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Hi @JorgeDavid! Welcome back! I think the piece is very close to being done! It might be too easy a solution to you or end the piece too early but you could just make a C minor or major chord at the end after what you have right now and call it finished. Unless you see a way to extend the piece further and treat what you have right now as a double exposition of a larger form? Thanks for sharing!

Thanks for your feedback. Yes, this is not really an invention, lol. I'll try to make a real one. I enclose the original motive of the exercise. The convention in my books, is that the motives do begin on the tonic or the 5th of the key. But not on the 3rd, in a 1st inversion. The motive bears some ambiguity about the key in me1 but the stretto in me2 make it clear. Feel free to show me an intro to your taste in me1. :)

Hello everyone, hope you are doing great! As always I am still focusing on improving my piano playing and not composing, but today I decided to sit down and composed a little draft. I was wondering what your thoughts were. It is a short section (it could be the first section of a small piece) for string quintet. Now sure whether I should continue it, put it aside, or maybe use only some parts for a future piece. If I decide to continue, I am not sure what to do with it, either. I guess just a simple binary/ternary piece as most times. It starts in C major but it immediately goes to C minor (where it spends most of the section) so I just called it Cmaj/min draft. For this one, I let my ideas flow quite freely so the melody is more chaotic than my usual. Do you think it is good enough to be used? Any feedback is welcome! Thank you!

I took time to listen to this set of variations. Since you got comments about monotonous experience by other, I think the best solution to this would be modulations to other keys, tempo changes, more varied use of instruments (a theme in bass clarinet every now and then) and more polyphony. The theme is memorable and instantly captures the attention. You should work on this piece to make it better, you might eventually produce a masterpiece.

Thanks for the comment. I will check you Variations soon. I am not really a bassist, my elder daughter is. I do play tamburitza bass, called "berde" occasionally. It has frets like guitar.

I agree with PeterthePapercomPoser, I don't like this midi version at all considering articulation. I believe the piece is all legato, these non legatos at least here sound like quasi staccatos. If you wanted staccato as a contrast, you should have written it in the score. How about pizzicatos instead of these non legato passages? I personally would use legato slurs all the time since the character of the piece is calm and melodic. The organic flow of key changes sounds nice, while the middle sounds almost stuck too much in diatonic c minor although I believe it is done on purpose: the a section has a chromatic flow, while the b section does not.

Hi @kaiyunmusic! I love your soft-jazz vibe in this piece. It reminds me how a dominant chord doesn't have to have a leading tone. And I like how you resolved on a major 7th chord without a 3rd. Harmonic nuances that give that relaxing jazz vibe. The piece is notated well although I might not have used triplets in the penultimate bar but I'm assuming you did that for the sake of your rendition/notation program? Thanks for sharing!

Hey @Uhor! I love the dissonant and mysterious vibe, but I long for some themes in that vibe. I could be wrong but it's hard for me to hear memorable themes in this. Thanks for sharing! I've been doing my own experiments in quartal harmony guided by Persichetti's "20th Century Harmony" book. Thanks for sharing!

Hi again @MJFOBOE! I like the piece overall. The only thing that bothered me is some of the inconsistent articulations. I think I hear the figure in the Viola at bar 2, 4 and 102 and 104 as if it should be legato but you have it separated. Later on in the piece you slur those notes both in the Piano and the Viola so to me it seems inconsistent. And the staccato and separated version of it sounds really mechanical imo. Thanks for sharing this playful piece!

You have no idea the wonderful suggestion you have bestowed upon me. I have been searching for various ways to capture a steam locomotive with the western orchestra. That piece is SO COOL!! It's luckily on IMSLP too, so now I have a score I can study. Thank you!! Yeah... The repetition was more for simplicity to be blunt. I felt I did good with the saxophone writing, however, I admit I am not too knowledgeable on ways to utilize the brass in the Big Band style. In the film, it is cut in half with the key change happening after the first shout/ chorus section. So in context, it only repeats the form twice. I copied the first section in this version as a means to extend the work. Thanks for the comments!

Hello again @MK_Piano! This is a cool big band piece meant to imitate a train! I wonder if you've ever heard of the Copenhagen Steam Railway Galop? It is another wonderful example of a piece meant to imitate the sound of a train getting started and chugging along. It's a very musically inspirational topic to write music to. And supposedly, Prokofiev loved to write music on train rides. I think there are some obvious flaws in your piece so please forgive me for pointing them out! LoL The piece is very simple and once it gets started, doesn't know what to do with itself. You employ the use of the common up a step modulation to try and infuse the music with some freshness and excitement towards the end of the piece. I've been guilty of using that kind of modulation myself as well. But the piece is basically the same 28 measure phrases repeated over and over. That's my only critique. It would have been nice to hear some kind of development or maybe variations? Thanks for sharing!

Hello @Frederic Gill and welcome to the forum! This is a nice invention! I think, usually, the primary goal of the exposition in an invention is to maintain the melodic identity of the motive. But here you change the motive in the imitation. And the counter-motive doesn't keep the same contour as the first instance in the right hand in measure 2. The 1st inversion triad is a prominent figure that gives this invention its melodic definition so it would have been nice to keep it intact throughout the invention. Also, since the first three notes outline a Bb minor chord in first inversion, it would have been nice to have some kind of accompaniment in the left hand from the very beginning of the piece to help solidify the harmonic identity and remove any doubt the listener might have as to whether the invention is in Db major or in Bb minor. Thanks for sharing!

Hello @Sojar Voglar and welcome back to the forum! This piece truly is "always something unique"! It's so mysterious and ebbing with variety although it is very well unified and coherent. I think I caught some of the mistakes in the performance when I followed along with the score - perhaps the flautist didn't quite play their part correctly in the slap-tongue section of the piece? Seems like their line was missing here and there. I love the venue of the Clarinet Quartet having played in one myself in high school. I also have a piece on here - 10 Variations on a Gypsy Theme for Clarinet Quartet. Check it out if you feel like it! But your instrumental combination is so much more creative! It's a great set of colors - Each instrument offers something distinctive to the ensemble. It's wonderful to listen to. You are a bassist, correct? That explains why you included a Contrabass in the piece. I thought maybe a bassoon would have been more appropriate among all the woodwinds. Congratulations and thanks for sharing!

Hi @Cafebabe! This is a nice classical sonata! The thing that bothers me when listening to this at first is the really bad balance between the melodic right hand and the accompanying left hand. The left hand should be softer and the melody in the right brought out more to be in high relief. Before, the only way to make this happen is to use MS Basic Soundfonts and use velocity values for the right hand. But I don't know if you know about a recent trick I learned in writing piano music in Musescore Studio 4 using the Musesounds Piano. What I do now is I write the piece for two tracks of basically two separate pianos - one for each hand. I go to the layout options and have each piano displayed with only one clef in one staff rather than in a grand staff for both. Then I bracket them as if they're one grand staff but each retains its own individual identity. This way I can give each hand its own dedicated dynamics and volume, reverb and other settings giving me more control over what is the most prominent part of the composition at any given point. I also noticed that you don't have any dynamics in your piece at all. Maybe you didn't find it necessary, and it could be argued, it is more historically accurate if its meant to be played on a period instrument. Musically, I find the retransition back to F major at the end of the exposition a little abrupt and forced. Another thing is that I'd expect each theme in a sonata to have ample time to speak before going into transitional figures. This would usually be done by giving the themes a full period, double period or sentence form which you don't do and it makes the themes seem like they can't stand still and start to flit about try to run away from themselves before the listener has even had a chance to absorb them. Also, when the development section starts, it seems like it's just a chord progression without really any relation to the themes. It makes me question what, if anything, is being developed. Although I had a lot of critiques of this piece, I did find it an overall enjoyable easy listening experience. Thanks for sharing!

Hi @Bjarke! The piece starts in a soft and dark place giving it lots of room to grow. The trumpet melody at 0:43 is the first instance of a theme in the piece that could be developed. At 1:03 you reiterate the theme in the choir with variation. At 1:33 the thematic exposition is finished and you continue the piece with a sequence of ostinati over low brass accompaniment. At 1:52 you introduce a trumpet fanfare that is then continued in the strings with brass ostinati underneath. At 2:13 you introduce a rising choir and brass melody. At 2:38 you've modulated into a nice string melody. At 2:53 you start an intense passage for strings and brass. There is some relief from this intensity at 3:17 with the staccato brass and string hits. At 3:49 you have an intriguing string ostinato that in my opinion could have started softer to give it more room to crescendo towards the end of the piece. Now to give my more overall impression of the whole piece: I think the piece is exciting and full of energy but it suffers in terms of musical coherence and unity. The trumpet theme at 0:43 is not particularly notable - in terms of melodic construction, it starts off strong and heroic but soon suffers from lack of inner melodic coherence. What I mean is that melodies usually have some kind of self-similarity to give them a hook or a catchiness to the listener. You do actually reiterate the hook of your trumpet melody in your string melody at 2:38 with variation which is a nice way to add some unity to the piece, but none of the other material in the piece seems to be related to the theme which is a shame and why I would say that overall, your piece lacks unity. I would also say that it suffers from too much variety - it's a jumble of mostly unrelated ideas thrown together. And the overall sense of the piece (besides the introduction) is to be hard, fast and loud without very many places where you let up the intensity which isn't very musical. Like at 3:49 where I felt like you really could have drawn the listener in by bringing the dynamics of the whole orchestra way down so as to lead the piece with a big crescendo to the conclusion which would have been more effective imo. Perhaps the reason why the piece resulted to be the way it is is because of what you chose to focus on when you were writing it? It seems like "Composition in four hours without any breaks" was your goal rather than any kind of particular musical goal or inspiration. Music is boring when it's approached in such a way as to look at it only as a way to force oneself to work on something without any breaks. And why wouldn't you take any breaks? Is there any particular reason? That doesn't seem like a significant nor important goal in music. For me, composition usually goes in cycles: if I haven't composed something in a long time, I'll start out with something small to warm up, then I'll move on to progressively more substantial and involved musical projects. Whether I take a break or not is not even something I pay attention to nor aspire to avoid. Just saying: you might want to rethink what's important to you in music or what your musical values are because it seems to me like you're not focusing on the right thing. But everyone is different and you might not agree - if not, by all means continue writing the way you do and know how! Thanks for sharing.

Any feedback is largely apprciated. Thanks.

I have a question about dictation. I’d like the melody that appears 25 seconds in (measure 17) to have a more “jumpy” rhythm. This is the audio of how I want it to sound. Basically some parts (like measure 19) are little quicker and come in a little earlier. Is there a way I can write this in the sheet music? Any help is appreciated.

The polychords are starting to make the music sound much more adventurous, and perhaps more like Ravel. I feel like there's a lot more opportunity with this style of music. Great job, sounds awesome!

I like it, sounds like music from an old film. Fun nuances around the instrumentation (the staccato and rhythms).