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This is an informal competition. All the participants are free to judge the entries as they see fit. And if you review all the participants pieces in the competition you can get an "Ardent Reviewer" badge!

Review of Waltz in f minor: Melody: I love the charming, simple melody you have in the foreground. However...as a listener, it is bit repetitive. You have established basic idea from the start well. But, you need contrast against. The audience needs to go "awe" and be able to listen piece from start to finish. This is why we have melodic form and structure. It just needs to flow logically and have contrast. Furthermore, you don't normally see that rhythm pattern in waltz. It nice to hear something different, but it makes us wonder is this a waltz or something else. Reconsider that. At m. 21, those 16th might be too difficult for pianist to perform. I know you were trying use what chopin what would have use, but he was very talented, and pianist today...their hands hurt. Trust me. Harmony: through out the entire piece, the harmony does not adventure too far away from key. (i.e. mainly diatonic). I feel that it would be better if there were chromatism with harmony and the piece modulates. Form: I am not sure what form is...

I will have listen and look over this weekend and next week: and then write my review following that.

You know...I was just about to ask for this. LOL.

I am joining this competition: I can be a judge. 🙂

Entrance here. I am in.

I am still looking for a person that will help me with this lied, by the way.

Honestly, I do not know what exactly you are talking about. Time to sell the forum, if you yourself do not know what you are doing?🤣

I am just not going to understand your very ANAL of a way you manage your forum, Peter Paper, and you are a competent composer, but I just say what I mean, no narrative to fit.

Anyway, I think this piece I wrote more than half my life ago has some legs. Too much dissonance for my old age...😉

I was truly impressed by your depth of knowledge and clarity of explanation. I would be deeply honored and genuinely grateful if I could stay in touch with you or have the opportunity to take lessons and learn from you directly. Your guidance would mean a great deal to me, and I’m very eager to learn under your instruction. With sincere respect and appreciation, Kian Mahdian

Don’t worry about it at all — and I didn’t take it the wrong way whatsoever. On the contrary, I really want to know how another musician perceives something from a different perspective than my own. Everything you said has a solid basis, and when those ideas make musical sense, they’re absolutely valid. Thank you again! I’d be very happy if you checked out my channel and listened to some of my other works — it would really mean a lot to me.

I'm glad you did! For me, I was going to have those reactions anyway, but obviously I'll have a different perspective. It's great we get to share potential reasons for feeling differently. Don't get me wrong; it's an incredibly smooth little sequence! It's actually possible that I thought it almost needed to stand out more, in a way, you know? Like the character is so different I might have wanted to hear it be a little wilder to reinforce that in my brain, you know? Not entirely sure. Kudos, again. Lovely stuff.

First of all, thank you so much for taking the time and care to listen to my work so attentively — I truly feel grateful for that. I’m really glad you liked it and appreciated the effort I put into it. Also, thank you very much for your feedback. If you’d like, I can share my own perspective on the points you mentioned. At 2:40, since there was a modulation to B major with the initial theme — and because of its nature, it didn’t really lead anywhere — the only way forward was through a series of modulations, starting with C-sharp minor. Then somehow, in a dynamic way, I had to wage a sort of “battle” of modulations to find my way back to the tonic. From my point of view, that section is actually one of my favorites; it just felt like it needed to happen that way. At 2:49, I wanted to keep that drone note more as a timbral element and to add a more dramatic texture due to the constant alternation between major and minor. From a technical standpoint, you could say it’s nothing particularly special — it’s really more about the color I wanted to convey. In general, I truly enjoy hearing everyone’s perspective and how each person approaches the piece with their own unique viewpoint — it’s very interesting. Once again, thank you, my friend, for your kind words and appreciation. Wishing you all the best!

I was truly impressed by your depth of knowledge and clarity of explanation. I would be deeply honored and genuinely grateful if I could stay in touch with you or have the opportunity to take lessons and learn from you directly. Your guidance would mean a great deal to me, and I’m very eager to learn under your instruction. With sincere respect and appreciation, Kian Mahdian

Wow, this is so pretty! I think my favorite thing about this are all these little moments that play with different dissonances: a. 0:21 holding onto the 7th into the EEC, b. 0:49 on the French 6th, technically resolving to V, bit leaving immediately after the silence. c. 3:32 holding onto fi. Maybe not unique per se, but treated with such a light touch that they really pop here! Good job! Only a couple sections I felt were a bit of a bigger change: 1. 2:40's sequence felt a little odd to me for some reason. It's a big moment, for sure, but maybe the sequence was just so rhythmically formulaic that it contrasted the unpredictable pleasantness of the rest of the piece enough to be marked for me. 2. 2:49's repeat of the low octave feels a little heavy-handed as well, but I get that you want to make the home key a little stronger after all the work you put into modulating. 3. Right at the very end, just a personal taste kinda gripe: going from 8 to 3 to 1 (scale degrees) in your highest voice feels like it's missing the 5, even though this is not an uncommon gambit. I actually quite liked the i chord with the third in the top voice because it balanced out the high SD 8. Obviously, all of the above are just personal taste things. This is a really excellently crafted work!

Because it's not a passing chord. The type of 6/4 record refers to what the bass is doing. In this case, the E in the bass isn't a "passing" tone (i.e., it's not approached by step and left by step in the same direction), so it isn't a passing 6/4 chord. Now, the third chord in m. 3 is technically a correct passing chord, but odd because it's minor (although minor v's aren't uncommon passing chords) and the aforementioned poor voice spacing. Minor v chords definitely exist, but—in America, at least—you're just taught to always raise the leading tone in minor unless otherwise marked through figured bass. V would indeed have a B-natural, but your use of the minor v, at least where I teach, in and of itself would be suspect. Any diminished or augmented interval in the upper voices is forbidden (unless extremely niche circumstances I won't cover here). If you did make the alto a B-natural in m. 3, it would become an augmented fifth, which is augmented, so it's not permitted. I mean, I'm sure there's music that ends in IV like some sort of plagal half cadence, but for harmony exercises, we really only deal with Half Cadences, Perfect Authentic Cadences, and Imperfect Authentic Cadences, with plagal extensions and deceptive cadences as ways to lengthen a progression, not end one. Ending a phrase in IV is really odd because it's functioning as predominant, which implies there should be a dominant somewhere in there. Note your wording. Authentic cadences resolve to tonic. Half cadences merely end on the dominant. Most phrases and pieces end on tonic because they "feel" resolved. I'm not explaining it in detail here, but 6/4 chords were considered the most unstable because of a remnant from Renaissance-style practice where creating a fourth between the lowest sounding note and any upper voice was a huge problem. So we only use passing, neighbor, pedal, and cadential 6/4s because 6/4 chords are dissonances and need to be treated as such. The fact that you have two 6/4 chords in a row in m. 3 is wrong because you have two dissonant chords in a row, prevents proper resolution. To be clear, all of this is only true in terms of doing exercises. Exceptions in the repertoire exist all the time.

First of all, thank you very much for your analysis. Your review was very comprehensive and meticulous, and I learned a lot from it. It was extremely helpful, and I am very grateful. Could you please explain why, in measure three, the second chord is technically a passing chord but is considered incorrect? Why are students taught to avoid the minor V chord? And in measure three, shouldn’t V necessarily include a B natural? If it has a flat, is that considered wrong? Also, I didn’t quite understand your comment about the alto leap. Did you mean an augmented or diminished leap that you said is forbidden? I have one more question: don’t we have a half plagal cadence, similar to a half authentic cadence that ends on IV? Is it incorrect if a phrase ends on IV? Why must cadences resolve to a tonic? And why is the second inversion of the chord considered wrong? Could you please explain these points in detail?

First of all, thank you very much for your analysis. Your review was very comprehensive and meticulous, and I learned a lot from it. It was extremely helpful, and I am very grateful. Could you please explain why, in measure three, the second chord is technically a passing chord but is considered incorrect? Why are students taught to avoid the minor V chord? And in measure three, shouldn’t V necessarily include a B natural? If it has a flat, is that considered wrong? Also, I didn’t quite understand your comment about the alto leap. Did you mean an augmented or diminished leap that you said is forbidden? I have one more question: don’t we have a half plagal cadence, similar to a half authentic cadence that ends on IV? Is it incorrect if a phrase ends on IV? Why must cadences resolve to a tonic? And why is the second inversion of the chord considered wrong? Could you please explain these points in detail?

This piece, to my ears, is truly perfect. Amazing. You managed—through the character you wanted to convey—to create something very special. Stylish, with wonderful and unexpected harmonic progressions. The transition to the slow section was dramatic and surprising. Overall, an outstanding piece. You’re a remarkable composer

Thx bro! I don't know why I wrote like this then but I did. The fugato is quite an unsuccessful attempt; I was not that good at counterpoint then! If this piece is written by me now, I would defintitely cut the whole fugato section out since it is totally unnecessary to retain it. For the harmonies, when I wrote those neapolitan harmonies I didn't even know the term "Neapolitan Sixrh" lol! Henry

Yo Peter, This one is really funny to listen to, nothing to add given how @Monarcheon already given such detailed advice. I like the middle section in Ab major the most. Thank for sharing! Henry

Exactly as you say, my dear friend. This kind of music and mood is what truly expresses me. That’s my temperament as a person, and it naturally comes out in my music.

Yeah, because I have just finished listening the 129 examples of the Sonata book I have read, and before writing the Adorned Zither Piano Pieces I have some energy left to review something! I think this one is more in major mode simply because the mood is more light hearted and joyful! And Schubert always did that by giving some slight hope in major mode before returning to minor which makes the tragedy more tragic, thus the minor quality more strongly. Henry