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Hi! I'm looking for any feedback on a string quartet that I composed so that I can make some refinements before entering it in a few competitions. Thanks!

You know what... by seeing this sentence immediately those two opening chords play on my brain and the music plays itself non-stop.....

No Doubt C# minor!! My all fav. piece, Beethoven's op.131 Quartet is also in that key. And I write my 3rd Piano Sonata in the key too. My upcoming piano pieces set will be in that key too. Henry

Dear friends, hello everyone! I'm Zhang Wenhao, a singer-songwriter from China. Today, I'm here to share with you an inspiring rock song called "Unextinguished Spark". The style of this song is inspired by many classic Japanese anime theme songs, encouraging everyone to hold on to their dreams and never give up easily. 亲爱的朋友们，大家好！我是来自中国的创作歌手张文灏。这次来跟大家分享的是一首励志的摇滚燃曲，名字叫《不熄的火花》。 这首歌曲风格的灵感来源于很多经典的日本动漫主题曲，鼓励大家坚持自己的梦想不要轻易放弃。 歌词如下/The lyrics are as follows： 《不熄的火花》/《The Spark That Won't Go Out》 作曲/Composed by：张文灏 Zhang Wenhao 作词/Lyrics by：张文灏 Zhang Wenhao 一次命运 偶然眷顾的微笑 让他从此 将毕生热爱找到 踏上了一条 漫长的跑道 微弱的火苗 在冷夜里不熄灭地燃烧 失意常常在他身边围绕 也偶有微不足道的骄傲 前路多糟糕 身心多疲劳 他都没想要 放弃奔跑 理想和热爱就像不熄的火花 哦 他想 总有一天能燃起滔天的热浪 哦 他想 每一个人都会有 为理想战斗 奋不顾身的时候 每个人也都会有 看不到尽头 想要放弃的时候 请继续坚定地走 别太过担忧 再耐心等一等 你想要的一切都 在不远处 在向你招手 失意常常在他身边围绕 也偶有微不足道的骄傲 前路多糟糕 身心多疲劳 他都没想要 放弃奔跑 理想和热爱就像不熄的火花 哦 我唱 就在今天燃起了滔天的热浪 哦 我唱 每一个人都会有 为理想战斗 奋不顾身的时候 每个人也都会有 看不到尽头 想要放弃的时候 请继续坚定地走 别太过担忧 再耐心等一等 你想要的一切都 在不远处在向你招手 每一个人都会有 为理想战斗 奋不顾身的时候 每个人也都会有 看不到尽头 想要放弃的时候 请继续坚定地走 别太过担忧 再耐心等一等 你想要的一切都 在不远处在向你招手 你想要的一切都 在不远处 在向你招手

I've noticed that for Christmas music (yes - it's that time of year and I've already written a piece for the season!) I always tend to write in the key of Eb major for some reason. It also happens to be the key of my favorite Beethoven Symphony - No. 3. Perhaps it's because of that symphony that people ordinarily think of that key as "heroic" but I think of it more as a warm key. I also prefer flat keys, even if it causes way more flats in the key signature than is practical. For example - I prefer Ab minor or Eb minor to G# or D# minor. I'll just use the Ab major and Eb major key signatures and write extra accidentals for the notes I need to make it minor. Interesting topic!

What is your favorite key/Note? or really, When you think of a melody, What key is it normally in? I came across this about a month ago where I noticed most of my music was in the key of D, and when I thought of a melody it was also in D; even though now there's a bit of B mixed in. It's just sort of a simple question, and I really want to see what others have to say about it!

Thanks for listening and commenting @Kvothe, and I am glad you found it to be a nice piece!! Yeah, the initial plan was trying to emulate Bartok/Stravinsky style but, since I did not really have fluency with that, after following the simple steps outlined in the post, I ended up just composing it in my own style (by that I mean composing it in any way that sounded good to me without any effort to emulate any particular style). I need to study Bartok style more in depth yet as I found it quite complex😣 I have never listened to Rachmoninov vocalises but I will give them a listen!! Thank you!

Now I don't see any excerpt, just empty space where the notes used to be ... ???

Hello, I will be just looking at your “ the evening sun”. Great pacing with the strings so far. Also, I like the flute solo thing. I like the mood that is giving off I like the little effects from the strings popping out sometimes I feel like the melodies can be smoothen out a little more in the brass I like the percussion arrangement and the instrumentation in the use of the percussion I believe that was a bassoon solo and it’s higher register I couldn’t tell that was very good The ending with solid, and yeah, it was a good composition just a little thing about pacing and what not and the piece direction it was one of those pieces that feels continuous because it’s short it doesn’t feel like the same thing and it’s structured in a good way with different instrumentations throughout and unique orchestration anyways good job

@PeterthePapercomPoser Oopsie, yep, fixed. (Unless it was a bass oboe 😮)

@Monarcheon the excerpt you quoted is in bass clef? Did you quote the wrong thing?

Huge disclaimer: I am not an oboist. But I'd imagine it really depends on what you need the oboe to do. My first immediate thoughts go to the intro in Haydn's oboe concerto which, if I remember correctly, holds onto C6 for quite a while. It does go up to D at the end of the first movement, but only on a non-diatonic chord, so that extra brightness is warranted. Even then, it's really short. I compare that to his contemporaries' concerti, Mozart's, Kozeluch's, and Ferlendis's. On a quick scan, I don't much see anything past C in any of them, though I see some similarities to Haydn's: Kozeluch is also comfortable holding onto C5 for a while and Mozart uses D5 as a brief note in a higher moment. From what I remember for Ferlendis's, it plays it pretty safe, all things considered. I don't have the music, but a quick Google search shows that nothing over C5 is really lingered on. For that reason, my gut tells me to say that C5 is where you edge out for longer, full-bodied sounds and things above it like D5, etc., can be used quickly on occasion, but not in the same way as C5, and certainly not commonly. But that's all conjecture; I don't actually know the ins and outs. Luckily I write modern music, so those suckers have to deal with whatever I give them, hee hee hee!

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I'll just tag @MJFOBOE in this thread. Maybe he might be able to help you..

Hi Churchcantor: I've never thought of doing that, as I have rather few views, and I'm very much an amateur, but if you have Dorico Pro version 6 I could send the files. I have never tried to make a printable "engrave" version in Dorico, and as it is, the files are rather unreadable when i go to "engrave", I need to change the font or something, the staff-lines run into each other. It would off course be a good training to make an engrave version, so I might look into that, give it a month or so, then I could send a PDF. If you are interested, I have a couple of new small symphonic pieces: Sun in November October Nights

honestly I just took the fur elise midi file from musecore and It came with that 😭 I just didn't bother changing it thank you1

Nice orchestration. What on earth was your reason for the 2/8 plus 1/8 you arranged instead of the simple 3/8 the piece is written in?

Ah, yes; that add9 in the final cadence: when you read the poem that I set in 1993, it is about swamp monsters that eat you! An add9 chord at the end is an unresolving yet peaceful chord. There is peace in death, get it?😉

Well, these sound nice! Do you have the score online?

Dear all, Spoiler alert: It is a Christmas song. I will still write a "classical" Christmas piece but I got this idea first. Please feel free to enjoy it anytime you want. Recently I saw a new DAW software with good AI voices, so I wanna test it out and write a sample song for it. That turns out to be excellent (overall speaking), but sometimes the lyrics are not clearly pronounced. I might write more chroal piece with this great tool now. Feel free to tell me how it sounds! Overall structure of the song:- Orchestation: SATB + Violin "Quasi-Rondo" form: ABABCABA’ Strategy: Since it is meant to be a pop song, more direct development to "chorus" Some fun modulations involved HoYin

Really??? Jeez, I remember paying something I thought was reasonable, a one time payment. I've never been charged again. Maybe it's getting popular. Sorry guys!

Wow! Some surprisingly good counterpoint, though it's difficult to see how it will all fit together without the text underlay. Consciously or not, you've taken a cue from Niccolo Jommelli (1714-1774) in scoring your Requiem for voices and strings alone...his Requiem (1756) was the most popular and often requested of its day, until Mozart wrote his in 1791. The sparing orchestration makes it more likely to get played. I agree with ComposaBoi on just about everything he said. Measure 11: The tenor part goes dangerously low, down to B below tenor C; consider a D instead if it won't mess up your counterpoint. Measure 17: Awkward for Violin I - the C on beat 3-1/2 is icky to try to reach down to there, it means shifting a third down the fingerboard for one note, then shifting back up again; consider the G above instead. Measure 31: Odd ending, it seems to me. There is no third in the chord, and while that's not without precedent, I don't feel like it works here. Consider an E-flat as the final note in the Soprano and Violin I. Show us more of this as you have it! Well done!

Howdy y'all! I'm writing an Oboe Quartet (Oboe, Violin, Viola, and 'Cello) and I'm wondering about the upper register of the Oboe. It's not exactly giving me fits, but I'm having trouble believing that the instrument is as limited as it seems to be, realistically. Being a Classicist, I tend to write parts that are intended to be playable on 18th Century instruments. I'm a string player, but have it on fairly good authority (and actual experience) that the Oboe, circa 1790-1800, was not really capable of playing anything above a D6 (D above high-C) reliably; there was a famous exception in the period, a virtuoso player named Friedrich Ramm (1744-1830) in Mannheim who was capable of playing an F6 (F above high-C), and it was for this player that Mozart wrote his celebrated Oboe Quartet in F, K. 370. In my own Sinfonia Concertante in C for Oboe, Bassoon, Fortepiano, Violin, 'Cello, and Orchestra, which was performed by the Austin Baroque Orchestra on period instruments (the oboe soloist's instrument was a copy of an original from 1806), I wrote a couple of E6s (E above High-C) that didn't come out well in performance, despite the excellence of the soloist otherwise, and that has made me hesitant to write anything in my other works for the oboe any higher than D6, even in my Oboe Concerto. Now I'm wondering if that register above D6 is difficult or unreliable on a modern Oboe. What do you guys think? I've had to rethink a couple of passages in this piece I'm working on, and I'd like to know if I'm being a little skittish. For that matter, if you think my experience with my Sinfonia Concertante was not representative of what a really good player should be able to play, I'd like to know that as well. Thanks in advance.

So I've been revisiting the "Metroid" series of Nintendo games from my childhood. Played through Prime and now Dread, which is the newest one until Prime 4 comes out in a couple weeks....it's not one of the better entries. But what stood out to me is the music. This is from the opening of the game. That is a very...not-convincing orchestral mockup, I must say. Definitely not for 2021. When I did my first game score 15 years ago now (omg), this sort of mockup would've gotten you laughed out of the building in the West. Even indies wouldn't have hired you unless it was a pixel-art throwback game and even then you're pushing it. I remember when I did my first soundtrack which was for a couple of Ubisoft devs back then, they were obsessed with "real", and even EWQLSO wasn't enough for them. But I remember reading a few years ago on Redbanned there was a survey, and Japanese composers still most often use Symphonic Orchestra Gold. It's very odd to me and something I"ve noticed specifically in Japanese video games. Not so much in film and TV — I see people from Japan regularly dropping killer mockups of John Williams and such on YouTube, but professional Japanese game devs really don't seem to care. Demon's Souls sounds like it used straight up ROMpler and "General MIDI" patches as well. Just abysmal. I wonder why in Japan they seem so unbothered by it? You'd think especially companies like Nintendo, who are so big on quality-control everywhere else and have these iconic melodies from like Mario and Zelda would demand only the best production quality?

Yes, which I really like...my progression has some of that, but it's not as dramatic as I would've wanted. Yes lol...That was just some material that I had written previously that I harmonized...I tend to write like I'm making a quilt, little sections here and there until it comes together.