and there but overall the score seems idiomatic for strings. Other users, better acquainted with these instruments may disagree or agree, but I see that you let them "breathe" (except at some spots, e.g: M19-25 on the Scherzando, Violin I, but still probably not too difficult to get) and that you have not written anything incredibly difficult. Articulations are detailed, harmonics are marked, there's a good use of dynamics... First movement starts off decently, but what I liked the most was the groove that it takes sometimes. Wish it had lasted more! This movement alone could have been enough as an entry for the competition, and I find it more or less appealing after a few listens! The second movement also has this groovy feeling that appears and disappears. It takes a bit of time to actually get started and make full use of that swing! This also happened to a degree in the prior movement, you seemed to intentionally try to make the piece not too rooted in that catchy rhythmic pattern. Not sure if it was the best choice or if the way to avoid it was optimal. The third one was the most tense and there were some really GOOD moments in there, but I can't get off the impression that you added unnecessary passages to increase that tension. It may be just me, though. All in all, a great submission. Many thanks for showing it here 🙂 and good luck in the polls! Best regards, Daniel–Ø.

Yeah, I've settled on making it readable for me, and it could always be spelled differently for certain instruments and spots if the need ever arose. The diminshed scale stuff was fun though, I have decent experience with the whole-half dim. scale but not so much with the half-whole. Very different colors harmonically 🙂 Nice, I'll check it out! I don't remember, it's been so long since I've seen those movies haha. I only remember Marty playing guitar 😄 Thanks Peter! Some of the technique stuff I wanted to do my samples wouldn't allow, but I liked the way the glissandos turned out. This piece made me realize I need to keep practicing string writing, I was afraid of double stops and playability at such a fast tempo. With more time and study, I would have been more fearless with it, but I still like the way it turned out. I'm glad it evoked such scary imagery for you!

@Thatguy v2.0Thank you so much, really nice of you to say! This was my first submission ever, I have not participated in any competitions before, which is why I love the fact it's informal and open to such wonderful community of individuals, so I wanted to try it out to get more encouragement for applying haha. When it comes to recording - the piano part is played by one of my collegues and my favorite composer of this age: Veljko Nenadić, If you like exploring contemporary music I highly recommend ( https://www.youtube.com/c/VeljkoNenadić ). The strings were added afterwards and they are midi. ^^

it is a mix and it's all free: flute, contrabassoon: Symphonic Sounds (Flute SSO, Contrabassoon SSO) violin: VSCO-2-CE-1.1.0 (Versillian Community Chamber Orchestra) cello: Virtual Playing Orchestra 3 (for the tremolo i used the orchestral one cus i couldnt find one for solo cello) piano: Yamaha C5 Grand-v2.4 do keep in mind that i also manually edit the velocity of every single note and add reverb but yoursss is my favoriteee, i actually got a bit creeped out listening to it. but yeah your description of my style is pretty accurate, no matter how many times i've tried to tone down the wildness, the wildness creeps back thanks for the comments !!!

I know your pain, I think it's rained for a week straight. But Halloween is tonight for me, maybe the dreary cloudy vibe will help the snobbery of my vampire persona Thanks for commenting, glad you liked it! TFW you hear a Henryism for the first time 😄 Hahahahaha! Glad I can keep you on your toes. Thanks for the kind words Mike! Hey thanks for commenting, I'm glad you liked it! Regarding the ledger lines, I agree. How should it be written? I know string players don't always mind ledger lines because of hand positions, but I'm not sure.

Oh... ferrum... THAT guy...right, um, you didn't hear? He uh, couldn't get one submitted in time. Said he had other things to do gooooooooooooood Awesome! I don't think I've heard much of his work since college, thanks for the recommendation! I love hearing what my music makes people think of Thanks buddy, we're all lucky that you're around to give such detailed feedback on our music. I don't have a lot of people to share this kind of music with, so I'm really happy you enjoyed this one! Thanks for your enthusiasm Henry! 💋

Wow, it seems like this competition really attracted top tier talent. I didn't realize such beauty could come from such a dissonant language! The performers were incredible too, any shout outs to them? You absolutely captured the spirit of our competition, even though written for another purpose. As others have said, I felt calm in a sea of unpredictability and horror, sort of like watching the world burn through a lens. Thanks for participating in our fun event, your music is wonderful!

pretty cool, you should comment on others' music!

pretty cool, you should comment on others' music!

Wow, what a wild ride this gave! Can't get over how great it is, I listened a few times, with and without the score. I think it's better to just listen to this one at first, the score is so detailed and busy that it's hard to keep up for me haha. Really? Out of everyone, I think yours is the one that has it all. Maybe not the most killer, or the most spooky, etc., but your piece captures all the halloweens to me. Your sound samples are phenomenal btw, what do you use? I'm assuming a mix? I've probably asked you before, sorry lol. I'm curious what's out there nowadays (for ease, I stick with Noteperformer/Sibelius just because they're so integrated with each other, but I use a DAW for guitar stuff). I really liked some of the string techniques, the tremolos were hott. I think your themes were stated really well, and your harmonic intent seemed clear. Your style is wild, like you tell a story with your writing but the book is Kafkaesque or like Fear and Loathing... you take us on a ride and we're just supposed to buckle up lol. I love it, yours is my favorite! It was really cool to see the different directions everyone took, I'm curious to see what people favor in the votes.

Worked like a charm, thanks!

There are dynamics and bowings and expression marks in the manuscript of the original song, but I don't mess with all that in Noteflight. It is sheer hell entering just the bare notes!😉

Hey there Wieland Cool music, it definitely fits the theme of the competition! You're a very solid composer, as your music seems deeply rooted in a heavy contrapuntal style. That style usually isn't for me personally, but I had no problem staying engaged throughout your whole piece. I'm not offering too much in terms of critique for these halloween pieces, moreso just admiration and appreciation. Thanks for sharing this, and I hope it was fun and worthwhile learning how to orchestrate one of your own works. 🙂 Cast your votes in the polls too!

Thanks for your feedback. It's probably true that this isn't really in the spirit of the holiday since everyone's writing about it. In our country, it's not celebrated at all, so I have a hard time with it.

Thanks for your comments, the piano was damaged, but I was not held responsible, so don't worry)

Thanks for your comments. Yes, some chords with black and white clusters can't be played 100 percent accurately, and that's not necessary. It would just be much more difficult to write out what would work out exactly given the tempo. I wanted the widest possible range of clusters.

Thanks for your comments! Yes, it wasn't written for this considering, my English is very bad and didn't understand requirements, I think the finished composition should be suitable

Melodies Themes Motives Harmony Chords Textures Form Development Structure Time Originality Creativity Score Presentation Instrumentation Orchestration Playability Execution of Given Challenge Taste 8.5 ??? maybe 7? 8 10 9 10 4.5 7 This is intense! Very nice melody, which is represented throughout the piece in various methods. The up/down beats, for example on bar 22, very cool technique. Very complex work, and looks like you've gotten a performance of this, which is impressive. So playability will automatically have to be a 10, but had I not known this, I might give it a 6 or 7, because you'd need professional performers here. Melodies and harmony: Melody is pronounced, and very good. I'm not sure how to rate harmony here, this is not that type of piece. Form: I definitely had to listen a few times but the form seems pretty well defined. Following your melody and musical ideas are not hard at all once you learn the format. Originality and Score Presentation: Highly original work and your score clearly outlines your ideas. Playability: If you got a performance, this has to be a 10, right? But this is a very difficult piece of music to perform, I may have given this a 6 or 7 otherwise. Execution of Challenge and taste: Excellent piece, but this just does not remind me of Halloween. It's definitely intense, but for Halloween I expect either horror, or whimsical march-like music (for both adults and kids). This is clearly an art piece.

Melodies Themes Motives Harmony Chords Textures Form Development Structure Time Originality Creativity Score Presentation Instrumentation Orchestration Playability Execution of Given Challenge Taste 6 + 9 + 10 9 + 8 + 8 10 10 10 9 5.5 + 7.5 + 10 7.5 + 9 + 10 Mothman has an avante-garde feeling, which helps portray a specified mood. In my opinion, the mood does not represent horror or panic, but more of an awakening, with some friction. Perhaps this could represent certain aspects of Halloween, so, that's why I gave this movement 5.5 out of 10 for execution of challenge. The Letiche is an awesome movement, and has the best rhythm out of the three. Highly articulated and lyrical, extremely fun to listen to! Makes you want to dance, possibly with spirits in the room! More Halloween-esque. And finally, my favorite of your movements was El Chupacabra. I feel like this one represents Halloween the most. And the melody, hands down, exceptional. Everything leading up to the melody is perfect, because you do a great job building up that tension. The rhythm here is actually really good too, maybe even on par with Letiche, it's just less pronounced (this is not a criticism). Letiche is more deliberate with its rhythmic changes, this piece, is VERY smooth! * For certain metrics, my scores will be in order from Mothman, Letiche, and Chupacabra (a + b + c). Otherwise I will give one score for metrics such as score presentation, playability, etc. Melodies and Harmony: Honestly, overall you have excellent melodies and supporting harmony. Mothman had the weakest, but that was clearly by design (that's why I separated the scores) Form creativity and score presentation: Beautiful score, ultra clear form broken up by movements, and very creative! Playability: Although challenging with the articulations, and other techniques used, seems playable to me. Execuation of challenge: Mothman just feels like it's meant for a completely different type of listening experience. The Letiche is more in line with Halloween I think, given the mood and fun rhythmic patterns, and I feel like Chupacabra is spot on with the Halloween vibe. Taste: I love them all. Even my least favorite of the 3 is awesome. You show discipline in writing for a specific mood, and it seems like you have a lot of experience with music composition.

Dear friends, hello! I'm Zhang Wenhao, a singer-songwriter from China. It's been a while! This time, I'd like to share with you a folk song that describes the comfort, ease and relaxation of rural life. It's called "Travel Notes of Mountains and Waters". This song tells the story of traveling and enjoying the mountains and waters. I think many people nowadays are under too much pressure from work and life, and they need an outlet to vent and relax. So I'm presenting this "Travel Notes of Mountains and Waters" to you all. I hope that after hearing it, you can temporarily forget your physical and mental fatigue and find solace. 亲爱的朋友们，你们好，我是来自中国的创作歌手张文灏，好久不见！这次来跟大家分享的是一首描写乡村田园生活的舒适、惬意、放松的民谣作品，名字叫《山水游记》。 这首歌讲的是旅行中游山玩水的故事。我觉得现在很多人的工作、生活压力都太大了，需要一个出口来宣泄、放松，所以把这首《山水游记》送给大家，愿你们听到以后，可以暂时忘记身心的疲惫，得到慰藉。 张文灏-山水游记.mp3 歌词如下/The lyrics are as follows： 《山水游记》/《Landscape Travel Notes》 作曲/Composed by：张文灏 Zhang Wenhao 作词/Lyrics by：张文灏 Zhang Wenhao 山腰上吹拂过一枕清风 听山脚蜿蜒过一泓水流 采茶女背着箩筐桥上走 茶歌悠悠飘到山的那头 硕果香把整座山园甜透 小朋友伸着鼻子贪婪嗅 穿过孩群我们到池塘口 有自在蝌蚪和鱼来回游 这山与水 我梦里来过 水畔有个你 山上有个我 你在山水中 笑着对我说 钟爱这秀美 如画的景色 这山与水 我梦里来过 水畔有个你 山上有个我 你在山水中 笑着对我说 钟爱这高雅 如诗的生活 怡人的稻花香随风飞舞 抚摸着脸颊像柔和丝绸 石径旁清泉自顾自清澈 像这处世外桃源的清幽 日头下落世界披上霞红 不远处袅袅炊烟升得稠 回到村庄我们举酒欢歌 饮尽山的包容水的温柔 这山与水 我梦里来过 水畔有个你 山上有个我 你在山水中 笑着对我说 钟爱这秀美 如画的景色 这山与水 我梦里来过 水畔有个你 山上有个我 你在山水中 笑着对我说 钟爱这高雅 如诗的生活

Thank you all so much for these wonderful comments and suggestions, I'm really appreciative of them! Absolutely agreed on the sheet music suggestions, I created it in a bit of a hurry but its generally nice to know what else can be done on top of it. With this I only didn't because of category difference between them, still I understand it would look much better if aligned. About form, it's definitely music with free form, maybe there could be a ternary song form (ABA usually) drawn from it because I do have some material that comes back later or is developed from. But generally I don't do very well with musical forms when composing especially that of classical era (sonatas, rondos etc.)