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Thanks, as per usual, for your detailed feedback! In regards to the pizz. Staccatos, I was under the impression that it was acceptable to use for Cb. And Cll. Parts, but not for Viola & Violins? At least, that’s what I was taught in my year of college when doing extra curricular arrangements with the theory professor. But yall tend to be much more wise than I at this stuff 😅 I was never really strings-oriented and am mostly self taught so I’ll take that into account for sure. I was also unaware that there was a specific marking for Bartok! the “mf” for the bartok section was mostly for the playback. In hindsight I should’ve made that marking invisible to correct for its implausible use, IRL. I agree, the piano also should stick out a bit more. The sound used for the piano and for the viola come from the Spitfire LABS VST3 plugin. I can optimize it to be a bit louder in the left hand, using a hidden staff, similar as to how I achieved that in the original playback for “Remembrance”. and as far as the key change goes, I thought the use of the Neapolitan chord modulation provided a pleasantly unexpected movement in that section during the mod. To A minor. What would you suggest in that section to maybe smooth it out a bit more? I’ll admit I had trouble figuring out where to take it and how to move it more seamlessly to A minor. 😅 I’m not a modulation Guru, but have been lucky in some instances where while writing, the modulation ended up just working on its own without much effort based on what I wrote prior to it. My process is a bit unorthodox in honesty, since I’m fairly un-trained with composing, mostly working off of my own ear. thanks Peter!

Hey @UncleRed99! Glad to see/hear that you've finally moved on to a new piece! I think the proper name for a string quintet + piano combination would be "Piano Sextet". Traditionally for example, a duet of Violin and Cello with Piano is called a "Piano Trio", a trio of Violin, Viola and Cello with Piano would be a "Piano Quartet" and a quartet of 2 Violins, Viola, Cello with Piano would be a "Piano Quintet". So I'm just extrapolating that this would be a "Piano Sextet" based on those naming conventions. I'll address a few things that bothered me about the score before actually talking about the music: There's a few things to note here. First, when writing pizzicato strings, you don't need to add a staccato marking for the pizzicato. It's redundant considering that pizzicato is already a very percussive and separated effect. Also, you have the Bartok pizzicato at mf, followed by a regular pizzicato at forte. That doesn't really make sense considering that Bartok pizzicato is achieved by snapping the string as hard as possible so that it hits the fingerboard. The Bartok pizzicato would naturally have to be louder than the regular pizzicato just by the nature of the effect. Also, there's a special symbol for Bartok pizzicato that string players recognize: I think it would be more concise to use this symbol. Here you have the indication to play legato contradicted by the separated 8th notes. If you want the player to cancel their pizzicato playing and return to bowing you can put "arco" or "ord.". Now about the music. The first thing I noticed is that this is a very quiet piece. I had to listen to it on my Bluetooth speaker to really hear it better. But I think the problem is also that when the piano is playing the melody alone without the support of the strings, the piano melody is often simply inaudible above the accompaniment. Especially the grace notes are lost because they go by so quickly. The way to counteract that is to of course use MS Basic soundfonts for the piano so you can bring out the melody in high relief by using higher velocity values for those notes (which you can edit in the "properties" tab). Unfortunately, the Musesounds samples don't currently respond to velocity changes so you'd be forced to use the MS Basic soundfont for piano. But imo (since I do this all the time) I think the clarity of the melodic line is to me a much more sought after commodity in music than the supposedly "better" sounding Musesound sample. But that might be just me. Overall, I like the melancholy vibe of the piece! The only thing that bothers me is that the key changes seem to be inserted into the piece just for their own sake. And the modulations should be led by the melody for them to make audible sense and create a more breathtaking effect. Thanks for sharing!

Hi! Actually I just completed roughly half of my piano toccata piece inspired from living near the motor city (Detroit, MI) in my childhood... I decided to make this toccata piece since I thought the mechanistic characteristics of the genre match well with general images of the motor city... After writing nearly the half of the piece I spent many days but still have no idea how to develop further the middle climax section... Could you comment on this piece and give any suggestions how to complete this middle section? I'd really appreciate your help!

We just want you to reply something related to the posted music, so you don't need to twist our views, thanks. Henry

Au revoir.

No need to answer in German... as I already told you I am French, whether you like it or not If you don't understand the lyrics, activate the subtitles provided on YouTube. You will have the pleasure of discovering a magnificent poetry that undoubtedly retains some of its power in English. But if you want to talk about music in a constructive way it's ok. Otherwise this discussion does not need to be

Ich kann nicht verstehen! Whatever. For me, more about music than discussion!

Sorry I don't understand what you mean. I don't understand the interest of telling me about your diplomas... I am your age and I respect your background, no problem on that. But I have absolutely nothing to do with authority opinions.

I will be lazy on this forum, because I think the mods want it to be some kind of academic thesis! Archived! I am 56, with two theory and composition degrees! Too academic and pedantic for me to comment too much! Try this... Three Roads Free Sheet Music by Robert C. Fox for Various Instruments | Noteflight

Haha hum I'm the singer (it's my job, I'm a pro) and I'm French ! Thank you for comparing me to DFD which is huge. I can't get close to him but no one has ever told me that I have a German accent when I sing in French haha

Hello, all! This as a full arrangement of Binary Data IV. Binary Data IV. is a piece by Alfonso Peduto that uses real-time physical delays on a piano to play incredibly fast arpeggios and descending lines. As such, the original song does not have one individual leading melody, which led me to write a unique melody for my orchestration. Thank you, hope you enjoy!

Happy Autumn to all! So... turns out, due to a miscommunication, I won't be writing a mini-bassoon concerto after all. Instead they want me to write a miniature concerto for violin and chamber orchestra. I've started sketching it out here; though I'm still at a very early stage. I'm thinking three movements; though the time limit is 5 minutes total. No prizes for guessing which composer inspired this. (I think it's rather obvious!) Those who guess the right answer can tell me if it's sounding too similar to the original work? Am using the chord sequence function in MuseScore to sketch out my harmonies. Only discovered this recently, and am finding it somewhat useful. Wonder if anyone else has tried this out? Apparently it works even better with Kontakt 7 and Sonuscore orchestral elements; but I haven't got round to installing those yet.

Have there been any suggestions for 2025

Is it still the same?

I wrote this piece in 2018, probably for some composition competition.

"Don’t worry, I know the entire work of Chopin as well as that of my other favorite composers. It’s just that Schubert is the composer who influences my psyche more than anyone else. Him and Mozart. And now that you mentioned Chopin, I’ve also composed pieces that resemble Chopin a lot 🙂 Among my favorite composers."

You are welcome. As a composer, it is important to know what influences us. Chopin is another great early to mid romantic composer. I recommend listening and studying his works. 🙂 But be prepared to dive deeper into chromaticism.

Thank you so much for your attention and appreciation. Schubert, and to some extent Schumann as well, influence me a lot. Even with my influences, I try in some way to leave my own mark. On the one hand, I feel blessed that I can capture the style so accurately, but on the other hand, I feel locked in. Still, this music expresses me and I love it, which is why I can’t escape from it. In any case, I’m very glad that you enjoyed it and appreciated the effort.

As Bhko mentioned, I, truly, feel that you capture Schuman and Schubert in this solo work. Both were excellent piano writers at their time. They knew how to use the piano as character and as instrument. Here, you have illustrated that. Many do not know that piano isn't just instrument. I love the 3 against 2. It creates lovely cross rhythm. The subtle chromatism, which colors the theme, is always nice to hear. 🙂 Over all...kudos

Thanks, but I was actually talking about combining parts onto one staff for the conductor's score. E.g. Merging trumpets 1 and 2 into a single staff. This can be done with implode; but it's apparently it's much quicker and easier in Dorico.

I'm a year late to the conversation, but if anyone was interested in moving over to Musescore Studio 4.5, for ($Free.99), in a recent patch (The 4.5.0 update), they added a finale function that I'm sure those of you who used finale would appreciate. The old "Input by Duration" writing mode. arrow keys up/down change pitch within the scale of the selected key signature, and simply pressing 1-7 gives you all note durations and typing a number will result in writing a note at the selected pitch, as the corresponding duration to whatever number was pressed. They also included a percussion table-input method (Which can be reverted to legacy input, via the preferences menu), which allows for both midi or mouse input. Also helps if you use a touch screen laptop device, with it having larger action buttons on screen, reducing mis-inputs from the inaccuracy of using a finger tip. They don't have things like Tempo tap or anything like that (Which I wish they'd add at some point.) But whatever functions that you want to have in the software, all you need to do is submit a request via Github. The Open Source Development team is very responsive and attentive to user requests, from my experience. They've worked very hard on a software that's 100% free to use without any sort of adware or inconvenient issues, once you set it all up. They even have a sound-library store via MuseHub but their in-house VST sounds are quite natural as they are. Personally I've mixed their in-house library with both Spitfire LABS and MuseHub's Vienna Brass library. (+ a Spitfire Felt Piano sound from MuseHub as well). Some of the sounds available on their library shop, I feel, need a lot of attention, but if you ever purchase one and are not satisfied with it, the refund process is very fast and easy to complete. I don't know. I know musescore can often be overlooked simply because it's a free open source software that many amateurs use, but I've been a user since MS2, and I have to say, it's been able to do 9/10 of the things I've wanted it to do, and then some. There's plenty of tools for professional engraving, and if there isn't a tool directly available for what you want to do, there's so many properties that can be edited for each element on the page, that you can make things move where you'd like them to go. My only complaint is that the program isn't that good at correcting accidentals with the "Optimize Inharmonic Spelling" function... It will simply change them all to b / bb or # / x markings depending on the key signature of the section selected. Other than that, I don't have many gripes at all about it. I've used Finale, Trial version, a handful of times, have test run Dorico and Sibelius through my peers, and after spending a couple hours on each, I still desired to use MS4.5. Either because it feels natural after so many years of using it, or, because in my opinion, it's a better program. Either way, I stand by it.. lol

I'm late seeing this post in here, but @Alex Weidmann if you hadn't already found it, I assume you're looking to condense scores in MS4.5. Way to do that easily is to click Format > Page Settings... > Scaling > Staff Space (sp): ___ (Down for smaller staves, up for larger staves).

Here's a new score (Finally). Written for String Quintet x Piano. Wrote it as a representation of how tense things are in the world nowadays. The mystery of not really knowing where things will go, from here. The rhythm / pulse throughout the piece signifies the ever-long march of time, that no one can run away from. Time that we all are limited in. The key change to A minor at the return to the motif signifies a slight feeling of hope among the tension, I feel, currently, in that I hope that things will become more bearable as time moves forward. Hope y'all enjoy this one. (I may or may not make updates to it, periodically, for the next couple weeks. Y'all know how I be at this point... lolol but I feel this one is as done as I can make it, at this moment.) The Calamity.pdf The Calamity.mp3

In an effort to actually get something done, I challenged myself to write and record a little piece in two hours; behold the result! The recording definitely got put off until the end. It's pretty out of tune/bad quality, but, I hope, bearable to listen to 🙂 Any and all feedback is greatly appreciated!

“Thank you so much, my dear. On the one hand, I feel blessed that I can capture the style, but on the other hand, I feel locked in. Schubert is my soul – he influences me incredibly. Still, I try each time to add something of my own, some small inventions of mine. Little by little, more and more. Finding your own voice is the hardest thing of all. In any case, I am very satisfied with my progress, and what matters most is that what I do is my whole life, and I feel blessed. Once again, thank you for your kind words.”