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hello mark, thank you truly for your comment, there were many influences that went into this work: shostakovich’s jazz suites, a few latin american rhythms, and my own personal anxieties during that period. I think the trio was directly inspired by my efforts, in trying to find a sense of peace through writing. I believe the added extensions are default chords I usually navigate to, to bring color to the harmonies. This is a more personal work, but hope it maintains some individuality. elated that you enjoyed my work.

Thanks for your vote and for voicing your opinions @MK_Piano! We have had this idea at the end of the last formal competition - "Dreamscapes" - which had monetary prizes and an official set of judges. As can be seen at the end of the "Dreamscapes" Satisfaction Survey linked below 5 out of 10 voters in the survey liked the idea of having tiered divisions for entrants of different skill levels. I think one of the problems with this idea is that we can never know if we'll even have enough participants joining the competition to justify having even just two different tiers. And would this also imply that the prize money will be split evenly between the different winners from the different tiers? Or would the more advanced tier get the lion's share of the prize money? But either way, I think from looking at the results (so far) of this 2025 Halloween Satisfaction Survey, the emergent fashion seems to be that people prefer to keep the competitions as casual as possible or just for fun and without monetary prizes. The formatting was optional. All the reviewers were free to use the reviewing template or dump it and make their own. Or just write comments and forget any kinds of categories or numerical scales. In the past when we had official competitions with monetary prizes, the official judges talked to each other about the entries (the composers of which were kept anonymous by me) on a set of competition dedicated discord channels on the Young Composers Spot discord server. We were a team and presented a concerted effort to review all the entries as consistently as possible. And as mentioned above in my response to @Wieland Handke's post, the only thing that needs to be consistent from one judge to another is the differences between the different entries. So that even if each judge rates the entries in a different range of the numerical scale, as long as the differences between the different scores are consistent across the whole set of entries, the scores all get averaged between the judges and produce a fair result. Thanks for your response and sharing your thoughts!

I just finished my little vote. I had a fun time, even if I didn't "win," I still feel I gained some experience. Heck, it gave me a passion to make new music and make more music of similar instrumentation. I was happy to see that I was not the only one who did a Piano Quartet with Strings to pair. It was refreshing to hear how different 3 people can make contrasting music with the same constraints. I will reference them in the future when it comes time to do more. 🙂 About the grading or reviewing aspect, I think a simple solution is to keep brackets or divisions for submissions. We saw a complete mix of tonal and post-tonal, amatuer and professionals. It can be hard to grade them all at an equal level when you have to conform yourself to a different standard for each person. I want to be the first to suggest this idea: I think before the next competition, you should categorize users by division based on an entry poll or application. Like most real festivals, forums or competitions, each user will have to file an application to enter with their work. Some places in the US are now asking for cover letters and resumes to pair. Since the point is to keep it fun and more informal, I suggest making a poll asking for people to help gauge their experience: "Have you seen your works performed?" "Have you taken music theory before?" "How many years have you been writing music? "Do you have the ability to write sheet music?" "Will you submit a post-tonal (Without key-center) or tonal (with key-center) work for this event?" Etc. Similar to existing competitions, we can categorize people before hand, create divisions and judge more accurately. Some divisions such as the following: Amatuer Professional Post-Tonal Tonal This was my only gripe with the formatting. It felt hard to review everyone to a level standard when the goal-post was never consistent. I do not want to feel like the bad guy for using language or concepts they are not aware of, or risk being redundant if it is clear they have experience. The table used for reviewing was a little vague as it felt more subjective. I do not mind that when rating music, however, it may be nice to specify what you mean by "Originality" or "Textures". Someone may have a different understanding of what those words mean and it will affect their reviews. Defining some of them beforehand will also standardize the ratings. Thoughts? 🤔

I think the real question here is "Can someone with aphantasia be an aesthete?" Possibly. I don't know that it's ever been studied, but I do suspect it is comparatively rare. I've always had hyper-phantasia and like most of that sort, was shocked to learn that this isn't the norm. I definitely believe it must be better to have this ability than not. My opinion on musical composition and art is that great works are the product of technical craftsmanship (which can be taught) meeting with an strong sense of aesthetic taste (which cannot be taught, but is understood fairly universally by those who experience it.) Since the latter is innate, I suspect there is a strong correlation with hyper-phantasia and aesthetes. So I would bet money that the greatest composers and artists had hyperphantasia. While it might not afflict ones ability to enjoy or recognize beauty, it probably does affect one's ability to reliably create it.

Have listened to all of this now. I noticed all but one of your movements follow the naming scheme of Mozart's Requiem. The suite feels mournful, with a flavour of Antiquity, and makes good use of percussion throughout. Sounds like Halloween music at times. The highlight for me was the mysterious last movement. Reminded me a little of the final movement of Holst's Planet Suite. This comes as a welcome relief, after the frantic dissonance of the preceding movements.

Very interesting harmonies, rhythms,and ,melodic lines ... Can you tell us something about your style and intent here? Jazz? I enjoyed your work. Mark

You're welcome! I enjoyed it! First, thank you for voicing your opinion! When we've done competitions with monetary awards and official judges in the past this was an issue that people have brought up. However, ultimately, when the different scores from the different judges were averaged together, as long as the judges tried to accurately reflect the differences between the various musical entries in their scores then once the scores were all averaged together, even if say, some of the judges scored the pieces in a different range of the scale than others, the scoring still worked to accurately reflect the differences in quality between the different entries. In the past when we had competitions with monetary awards, the entrants were kept anonymous by sending their entries by personal message to me. I would then add their entry to the submissions thread. I think in a free contest, this requirement might be too strict. And I personally don't like the idea of keeping the names of the judges anonymous because it discourages discussion and interaction between the judges and the members. Thanks for voicing your opinion!

First of all, I have to say that I really enjoyed this competition! It was an intense two weeks—on the one hand, to finish my own composition/arrangement, and on the other hand, to listen to such a diverse range of great musical works. I think all the participants invested a lot of time, effort, and passion to achieve such a result! I must admit that – puh – reviewing seems to be harder than composing! We have seen a lot of atonality and non-traditional musical structure (to mention some, but not to be exhaustive "Dima’s National Dance" by @Dima, "From Above, Now Below" by @Thatguy v2.0, "Diptych for Piano Quartet" by @Cosmia, "Aos Si" by @HoYin Cheung, "American Cryptids" by @Micah, "Fumage" by @Justin Gruber) and – on the other hand – more „beautiful“ and „well-behaved“ pieces (for example, "Ghost Town Requiem" by @UncleRed99, "Bagatelle No. 6" by @Omicronrg9 and "Dance from the skeleton ball" by @MK_Piano), which I very enjoyed, too. As „balanced“ between this two poles I would consider "Daunting Steps" by @ferrum.wav and – lol - my own piece. Therefore, the decision was very hard and due to the subject of the competition, Halloween, the more outlandish pieces were in the better position. The dedications of the badges „spookiest/scariest piece“, „strangest/weirdest/most outlandish piece“ and „biggest thriller“ were – in my opinion – not so easy to distinguish, so that we have one glorious winner in nearly all categories, "From Above, Now Below" by @Thatguy v2.0, my best congratulations. Special thanks to @PeterthePapercomPoser for organizing that funny contest! What did you think of the official competition reviewing template? For me, the competition reviewing template was very useful, giving the focus what to review a clear structure. Even if I did not give a textual review according to the eight categories but only a general one, scoring according to the definitions (i.e. between 0 and 10 points) and calculating an average was useful and helped to determine the winner(s) for the different badges. I could also imagine that in future competitions, the template and the numbers will be used in an official sheet to determine the overall winner. In such a case, however, it would be necessary to formulate more precisely how we should award the points in order to achieve a fair result that can be used for such a calculation. I noticed that some of the reviewers often awarded 10 points to pieces/categories they liked, while I was a bit stingy with this top score (apologies to all participants). I would like to say that such differences in the use of scores between different reviewers, although consistent in their own assessment, could lead to a kind of injustice. What would you like to see in future competitions? I think, the most revenue of the competition is getting a lot of review in a short period of time. Therefore, I would like to keep the competition „just for fun“ without monetary awards. An interesting variant could be to keep the competitors and judges anonymous. Such a rule could be combined with the mandatory use of the template and its usage for the calculation of the winner, as mentioned above. In such a case it would be necessary to require that all participants review all the other entries to achieve comparability and fairness. However, such a strict set of rules could imply that some members would hesitate to participate, thus we could try out that for one competition, but should not apply it to all future ones.

@PeterthePapercomPoserThanks for asking ^^ I won't be reviewing this round for now, since I'm new I don't feel that I should, but perhaps in the upcoming events I will definitely be involved, I'm really impressed with this site and quite happy to have stumbled upon it.

Hello Henry, Thanks for your review and valuable comments regarding this piece. Yes, this is like all my organ pieces except the "Soliloquy for Organ No. 1" composed for organ manuals only. Indeed the feedback of an organ player would be great!

I think it's harder because for me it's very important to evoke the casting in the music as closely as possible. So I can't always just write the music I want - I have to follow the underdrawing of the casting. Thanks for your review!

Very unique piece of music, interesting rhythms, and interesting choices for harmony (dictated by the dice)? Do you find it harder to compose based on the rules from the game, or is it easier because you are essentially following a template? Cool piece, and rhythmically weird, in a good way!

Hello Everybody, I know it's been a while since I was last active here, but I wanted to share a new prelude I've composed. This is a rather short work I plan on sending off to a piano composition competition, since I think the recording will do it justice. Another thanks to my piano teacher who made the effort to record my work. Here is a description of the piece: “A Prelude written during a time of uncertainty, and it reflects the idea of anxiety + release. However, the trio section is especially beautiful. I recommend listening to it while eating vanilla ice cream; it will enhance your experience.” 🍨🍯🎹 Let me know your thoughts in terms of harmony, melody and form. Score Thank you truly

Hi @luderart! I quite enjoy this one with those alternations of chordal and fast passages which I think well fitting to an organ. I like those bare fifths and Phrygian mode which gives the piece more antique feeling. One question is that: is this piece only written for the manual part of an organ without a pedal? I would invite @PCC to review as well since he plays organ haha. Thx for sharing! Henry

Hi @林家興 I think this one is a good effort to write a variation which you succeed with a lot of different styles including contrapuntal, romantic and more impressionistic style. For variation 1, I think you should definitely explore and extend the fugue more haha. The subject is clearly not so developed when only the exposition of a fugue is presented, plus a counter-exposition with the inversion the fugue subject! Also, you could have the viola stay in b.35 so that the subject entry in b.40 would be by First violin with a 4 part counterpoint there. For variation 2, like @Monarcheon I really like the harmony there. Just for the ending typically a pizzicato wouldn't be written with a long dotted minim but instead just with a crotchet? Variation 3 is my least favourite variation but it's just subjective lol. Just one stupid personal thought: I always think variations should be developed through the order of the variations, and I think you can add more variations in the E minor first with the more negative mood before going to other keys to explore different styles. Also, are there any reason why the variations are arranged in this way? Thx for sharing! Henry

Thank you so much my dear Henry. The andante came natural to me and I think I'm more than pleased. Thank you so much for your appreciation and your attention as always . Warm greetings to you

Hi @NicholasG! The brass passage in 0:39 is way too loud and it scares me lol! I think you should definitely tone down the dynamics there! I would say it would make a good trailer music. Thx for sharing. Henry

Hi @Bjarke! I like this Perpetuum mobile texture which really gives motion to the piece, as well as the imitations between the hands. The modulations are effective especially for a cinematic music. Of course, dynamic details would be crucial to propel the flow and drama of the music. Thx for sharing. Henry

Hi @Vasilis Michael! I like the light Mozartean touch of this slow movement. The use of minor harmonies in the 1st episode adds just the enough flavouring. The modulations in the 2nd episode is nice too. Thx for sharing. Henry

Hi @Samuel_vangogh! Like @Monarcheon said the use of 014 set is very apparent start from the beginning, as well as in b.20 choral texture which is basically the superimpositions of multiple 014 chords, which makes the whole music structurally tight. I actually like the direct shift of register since I think it's a good contrast particularly when you combine it with the change of dynamics, timbre and texture. I also agree with @Monarcheon that you could have added more rhythmic variety to the music but given the short time of the movement it's fine for me. Maybe add some more rhythmic variety if this movement would have a contrasting section. Also I feel like the piano writing could be more lucid. Thx for sharing! Henry

Hey Peter, I ignore all your casting and go straight to the music lol. I like the beginning which sound like serial music to me tbh and the irregularly regular rhythm between the brasses. The bitonality starting from b.11 is a nice touch too. Thx for sharing! Henry

LoLoL!!

sorry, forgot to press submit!

Happy Halloween... 👻👻👻👻👻

I don't how this is still happening but your vote isn't showing up on my end again... 😕