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I just want to let you guys know that I greatly appreciate you guys joining The Arcane Alchemy. Here we will make some amazing pieces and come up with some great q&a's, so again thank you guys so much for joining!

Something that may be of interest to young composers who use virtual instruments for their own orchestral music: an example of producing a high complexity level piece such as Mahler's 6th Symphony with Vienna Symphonic Library. (This is the first part, up to the transition to the 2nd main subject. I will be adding the coming sections in this thread as they are finished.) If you are aware of any other (good or bad) attempts at producing (even an excerpt of) the 6th Symphony with virtual instruments, do let me know. Also, if this should inspire you to make your own attempt at this piece, I'll be happy to listen to it and discuss it with you.

I thoroughly enjoyed this piece. Utilizes the full instrument very well. I enjoyed the upward sequences, really built excitement. 1:50 beautiful. 2:45 a wonderful build up. 3:40 exciting. 4:05 awesome, and great playing here. Nice ending.

Bravo, the different colors by the orchestra were great. (the soloist doesn't always play with perfect intonation, which made it hard to judge the quality of your solo line, but it felt a little unjoyful.) A gorgeous piece.

beginning perfectly encapsulates the vibe you're looking for, cant wait to see what else you do with these effects. 1:30 perfect melody, I do wish the melody pierced through the background a little better. 2:30 I feel like it would've developed the 1:30 melody a different way, rather than choosing a new melody. A good use of changing sounds for the melody, adds some good layers, especially when they overlap.

I also want to add here, that if anyone wants to send any music my way, they totally can. If it is capable of being sung by a baritone, I am offering my time to sing your melodies for you (without accompaniment) so you can hear it in a real voice. These would NOT be for commercial OR public use, but independent study unless otherwise communicated. If you have something for a soprano or tenor which would not fit my voice, you can transpose it yourself down to a baritone range and I can sing it for you. I don't expect anything in return, but I do hope y'all use this opportunity. I too often see composers writing difficult music for the voice, when in my opinion, the art is at it's best when easy for the singer. I am not currently accepting music for recitals, but I am always hunting.

I started 2 months ago.

Firstly, stylistically, I do not like the separated flags for each syllable. To quote "Some guy that writes music", in the past the notation of separate flags was common but recently it has been abandoned in favor of proper beaming. And I like that, even myself as an experienced choral singer I have always prefered now popular prober beaming notation. This composition requires a skilled singer with large range, but they do exist. Generally, it is nice music, well suited to the poetry, the form is also balanced. I prefer more trips towards chromatics and extended tonality, but that's my personal approach.

Thanks, @PeterthePapercomPoser. I browse through the forum from time to time, although I do not have much time to listen lots of things attentively :S. I have bookmarked some of your "20th century harmony" exercises because I am interested in trying to study that book and I loved some of the ones you made. Will probably comment on some of those when I have a little time to analyze the scores! (and probably use them as examples to compose my own exercises!) Somehow I feel it is too short and that it stars too abruptly so I was thinking about options to extend it. You pointing out about the "double exposition" made me realize that, what I currently have, might be understood as two different themes (or parts of a theme) starting in m.1 and in m.7. I might play around with some different forms but I was thinking on extending those ideas into full themes and then playing them like this: A section 1. Theme I in Cmin 2. Theme II in Gmaj (or minor) B section (The section I have composed). 1. Theme I in Cmaj with sudden transition to Theme II in Cmin and coda. I am not sure if it would be a valid form or not, I guess it would be like a binary piece based on the exposition + recapitulation of a sonata form. Maybe I end up failing and just adding a final chord to what I have now. But I will give it a try. Thanks for the feedback!

I have several questions: How experienced you are as a composer? The answer would make me a lot of easier to comment this Sonatina. How come the flute part has zero dynamics, articulation and interpretation marks? Have you ever heard about the chromaticism in music? This Sonatina is more like a three-pack of sketches rather than an accomplished composition.

I like how it became more intense throughout the song. Cool.

This is beautiful. I love this piece very much as it is. A couple notes as a trained singer. Firstly, stylistically, I do not like the separated flags for each syllable. It's common in music, but all it does is give me extra work because i have write in the beaming myself. The reason this was done historically was because words were jammed into the score as tight as possible, because printing pages cost money, and often times syllables would become unaligned with their notes. Vocal beaming was a solution because you could just beam together when you aren't moving to the next syllable. This is no longer an issue because one more page won't hurt. So please do not do "vocal beaming", it's outdated and disliked by most singers. One of the above comments worried about breath, and I'm not worried, there is only one place I'd breathe where you don't have a rest, and that would be m. 57 b. 3. It's a long phrase with a mood change halfway through the phrase. I also agree that the piece is a bit rangey, but I would just make note of that for the next time you write. I'm a believer that most art song should be maybe a 10th wide. The main form which these pieces being performed are 1. Amateurs singing one song in a recital with their peers (they have a less extensive range) 2. Professional recitals that an hour long, and need more pieces that are easy than are hard. m. 10, skipping on a "ing" will feel quite weird for a singer, and considering is written for tenor/soprano (but definitely works better for a soprano voice) that f will be right on the passagio for most voices. Shifting the "on" one eighth note forward would be easier to sing. It's a little displeasureable to sing, but also the general mood is quite cute and bouncy there so it's not bad writing. m. 36, if you're using traditional vocal beaming (as you currently are) you do not need this slur. In vocal music slurs mean the same thing as your beaming. If you want legato, put it over the whole phrase, or write the word legato. Overall I think it's wonderfully written, my biggest concern is the range, even I myself would have to think about whether or not I would put this on a recital because if it's difficulty in that area. In a joint recital it'd be fine, but by myself for an hour, it would have to compete with some really good songs for that spot.

Hello! I've composed a sonatina of 3 movements for Flute based off of Monet's Water Lilies.

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!