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As for christmas event, I am usually busy around that time, so I probably opt out.

There used to be more reviewers, but it seems it seems they have moved on. 😞 Also, at times, activity at is rather slow. Young composer strive for quick feedback. That they can improve. No feed back will not help them. 😞

Melodies Themes Motives Harmony Chords Textures Form Development Structure Time Originality Creativity Score Presentation Instrumentation Orchestration Playability Execution of Given Challenge Taste 6.5 10 10 10 10 9 9 10 Ah, this piece is right up my alley. I could tell this is perhaps Ravel inspired, and this is a style I really enjoy. Id say that the melody is weak, or just missing, however, you do a great job at still keeping things very interesting, purely with your structure and harmony. Speaking of harmony, amazing and well done! The mood of the piece brings on a sense of high tension and release. Technically, this is hard to play, but given my experience with piano and this type of style, its very doable, especially at this slower tempo. Does it remind me Halloween though? This is definitely more "art style" music, however, it offers chilling sections, with some released tension. After all, in horror situations, no one's being chased for the whole movie, right? There always is a sense of reprieve! Melody: While there are some instances of motifs, I found this to be more of a mood piece. But you are able to keep it interesting. This is due to your structure, and harmony. Harmony & Structure: This is where you shine, your harmony is what drives this piece, but the structure is what keeps everything legible and easy to follow. Originality and Score Presentation: Score is beautiful, nice use of cross staves to keep the music easier to read, and tuplets help group your rhythms. Playability: Very difficult to perform, but clearly laid out and with a lot of practice, there should be no problems here. The second movement could be trickier because you have more key changes. Execution of challenge: Eerie atmosphere, tension buildup and release. Great elements to get into the Halloween spirit! Taste: I absolutely love this style, I started getting into Ravel which influenced some of my later compositions. I feel like you do an excellent job at capturing this style.

@ferrum.wav What daw do you use?

The score goes only up to measure 36, you can disregard the rest

Melodies Themes Motives Harmony Chords Textures Form Development Structure Time Originality Creativity Score Presentation Instrumentation Orchestration Playability Execution of Given Challenge Taste 10 8 10 10 10 9.5 10 9 VERY fun melody, highly original, clear structure and clearly able to create that Halloween vibe in a fun whimsical way! And I love the way you are able make use of your instruments to your advantage to help progress the piece. The breaks in your music also feel natural, and help build the suspense. Melody and Harmony: Beautiful melody, it's perfect! The supporting harmony is fun, clear, and helps move things along. Form and originality: Your music reads like a book, it has a clear intro, body and ending. The natural breaks are equivalent to paragraphs, and you build suspense this way much like a novel. Score Presentation & Playability: Good structure, clear music notation, reasonable tempo and natural breaks all contribute to the high score presentation + playability metric. Execution and taste: Personally I enjoyed the full piece, and the general mood reminds me a lot of a lighthearted Halloween dance! The breaks in this piece also contribute to the mood changes, which helps accentuate your catchy melody.

yeah i could see that actually. a large part of the main theme consists of a downward sequence of the motif. yet, the part that teases it repeats the motif a lot too. so, i get not catching the first statement of the main theme. though i've tried to signal it by putting it after the climax of the intro with dynamic and textural contrast this is actually parts of my weakness i've been trying to work on: letting themes breathe more with rests or signalling the end of a part clearly. the time limit is also a factor here cus i'd give longer rests to more sections if there was more time.

hahahaha, OH THE SHAME WILL BE SEEN

Your caliber of writing deserves to be entered with all the others, you're great! Thanks for the recommendation, I'll check out his music

Hi! Drive links are fine, but you can also just drag your files here and they will be automatically shown. Welcome to the forums! In fact it seems like a work with five movements according to the PDF itself, but the OP submitted 3 here. Multi-movement works are fine, it's a shame you had to split it up. Do not hesitate on publishing the rest anyways! On the engraving plane, I would recommended you to mark the beginning of each movement with its subtitle. Just a detail, but a neat one if you ask me! There are some overlaps here and there but overall the score seems idiomatic for strings. Other users, better acquainted with these instruments may disagree or agree, but I see that you let them "breathe" (except at some spots, e.g: M19-25 on the Scherzando, Violin I, but still probably not too difficult to get) and that you have not written anything incredibly difficult. Articulations are detailed, harmonics are marked, there's a good use of dynamics... First movement starts off decently, but what I liked the most was the groove that it takes sometimes. Wish it had lasted more! This movement alone could have been enough as an entry for the competition, and I find it more or less appealing after a few listens! The second movement also has this groovy feeling that appears and disappears. It takes a bit of time to actually get started and make full use of that swing! This also happened to a degree in the prior movement, you seemed to intentionally try to make the piece not too rooted in that catchy rhythmic pattern. Not sure if it was the best choice or if the way to avoid it was optimal. The third one was the most tense and there were some really GOOD moments in there, but I can't get off the impression that you added unnecessary passages to increase that tension. It may be just me, though. All in all, a great submission. Many thanks for showing it here 🙂 and good luck in the polls! Best regards, Daniel–Ø.

Yeah, I've settled on making it readable for me, and it could always be spelled differently for certain instruments and spots if the need ever arose. The diminshed scale stuff was fun though, I have decent experience with the whole-half dim. scale but not so much with the half-whole. Very different colors harmonically 🙂 Nice, I'll check it out! I don't remember, it's been so long since I've seen those movies haha. I only remember Marty playing guitar 😄 Thanks Peter! Some of the technique stuff I wanted to do my samples wouldn't allow, but I liked the way the glissandos turned out. This piece made me realize I need to keep practicing string writing, I was afraid of double stops and playability at such a fast tempo. With more time and study, I would have been more fearless with it, but I still like the way it turned out. I'm glad it evoked such scary imagery for you!

@Thatguy v2.0Thank you so much, really nice of you to say! This was my first submission ever, I have not participated in any competitions before, which is why I love the fact it's informal and open to such wonderful community of individuals, so I wanted to try it out to get more encouragement for applying haha. When it comes to recording - the piano part is played by one of my collegues and my favorite composer of this age: Veljko Nenadić, If you like exploring contemporary music I highly recommend ( https://www.youtube.com/c/VeljkoNenadić ). The strings were added afterwards and they are midi. ^^

it is a mix and it's all free: flute, contrabassoon: Symphonic Sounds (Flute SSO, Contrabassoon SSO) violin: VSCO-2-CE-1.1.0 (Versillian Community Chamber Orchestra) cello: Virtual Playing Orchestra 3 (for the tremolo i used the orchestral one cus i couldnt find one for solo cello) piano: Yamaha C5 Grand-v2.4 do keep in mind that i also manually edit the velocity of every single note and add reverb but yoursss is my favoriteee, i actually got a bit creeped out listening to it. but yeah your description of my style is pretty accurate, no matter how many times i've tried to tone down the wildness, the wildness creeps back thanks for the comments !!!

I know your pain, I think it's rained for a week straight. But Halloween is tonight for me, maybe the dreary cloudy vibe will help the snobbery of my vampire persona Thanks for commenting, glad you liked it! TFW you hear a Henryism for the first time 😄 Hahahahaha! Glad I can keep you on your toes. Thanks for the kind words Mike! Hey thanks for commenting, I'm glad you liked it! Regarding the ledger lines, I agree. How should it be written? I know string players don't always mind ledger lines because of hand positions, but I'm not sure.

Oh... ferrum... THAT guy...right, um, you didn't hear? He uh, couldn't get one submitted in time. Said he had other things to do gooooooooooooood Awesome! I don't think I've heard much of his work since college, thanks for the recommendation! I love hearing what my music makes people think of Thanks buddy, we're all lucky that you're around to give such detailed feedback on our music. I don't have a lot of people to share this kind of music with, so I'm really happy you enjoyed this one! Thanks for your enthusiasm Henry! 💋

Wow, it seems like this competition really attracted top tier talent. I didn't realize such beauty could come from such a dissonant language! The performers were incredible too, any shout outs to them? You absolutely captured the spirit of our competition, even though written for another purpose. As others have said, I felt calm in a sea of unpredictability and horror, sort of like watching the world burn through a lens. Thanks for participating in our fun event, your music is wonderful!

pretty cool, you should comment on others' music!

pretty cool, you should comment on others' music!

Wow, what a wild ride this gave! Can't get over how great it is, I listened a few times, with and without the score. I think it's better to just listen to this one at first, the score is so detailed and busy that it's hard to keep up for me haha. Really? Out of everyone, I think yours is the one that has it all. Maybe not the most killer, or the most spooky, etc., but your piece captures all the halloweens to me. Your sound samples are phenomenal btw, what do you use? I'm assuming a mix? I've probably asked you before, sorry lol. I'm curious what's out there nowadays (for ease, I stick with Noteperformer/Sibelius just because they're so integrated with each other, but I use a DAW for guitar stuff). I really liked some of the string techniques, the tremolos were hott. I think your themes were stated really well, and your harmonic intent seemed clear. Your style is wild, like you tell a story with your writing but the book is Kafkaesque or like Fear and Loathing... you take us on a ride and we're just supposed to buckle up lol. I love it, yours is my favorite! It was really cool to see the different directions everyone took, I'm curious to see what people favor in the votes.

Worked like a charm, thanks!

There are dynamics and bowings and expression marks in the manuscript of the original song, but I don't mess with all that in Noteflight. It is sheer hell entering just the bare notes!😉

Hey there Wieland Cool music, it definitely fits the theme of the competition! You're a very solid composer, as your music seems deeply rooted in a heavy contrapuntal style. That style usually isn't for me personally, but I had no problem staying engaged throughout your whole piece. I'm not offering too much in terms of critique for these halloween pieces, moreso just admiration and appreciation. Thanks for sharing this, and I hope it was fun and worthwhile learning how to orchestrate one of your own works. 🙂 Cast your votes in the polls too!

Thanks for your feedback. It's probably true that this isn't really in the spirit of the holiday since everyone's writing about it. In our country, it's not celebrated at all, so I have a hard time with it.

Thanks for your comments, the piano was damaged, but I was not held responsible, so don't worry)

Thanks for your comments. Yes, some chords with black and white clusters can't be played 100 percent accurately, and that's not necessary. It would just be much more difficult to write out what would work out exactly given the tempo. I wanted the widest possible range of clusters.