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Piece of the Beast mp3. Hey y'all. This is a piece I wrote to practice writing for piano and could fit the theme of this competition. It's not really sinister or unsettling, just has more of a dark mood. Feedback will be very much appreciated. Thanks for listening. Also, I have an Instagram music page (TayloredScores) where we as composers can keep in touch and inspire each other.

Submission link: https://www.youngcomposers.com/t48430/submission/

Sure, you're welcome to! But the competition closes tomorrow - Friday, October 31st! I am assuming that you mean that you want to submit music?

Dear readers, This is my submission for the Halloween (Fall 2025) competition. I realize it’s quite a last-minute entry, but after discovering the event a few days ago, I decided to give it a try for fun. I’m genuinely excited that we can all share and experience each other’s music. It’s wonderful to meet you all and hear your work. About this submission: Diptych for piano quartet - I haven’t settled on a title yet, so it will remain Diptych for now - a two-part musical piece, hinged yet paired to form a unified whole. It leans toward the contemporary classical genre, shaped by elements of both expressionism and impressionism. If I had more time (and I hope there will be more competitions like this), I might have written something more whimsical or festival-inspired for the occasion. Still, to me, contemporary harmonies and expressions possess their own kind of "terrifying" beauty that is celebrated on Halloween. My inspirations for this piece include artworks such as Francis Bacon’s Painting 1946 and Francisco Goya’s Saturn Devouring His Son. Kind regards, Cosmia

I'd like to participate, if possible

Sure... Or we can be lazy /s

Entry: Daunting Steps Melodies Themes Motives Harmony Chords Textures Form Development Structure Time Originality Creativity Score Presentation Instrumentation Orchestration Playability Execution of Given Challenge Taste 10 9 9.5 10 9 7 10 10 Average Score:9.3 Very good Review: Execution: 10 The entry met the two requirements for this competition: an ensemble for solo instruments with the time frame of 3-7 minutes (with a sweet spot of 5 minutes). Instrumentation : Triple tonging in the woods usually marked with Flz. (flutter tongue). That way, the flutist knows how to tongue the notes. As for String writing: there are some techincal issues to be addressed. First, Sul G marked only one measure. That seems bit confusing. The measure tremolos with double stops...that might be cause playabity issues. the port. to natural harmonics. Also, i am not sure if Arco with tremolo can be achieved then a port. That is rather demanding. In this area, the entry will be score 7. Score presentation: After a careful readful of the score, there notation and engraving errors. There was hair pin that was not algin with the staff. There are rest that 8ths rest that should be quarter rests. The 16h note triplets in compound meter might be misleading. Ergo, the score will 9 Taste: What I like about this entry is that is experiments with idioms that general audience might not be accustom to. There is high sense of chromatism that leads you wonder if this atonal or not. Ferium knows how push beyond traditional harmony and open the door into modern harmony. For that, I will give a 10 Form Development Structure Time There is a clear sense form and structure in this entry. Although it does not use classical structure, which one may be used, you have to know how modern composers use form and structure in new ways. Unlike the traditional sonata forms, this piece is more like Rapsody or similar to scherzo. Both are free forms. I am going to Scherzo in this case, since the meter matches here. (However, I am not sure...if that composer wrote that way). A Scherzo is built like minuet but in 6 or 3. And in this 6/8 with two meterical stress. And that was achieved well. 9.5. Harmony, Textures: The interplay between parts created moody polyphonic and chordal textures. 9 Melodic material The melodic material through this was well devopled. 10 Overall this orginal and creative: 10

I don't think a piece like this can fit metrics such as Melody, or Harmony, so I will just give you my thoughts. I love the use of articulations, I feel like its a great way to make a piece sound more authentic. The score is beautiful, and interesting to look through (since you use articulation marks). Is this playable? Probably! But it looks really hard. My favorite part was when the piano came in, and brought a false sense of security and peace. That part is awesome! And nice homage to Bach's Fugue and Toccata to conclude that (somewhat) peaceful, but eerie piano section! There is so much dissonance, but you do introduce some clarity as well, the mix is something I find quite interesting. Does it remind me of Halloween? Yes! At the 1 minute mark, this part in particular, reminds me of a chase scene. At 1:33, with the parallel octaves, I felt it was a good way to break the chase scene (as if the person being chased is looking around for safety). Not sure if anyone picked up on this...we all know at 3:18 we hear Bach's theme. But at 3:23, we hear it again, listen closely! Very cool piece!

Among all the other previously published canons of its type, this one might as well have turned out to be the most demanding to perform, in no small part due to the choir's conventional maximum ranges being reached in at least three voices, including both soprano (C6) and bass (E2), making it no small feat to sing. The main lyrics would roughly translate from Latin to English as follows: "In the direst of circumstances the true heart of men shall sing with great hope of leaving behind a memorable life. Even death can conquer those whose memory lies in the glory of their good deeds." The coda, as per usual, reinforces the core message in a variety of ways. YouTube video link:

Melodies Themes Motives Harmony Chords Textures Form Development Structure Time Originality Creativity Score Presentation Instrumentation Orchestration Playability Execution of Given Challenge Taste 10 6.5 9 8.5 6.5 6 10 8.5 I love this! Your theme is fantastic, fun, memorable, and lighthearted. You pulled off the Halloween vibe very well without using over the top dissonance, which in my opinion, is not easy to do. Is this playable? Probably, but it seems exhausting especially with the lack of tempo changing (one constant fast tempo) and all of those block chords. But this can be fixable if you ever wanted a live performance. The intro was also a fun way to take the listener into your variations. Melody: I'm giving you a 10 because you not only have a clear motif / melody, but its also fun and memorable. For example, this is something I can hum to. Harmony: Standard functional harmony, perhaps a bit thin at times, but because your melody is strong, I'm ok with that. Form and originality: Great form, highly structured, and a pretty original work in my opinion. Score Presentation and Playability: This is where there could be issues. Two pianos are fun, but expensive if you wanted to get a performance. And a lot of unison between the pianos can probably create some strange sounds, and potentially thin harmony. I'm not sure this would have been a Bach approved piece because of that, but we can look the other way here because we are in 2025, not the 1700s. Execution of Challenge and Taste: I gave you high scores here because I feel like you nailed the most important part of the challenge...to create a Halloween piece. When you don't even have to describe the piece, and you just feel the holiday vibe, you know you delivered.

submission time

this is a submission for the 2025 halloween competition. i was just really going for a spooky halloweeny vibe but not like "terror and dread and killer" vibes. it's definitely lighter than the other submitted pieces. also, contrabassoon! very spooky sounding instrument, and i've tried my best to harness that specific quality of it. enjoy!

Melodies Themes Motives Harmony Chords Textures Form Development Structure Time Originality Creativity Score Presentation Instrumentation Orchestration Playability Execution of Given Challenge Taste 7.5 8.5 8.5 7 8 10 9.5 8.5 The intro is fantastic! I can definitely see this as a sinister happy go lucky ice cream truck, traveling through the night. It just needs some bells. This also has a twilight zone vibe in my opinion. The harmony and dissonance is spot on for a piece like this. And about 3 minutes in, I am hearing some form develop. So we go from a somewhat free-form unstructured intro into a structured bit (the bossa nova-esque section) which I think fits very well here. Melody: My favorite part was your intro, leading into the development of the piece. Middle section is fun too though. At first I wasn't sure about your ending, but listening to it again, I think it works. The ending in fact leads to some interesting, unresolved suspense. Harmony: Lots of dissonance here but it gets the job done well. Harmony is important when it comes to mood, which influences the execution of challenge metric. Form: Free form intro, followed by bossa nova like structure, yields a form I could follow. This seems like an ABA form. Originality: I think this is pretty original. I get twilight zone vibes, but, that's ok, you put your own twist on this. Score Presentation & Playability: Nice layout, easy to follow, and the note density for a woodwind quintet seemed more than reasonable. I don't see any issues with playability. Exeuction of challenge & Taste: Love the vibe, and you know what, it definitely makes me think of a Halloween Ice cream truck. You just need the bells now and we got ourselves an ice cream truck slasher film!

Melodies Themes Motives Harmony Chords Textures Form Development Structure Time Originality Creativity Score Presentation Instrumentation Orchestration Playability Execution of Given Challenge Taste 6.5 4 7 8 8 10 7.5 4.5 Hey, so you have a pretty distinct motif and theme, and your overall mood does portray something spooky. I'm not sure I would have realized this was about killer clowns, but the general vibe is there. And you have some nice instances of dissonance to help amplify the mood! Fun use of articulations and pizzicato as well! Melody, Themes and Motives: You do have a clear theme / motive which is fun to pick out. Harmony: You had some instances of dissonance, but aside from that, I couldn't pick out any obvious key changes, modulations, and the harmony seemed quite static. There may have been some key changing now that I am listening again, but they are brief. Also, sometimes weaker harmony is fine, but only if the melody or theme is strong. Form: I had no problem following the structure, and your clear themes and simple harmony actually work in favor here! Originality & Playability: I think this is pretty original, and it should be quite playable. Execution: I do get Halloween vibes, but like I said in my summary, I'm not sure I would have gotten the Killer Clown vibes. Taste: I love darker music like this, but either the melody or harmony has to be a little stronger in my opinion.

Melodies Themes Motives Harmony Chords Textures Form Development Structure Time Originality Creativity Score Presentation Instrumentation Orchestration Playability Execution of Given Challenge Taste 5.5 8 8 9.5 10 7 5 7.25 What an adventurous trio! And your key changing is really fun, especially around the 3:25 and 3:40 mark. I had mixed feelings about whether this felt like a Halloween piece though. But there are certainly sections that represent structured chaos and friction. As for your time signatures, very abnormal (when was the last time I saw 3/16?) but hey, you made it work! Melodies & Form: I think you had some fun motifs, especially in the Bassoon. I do think this piece is pretty structured, but the melody / themes are sometimes is hard to piece together. Harmony: This modern sounding trio creates some gorgeous harmonies, especially towards the end! Creativity & Score Presentation: Beautiful score presentation, and original! Playability: Not sure, but the note density seems pretty high for a woodwind trio. Also, there are a lot of time signature changes that could be hard to follow. Execution: As I stated in my summary, it doesn't quite sound like a Halloween piece to me. But if you were to put this in a cartoon, I think that's where the piece would shine! Taste: I listened to this a few times to make out the structure so I could give a somewhat coherent review. I have to say, the style grew on me. Originally I gave this a 6.5 from my first listen, but I could bump that up to an 8. So I just averaged them out, and that's why I put a 7.25 in case your wondering!

I hear he is writing music for a new film...

Hi Justin. Welcome to the forums! I'll try to be brief here and I will possibly fail terribly. First of all, nice scoring, very standard and professional looking. "The winds enrapture a surreal version with significant variance in color and timbre, demonstrating the depth and nuance that the smoke and candle cannot on their own." (A surreal version of what? Fumages?) "This piece takes that imagery into sound, with wisps of timbre, sudden bursts, and eerie colorations from the woodwinds. It mirrors candlelight, smoke, and the blurred line between reality and apparition—an atmosphere that fits the surreal and haunting spirit of Halloween." This is an informal competition. I am aware that kind of "selling" your piece with words like these is the everyday basis, the norm, specially in more "serious" ($$$) music composition competitions, calls for scores, etc. and in some other places within this vast realm. Let me just state that there's no need to here, and frankly after listening to your work for the fourth time (1st time before reading the speech in the PDF, 2nd-4th after having read both small texts) I still can't see how what you say your piece depicts matches in any way or form with halloween, or even spookish fumages, of course, other than by you yourself fixing these concepts and thus tying them to your music by means of the words that you have put before the very score begins. This is not to say Fumages themselves are not spooky or suggest Halloween-like sensations. To me, they very much are (some): So there are two possibilities, either you composed this piece in 2024 with "an atmosphere that fits the surreal and haunting spirit of Halloween" in mind or you submitted it elsewhere, with another speech more adequate to that moment, and then reused it here. If it's the former, weird that no reference to Halloween is found in your introductory text. If it's the latter, I do not buy it and there is no need to do that here 😉. Let's finally continue to the piece itself. Not sure if the audio is incorrect at the beginning or it's just on my end but I hear M9 like this instead of how it's written. Other measures with this rhytmic fragment happen to sound like that sound-wise. Just a detail. Second, I do think I have listened to this piece before. Maybe it's just a coincidence. Third: I more or less agree with the commentary of @UncleRed99. I myself have pieces with X/16 tempi indications and just for reference I don't feel it Halloweenish but I did enjoy some parts of it. I'm dropping an example just for future reference: These are the first bars of Beethoven's Sonata No. 32, 2nd movement. Why? Sure there must be lots of discussion for why the F did our Ludwig choose 9/16 instead 9/8 and possibly many members here have their own ideas! But I digress. Summarising a lot, and Halloweenish considerations aside, you got in my humble opinion a VERY solid introductory section! The way instruments meet while entering the score feels very natural to me and they begin blending so well, creating a nice texture, but then they get a bit lost into some hmmm... not chaotic but vague and definitely not convincing —to me obviously— passages where the music feels like it wants to go to many places at the same time. This is most likely where the atmospheric approach should overcome the typical melody+harmony approach but it doesn't seem to stick to any particular one for long. It's all moments of calm vs moments of half-intricated lines intertwining each other. The former I liked, the latter not so much. My favourite parts of the score are probably the already mentioned beginning and undoubtedly letters M to O, specially the transition from O to P, very well done. You clearly know your craft Justin. Hats off for that great O->P. All in all, a piece that is more or less enjoyable to me, with its ups and downs sure, and imo a brilliant transition. After many listenings, it ended up almost convincing me, specially towards the end of it. Many thanks for submitting your work here, Justin! Best regards, Daniel–Ø.

Walking home in the moonlight with some sci-fi vibes.

We would be more than happy if more members can review more frequently!! (So that I can be lazy and eat and sleep lol)

That makes sense.

Well this template is only for judging a competition, for a daily review it's not mandatory to review all of the aspects in the template! Henry

I feel this is great a way to review works in the forum; however, it will need to adjust to other genres: sound tracks and incidental music; electronic music; Pop music... For these will not have score but can be scored in other ways. Can we adjust the template to genre?

Thank you for the review for minuet. Thank you!

Hi @Musi Make! Welcome to the forum! Sorry for a late reply, the hype in the Hallloween competition has covered the site! I quite like this soundtrack, it definitely reminds me of RPG game BGM. Thx for sharing. Henry