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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.

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!

Hi again @MJFOBOE! I like the piece overall. The only thing that bothered me is some of the inconsistent articulations. I think I hear the figure in the Viola at bar 2, 4 and 102 and 104 as if it should be legato but you have it separated. Later on in the piece you slur those notes both in the Piano and the Viola so to me it seems inconsistent. And the staccato and separated version of it sounds really mechanical imo. Thanks for sharing this playful piece!

You have no idea the wonderful suggestion you have bestowed upon me. I have been searching for various ways to capture a steam locomotive with the western orchestra. That piece is SO COOL!! It's luckily on IMSLP too, so now I have a score I can study. Thank you!! Yeah... The repetition was more for simplicity to be blunt. I felt I did good with the saxophone writing, however, I admit I am not too knowledgeable on ways to utilize the brass in the Big Band style. In the film, it is cut in half with the key change happening after the first shout/ chorus section. So in context, it only repeats the form twice. I copied the first section in this version as a means to extend the work. Thanks for the comments!

Hello again @MK_Piano! This is a cool big band piece meant to imitate a train! I wonder if you've ever heard of the Copenhagen Steam Railway Galop? It is another wonderful example of a piece meant to imitate the sound of a train getting started and chugging along. It's a very musically inspirational topic to write music to. And supposedly, Prokofiev loved to write music on train rides. I think there are some obvious flaws in your piece so please forgive me for pointing them out! LoL The piece is very simple and once it gets started, doesn't know what to do with itself. You employ the use of the common up a step modulation to try and infuse the music with some freshness and excitement towards the end of the piece. I've been guilty of using that kind of modulation myself as well. But the piece is basically the same 28 measure phrases repeated over and over. That's my only critique. It would have been nice to hear some kind of development or maybe variations? Thanks for sharing!

Hello @Frederic Gill and welcome to the forum! This is a nice invention! I think, usually, the primary goal of the exposition in an invention is to maintain the melodic identity of the motive. But here you change the motive in the imitation. And the counter-motive doesn't keep the same contour as the first instance in the right hand in measure 2. The 1st inversion triad is a prominent figure that gives this invention its melodic definition so it would have been nice to keep it intact throughout the invention. Also, since the first three notes outline a Bb minor chord in first inversion, it would have been nice to have some kind of accompaniment in the left hand from the very beginning of the piece to help solidify the harmonic identity and remove any doubt the listener might have as to whether the invention is in Db major or in Bb minor. Thanks for sharing!

Hello @Sojar Voglar and welcome back to the forum! This piece truly is "always something unique"! It's so mysterious and ebbing with variety although it is very well unified and coherent. I think I caught some of the mistakes in the performance when I followed along with the score - perhaps the flautist didn't quite play their part correctly in the slap-tongue section of the piece? Seems like their line was missing here and there. I love the venue of the Clarinet Quartet having played in one myself in high school. I also have a piece on here - 10 Variations on a Gypsy Theme for Clarinet Quartet. Check it out if you feel like it! But your instrumental combination is so much more creative! It's a great set of colors - Each instrument offers something distinctive to the ensemble. It's wonderful to listen to. You are a bassist, correct? That explains why you included a Contrabass in the piece. I thought maybe a bassoon would have been more appropriate among all the woodwinds. Congratulations and thanks for sharing!

Hi @Cafebabe! This is a nice classical sonata! The thing that bothers me when listening to this at first is the really bad balance between the melodic right hand and the accompanying left hand. The left hand should be softer and the melody in the right brought out more to be in high relief. Before, the only way to make this happen is to use MS Basic Soundfonts and use velocity values for the right hand. But I don't know if you know about a recent trick I learned in writing piano music in Musescore Studio 4 using the Musesounds Piano. What I do now is I write the piece for two tracks of basically two separate pianos - one for each hand. I go to the layout options and have each piano displayed with only one clef in one staff rather than in a grand staff for both. Then I bracket them as if they're one grand staff but each retains its own individual identity. This way I can give each hand its own dedicated dynamics and volume, reverb and other settings giving me more control over what is the most prominent part of the composition at any given point. I also noticed that you don't have any dynamics in your piece at all. Maybe you didn't find it necessary, and it could be argued, it is more historically accurate if its meant to be played on a period instrument. Musically, I find the retransition back to F major at the end of the exposition a little abrupt and forced. Another thing is that I'd expect each theme in a sonata to have ample time to speak before going into transitional figures. This would usually be done by giving the themes a full period, double period or sentence form which you don't do and it makes the themes seem like they can't stand still and start to flit about try to run away from themselves before the listener has even had a chance to absorb them. Also, when the development section starts, it seems like it's just a chord progression without really any relation to the themes. It makes me question what, if anything, is being developed. Although I had a lot of critiques of this piece, I did find it an overall enjoyable easy listening experience. Thanks for sharing!