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Hi there! This piano piece is rather delightful. I love how charmful it is. However, in m. 6, the parallel octaves throw off the charming. In two part counterpoint, you normally want to avoid that. You should try mixing imperfect consances with perfect ones. I notice a lot parallel 3rds and 8ths through the piece. I recommend species counterpoint carefully and maybe reading through counterpoint book. There are a lot members on here who can help you.

Maybe create some motion in the inner voices like you already did in m. 4 when the melody is sitting on a long note? Like the chord in m. 5 - 6. Also something that happens in concerti is that the melody is first introduced by the orchestra alone before the soloist plays it. Maybe you could do that here where prior to the Oboe coming in the string orchestra plays the whole 14-bar melody you already have. You could use that as the introduction to the Oboe melody that you already have. Also using some octave displacement of the melody could bring some contrast between different versions of the melody (like if the beginning version of the melody without the Oboe were an octave lower for example). Those are just some ideas I had while listening. Looking great so far! Thanks for sharing.

I understand, I try to delete the e-mail addy, but I go fast and forget, miss it...he wouldn't mind, but I can see why as a matter of protocol, no.

I think he's referring to you posting personal information, like the person's email address I deleted in a post of yours. Protect your friends, anyone can view public forums and obliterate their inbox with spam 🙂

WIP Update : Orchestrated the melody I have so far. I want this section to just be the oboe + strings. I'm still trying to come up with some material to put before the oboe comes in. I start on a Gm/C chord (technically Gm7/C with the oboe melody), so I just need a progression that will lead me there 😂. I'm thinking French horn melody with suspensions and soft movements (think Hymn for Band by Hugh Stuart). If anyone has any suggestions, please let me know.

Hello everyone To warm up my warm my composition skills, I will be going counterpoint (species and such). You help will greatly apppericate. Below is first species

I only saw this by accident, and I really should listen to both, the which-sonata-is-better game! It's been a bit crazy for me. I actually wrote a piece yesterday for a young Ukrainian man's dead grandmother! That Ukrainian wants to come here, family issues, yada yada, but I have a lot on my mind. Anyway, I'll listen now. Bb Minor: first movement is fun, quarters and eighths a bit bangy-tie some together and get syncopation, but always keep up the rhythm. Liking the second movement, seems like a quirky and enjoyable scherzo. Largo, I might vary the rhythmic texture beyond straight quarters? The rondo is very classy! Eastern European quality sometimes, as I like to do: Dvorak Dumka! Whoa; going full Liszt at the end! Next, key...oh yes, e minor. Guitars like that key! From just the first movement, maybe I like this one better? You are good with register contrasts in your piano writing; been talkin' to Herr Beethoven? In general, both sonatas have minimalist passages, Philip Glass-like. Nothing wrong with that! Allegro Maestoso is good, I'm getting Schumann and Brahms lieder somehow! I like things in both, maybe edge in the e minor. I think when you write another sonata, you are the composer, but it might be a good exercise to try a minimalist one, more counterpoint than full chords, look at Hindemith Sonata #2: it just crossed my mind! You don't have to write in his style.

Sonata No. 3:https://musescore.com/user/96214813/scores/27723544

Hi all. Here's the latest version of this work. Let me know if you think it's going in the right direction? I've made it more harmonically adventurous I think. Just wonder whether my chord progressions work; or if they're a bit too silly? I was trying to use secondary dominants and secondary sub-dominants. The 1st movement probably needs some massaging to make the transitions work better. The 2nd movement is probably incomplete, unless I decide to leave it with its current ambiguous conclusion. The opening of the 3rd movement was constructed by applying negative harmony to the 1st movement. The piano chords will eventually be shared amongst the woodwind, brass and available strings. What I'm aiming for, is a modern take on Vivaldi that's not pastiche. Something a bit like "The Capriol Suite" perhaps.

Oh yes, Henry, he agrees, and it is not personal at all. I am 56, he is 22, after all. I copy his letters to my siblings and even if there were anything REALLY personal, and there is not except for friendship, I would just edit it out; what, like his excursions to Kyiv's red light district, naughty movies?🤣 This piece I pulled out of my arse yesterday is so intermingled with this unlikely friendship, and that is all it is, despite some interesting ways of addressing me, that I really have to give some background. Sure, if it breaks forum rules, delete the letters. Could not bother me, and I just won't post any more Kyrylo letters!

Is it appropriate you post your friend's personal letter to a public forum? Does your friend agree? There are lots of personal matter here. Henry

I will await your 10th theme muahahaha!

German Variationen I last wrote; German theme, German poem, German title, sure! This is my first title in Ukrainian! I suppose I will pick up a few words if Kyrylo can actually manage to knock on my door this December, and he was planning a trip to the states before he met me online. My brother is married to a Bulgarian, 20 years, and I know more Russian words than Bulgarian or Ukrainian! Robert Fox 1:41 AM (4 minutes ago) to Susan Well, despite the friend's dead grandmother and bank overdrafts that are not my fault but that of my online music publisher, things are fine with me: three days ago, Jonas, my pot dealer, actually bought a 40 for each of us, and we hung out and talked. I had given him $20 for a bud, and he gave me about $60 worth of really great homegrown, almost skunky, not super high THC but stony, burned forever, but it was what we used to call "sleepweed," so for three days I smoked it out of a tobacco pipe and took little naps! He said he would have a beer and hang out again. This is the mark of a great composer; either drink or be a pothead.🤣

Yes, I am on Discord, quite actively as I game regularly with a group of friends. I think it would be beneficial to push for more activity on the Discord side, and possibly some alterations to the discord server itself, as it's quite plain, and not extremely active compared to this forum, as far as I can tell. I have my own discord server for myself and friends to have community for many different topics, and I feel that it may help if I could provide some suggestions regarding edits to the server that would assist in navigation, accessibility and overall more engagement if the server administrators are interested in that

I'd be happy to chat in that part of the discord. As you already know, I am a member of the server, and am more active on Discord than I am here. I assume that corner of the server is reserved for Invite only, as I don't see it on the chat list.

I've added another theme to the bunch for a total of 9 themes I'm working with.

Hello all! I'm back with another piece that I've been working on over the past bit. This one I aimed for less spooky, eerie and more sci-fi. With some big, grand visuals and the voids of space represented in the sections of this piece. This has been a fun one to work on, and am looking forward to your feedback! I didn't really push forward any new instruments or ideas on this one, more just focused on what I have been familiarizing myself with and took my idea and ran. Would love to know what visuals this piece brings to mind for you as you listen! Thank you all for the feedback, looking forward to hearing your thoughts.

This is completely off-topic (you know me) but I just checked the bank, and Noteflight where I enter my music not only held my yearly $49 payment last month for seven weeks showing it as paid, and sent it to the bank when I had no money, they sent it in again this month, and I overdrafted, and I only owe it once a year! Incompetent bastards!🤣 Embarrassing, but my mommie is going to cover the overdraft, and I hope there is enough left over for some beer, because I really need it! Also embarrassing, I actually wrote a German Augmented Sixth Chord in this, that hackneyed old trick, and even a diminished seventh chord! Losing my touch perhaps, but it was done pretty fast. I am in the lovely stage of having to listen to my very sad piece over and over, to see if I missed anything in the editing. I'll go on: I will have to, before I meet Kyrylo (he's coming here) touch up my knowledge of Ukrainian composers! Prokofiev is the obvious example, born in what is now Ukraine, Glière I know I have heard but can't recall, any others you guys could suggest? FWIW, I actually WAS thinking of a Prokofiev piece when I wrote the A Section, the slow movement from his eighth piano sonata. Saddest major-key music ever written! 15:12...

It's really cool! I can't say much other than it is a neet and playful piece! I just wrote a funeral dirge this afternoon...

Here is a lovely choral piece I sent him when she first had the heart attack, and I obviously did not write it.

Midnight in Kyiv. He is probably asleep and will read it (hear it) in the morning. He lost his grandmother, his best friend and favorite relative. Come to think of it, I haven't written much in B Major in 38 years, but that is the key it came to me in! I think my sister likes it. She is following this whole Ukrainian friend thing. This also marks the first time in 38 years that I have just sat down and wrote a piece for a friend in need. Yes, my sister likes it! Susan Podzon 4:59 PM (3 minutes ago) to me I love it! You are so sweet UPDATE: Kyrylo usually writes me around quarter to one in the morning, which is quarter to nine in the morning where he is. I'll let you know what he thinks.

A two-hour dash off, so not sure about the part leading! The middle section uses a melody I wrote in college in 1989; just the melody. Для Кирила Free Sheet Music by Robert C. Fox for Piano/Keyboard | Noteflight The Ukrainian Cyrillic title is "For Kyrylo."

As the third installment in my enharmonic perpetual canon cycle, this one follows a procedure nearly identical to that of the first one and is quite similar in duration as well. The lyrics (once again, in Latin) sung by the choir translate as follows: "Change is inevitable in all things. Everything flows in the balance of those who are tempestive." As with the previous installment, the coda further drives the meaning to greater clarity and realization. YouTube video link:

You’re welcome. And after writing that, I realized that your flute & clarinet were the same dynamic, so maybe it’s just a thing you could solve using Musescore’s mixer then exporting? But at the same time, the flute’s middle range speaks very clearly and the clarinet’s middle range (written C4-Bb4) speaks the least clearly. Live players could more easily be instructed to match dynamics if you made a note. I don’t know which would be the most effective option, lowering the flute dynamic, raising the clarinet, and/or using 2 clarinets, depending on if you want it live or to sound cohesive online. But I think you’ll figure something out:)

My proposals