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Thank you! It does!

The string pizz. reminded me of this. It's kind of unrelated, but you might dig it if I haven't already shown it to you lol https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1dPpbYlW0pQ&list=PL1649A3A736810FFC&index=4 This is really cool, I think the instrumentation is wise as well. It doesn't have the sense of wonder like the Donkey Kong music, it's more foreboding to me. Maybe like exploring the wreckage of a sunken ship, or scanning for alien-like creatures at the depths of the ocean floor. Very mysterious and tranquil, but still the sense of danger. I think the lumatone gets a bit repetitive, maybe it's just me? I suppose some spots you could crank the dynamics way down, or break up the flow of it during one of the string parts. I'm just imagining it being looped, but if it's background enough I think it works. The part itself IS very cool, it really works with the microtonal writing. Idiomatic and picturesque. Just initial impressions! I'm still not convinced of microtonal music, but I admire your journey and like your writing style with it. 🙂

Wanting to create a washy-choral sounding prelude for the ensemble to play before my Oboe comes in... I have Fm/Ab - Dbm6/Ab- Abmaj7 - Cm7-Fm9 - any ideas to keep this sound going?

I am so pleased you enjoyed the work!!!! I'll correct the oversight .................. Mark

Any tips or suggestions?

feels better well written, and is faster paced, I just like fast paced songs, I also like how it's kind of more dark? I don't really know how to explain, also, if any of this doesn't make sense, It's probably because I haven't listened to it for a day.

Can you write why? Anyways, thank you for the feedback! (I am not saying I like the first better, it is just that I want to improve.)

Ahhh ok, so leave it and have it stay as 14 I'll need to do some research on concerto structure and what is technically challenging for the obo so that I don't make this too easy to play or boring

The piece that got me back into writing music, this past December...

Yeah - a pick-up and an anacrusis are just different names for the same thing. If you made that first F an anacrusis then your phrase would be 13 measures long though.

Oh okay, now I understand - brain fart moment lol The F is the beginning of the melodic material, but since I have two empty beats before that, I can fill up that space. Couldn't I also just get rid of the rests and make that measure an anacrusis? --> was thinking of having some strings and F. Horn play a countermelody + harmony as the theme comes in. I've never even attempted writing a counter melody before, so that should be fun.

The phrase starts before the melody comes in so the beginning of the phrase is just the beginning of your first bar rather than starting the phrase on bar 2 as if the F in bar 1 was a pick-up. So the phrase might start with some kind of accompanimental pattern with the first two beats being a space in which melodically nothing happens (until the F comes in).

Hmmm, so how do I treat it as an "acephalic" vs a regular/other phrase type @PeterthePapercomPoser? Just wanting some more clarification

Cool! Someone else likes to compose/arrange guitar music!

It's neither good nor bad - or at least it depends on what you want to do with it. It's just a characteristic.

You're the composer, so only you can make that decision. Certainly it can be more virtuosic than what you have! I mean I at least assume that the bassoonist can play some scales in an easy enough key. You can still fit a lot of music into 5 minutes if the tempo is fast enough. Check out this winning Bassoon Concerto that a member here submitted for a competition in the summer of 2020 when I first signed up for YC!

I'll get the second one in pretty soon. I am a bit drunk on beer right now, and can technically compose or enter notes when drunk, but functionally cannot enter notes when drunk! Go figure... Anyone interested: I actually remembered to put in composition dates on these three partsongs! They are of course partsongs, so the alto and tenor voices are not so interesting. The Windhover, 4-29-21. Binsey Poplars 3-20-21, Spring 5-02-21. You will have to wait for the second two: TOO MUCH BEER! 😋

Hello dear fellow composers. This poem (1886) is part of Laforgue’s Imitation of Our Lady the Moon. Here the Moon is no longer a muse or confidante, but becomes the star of farewell and forgetting, sealing human hopes in silence and nothingness. I truly believe that this cycle reflects a part of Laforgue’s own biography — that of a young poet caught in an impossible, broken love story, one almost erased from history, save perhaps for the initial of a name glimpsed in his correspondence. At least, that is the conviction I had while reading these poems. And so here is the end of my cycle: a piece deliberately sparse, rarefied, silent. It is also, perhaps, a farewell to Laforgue — for now. Time has come for me to explore new paths (and I have been kindly reminded more than once that I am probably composing with a delay of about 120 years…). I can only hope that these pieces may nevertheless have found some resonance with you. This is one of my most sincere works, born from a curious overlapping of states of mind with Laforgue. And I believe — to confess under the cover of anonymity — that one is never truly safe from falling secretly in love, even at my age. Perhaps this is what makes the kinship so troubling.

This piece is clever, yet awful. It would make for very good horror movie music. BTW, Outis is ancient Greek for "Nobody!"

I've never heard of that term before lol, is that a good thing?

Many thanks for your review Peter. Do you think this can be salvaged; or should just rip it up and start again? I can't make it too virtuosic, as I'm writing for an amateur bassoonist. I had a choice of instruments, and decided bassoon would be the most challenging. Since it's a quiet instrument, it doesn't come through very strongly against the orchestra. Plus it's in the bass register: so maybe not a natural instrument to carry the melody. I was trying to create a dialogue between the bassoon and orchestra, using call and response. Guess I haven't done a very good job though. The 5-minute time limit is also a challenge, since it doesn't give much opportunity for development.

Thank you so much for your wonderful words and your appreciation of my music. Yes, I consider myself a composer mainly for the piano, although I truly love orchestral music, and especially chamber music. Chamber music is my favorite... I just don’t feel familiar enough with the other instruments, although I have written a divertimento for winds and two minuets for string quartet. For a first attempt, it was quite a respectable effort, and I would definitely like to continue and write music for more instruments—it’s just that, at this point in my life, I don’t have enough free time to achieve that. I have also played Chopin’s mazurkas and polonaises in my repertoire, but I haven’t yet happened to compose something similar, although I would very much like to, and I thank you for pointing it out.

No I've never heard these Dvorak Bagatelles before. You've introduced me to them, so thanks for that! Yes, that's what I always do.