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AUDIO : https://drive.google.com/file/d/1bqxe3epHQIU1eZn5WMtwrQ3nvq3wkY2s/view?usp=drive_link Hey everyone, just wanted to show what my next project will be after I'm done with my symphony. Criticism welcome so long as it's constructive!

Hi @panta rei! Once again, I am in awe of your chromaticism and ability to always be modulating and yet in a way that allows themes to be sufficiently exposed. You're always going somewhere harmonically, very often with pivot chord modulations or secondary dominants (or secondary augmented 6th chords?) That makes your piece very interesting both harmonically and melodically. Although I think it's more of a minuet than a scherzando. It's not fast enough to be a scherzo and there's not enough surprising dynamics and the piece lacks the rhythmic drive for that kind of thing. Thanks for sharing!

Hi @Symphonic! Part I - I can imagine this music playing to microscopic images of bacteria multiplying and microorganisms "adapting" to their environment - at least that's what the music and the title bring to mind for me. Very minimalistic, which to me would accompany well images of motion and scurrying and hurrying - maybe in some kind of nature documentary? Part II - The animals are sheltered in for the night. Or they're hibernating during the winter months. (Also along the theme of being "adapted" to their environment.) This music to me has a very 'neutral' pathos. It doesn't sound melancholic, threatening, nor joyful. It's just natural I guess. I think the chamber strings sound good in this context making the music sound much more personal and intimate. Part III - This seems to be a recapitulation of Part I. I also hear it as a new zest for life as the morning dawns. Or maybe the spring has finally come and the animals emerge from their dens after a hibernating sleep? On a side note - this kind of music would be very difficult for me to compose and I don't know if I'd have the self-discipline to write it all on paper. So much wasted space without any themes! LoL But I did enjoy it - thanks for sharing.

Yeah... I think is that the main theme is kind of sad, even if it is in mayor, but there is a tumoltuos adventure in the middle, near the end the theme is more proud, but the adventure theme still lingers near the end, and finally it said YES! with that added 6th epic armony, that do the trick i guess 😕.

Hello @latebeethoven_addict! 1st movement - this actually manages to be a good sonata form structurally. The problem I perceive with it is that the transitions and modulations sound very forced (on account I guess of this being an old work of yours). Another problem is that the ideas/themes have no unity and don't seem to be related to each other at all. Very often you default to writing various arpeggios and scalar passages that have no point or substance (because they're not guided by a melodic sense or thematic significance). Writing scales and arpeggios for their own sake is just about the most boring and pedantic thing a composer can do. The fugato passages are also very poor on account of being short and based on unrelated musical subjects. They also break down quickly as if you weren't able to sustain the fugal process for very long, so you just resort to adding voices which aren't related to any of the subjects or themes. 2nd movement - many of the same remarks from the 1st movement apply here. There's lots of forced modulations and transitions. The music doesn't breathe - there's scarcely any resting time for the listener to relax and feel like a phrase has finished before another one begins. Also again there's lots of arpeggios and scalar passages just to fill up space. It doesn't sound very dance-like or like a minuet and the rendering is very mechanical with no tempo changes to add any kind of humanization or ebb and flow to the piece. There's no space between one movement and the next so unless you're following along with the score it's very hard to tell that one movement has ended and another has begun. Usually we advise members to save their movements as separate files so that the listeners can freely choose which movement to listen to making it easy to start listening to the piece where they last left off if the piece is as long as this one is. It's not very reasonable to expect members to listen to a piece that's this long in one sitting. 3rd movement - this one also suffers from many of the same problems as the previous two movements. But it introduces consecutive repeated chords that change chromatically in ways that don't make any musical sense. Another thing I haven't yet mentioned is that you often introduce very random sounding tuplets into your scalar passages. To me, they don't make any musical sense. If you were in some kind of Chopinistic rubato type of section where the tempo was controlled by a steady pulse in the left hand with a tuplet being played over it so that the ear can conceive of it as a type of rhythmic ornament then that would be fine. But there doesn't seem to be a reason for your tuplets - they're another one of those things that you seem to do for their own sake or to try to introduce some musical interest. Imo that's not a good way to do that. If I had to choose I'd say my favorite movement would be the 3rd. Thanks for sharing! I'm assuming you've progressed and compose a bit differently today on account of this being an old piece, but I hope that you will still find something useful in this review.

Hi @arpeggia, really great work, I very much enjoyed it! I agree with Henry, there is a "Chopin" flavour to it (e.g.: from b. 42 to b.51) . I especially enjoyed the transition around b. 31, then the section from bb. 64 to 77 --> really very clever move, super interesting! And in general, I really enjoyed the transitions from triplets to eighths (and vice-versa), they give a feeling of great energy. PS: was it a recording? If so, what at performance!!! Thanks for sharing, I liked it, Kind regards, Julien

Hi @PeterthePapercomPoser, Many thanks for taking the time to give me your feedback. Interesting, gives me another perspective of my work, thanks! (I never looked at it like that, but indeed, your analysis makes sense!) Had to look at the definition ;-), and indeed, I used quite a lot of it in my piece. And thanks for the comment. Thanks for that, it for sure will encourage me to continue composing! Take care, Julien

Thank you! It would be a great idea to compose a metal/rock opera about the story of Faust... 😄

I love how calm yet not melancholic it is.

I recently became reacquainted with this track from Final Fantasy V by the great Nobuo Uematsu - Overworld Theme:

Hi @pateceramics! I like the text of this song! Did you come up with the lyrics yourself? It makes me think of the distant astronomical future (the 'heat death' of the universe) where the red dwarfs (the longest living stars) will be the only surviving light and heat sources in the universe before everything goes dark. I do wonder sometimes if any humans or living beings will be around to witness that. I like how the beginning of the song slowly exposes the F major tonality gradually by adding more factors of the chord. There's also some nice word painting at the end where all the voices die out one by one while they sing "as the starts are turned out, one by one". It's also good that you include a key change for some harmonic contrast although for me, it's not enough, as the song stays in a predominantly diatonic and major context throughout the whole thing. I yearn for some chromaticism to help bring color to your harmonies and melodies! But overall, I enjoyed this song - thanks for sharing!

Hi again @Cafebabe! I think the Ab in meas. 18 should be a G# since the chord there is E major. This prelude is a little virtuosic almost like Chopin's "Aeolian Harp" Etude where the right hand has to sometimes skip/jump wide distances to hit a melody note before returning lower to finish playing its harmonic pattern. Although my complaint here is that there is very little here that qualifies as melody. To me, it sounds like a series of chords but filled-out with some creative arpeggio's/figurations. The beginning does start like a melody but then when you take the figurations through consecutive harmonic changes, the melody loses any semblance of interesting melodic contour to me. That's my critique. Thanks for sharing and keep composing!

Hi again @olivercomposer! Wow - this is another great metal song from you! Are you planning on writing a metal rock opera? LoL I like the 3rd and 7th stanza which kind of act like the chorus of the song and also let you end on the dominant of the key giving the song a more interesting macro-tonal plan even though it stays in one tonality without modulating. Thanks for sharing and I'm looking forward to more of your music!

Hi @Cafebabe! An interesting classical-styled piece of yours once again! I have some critique for you - I think that your triplet 16th notes in this are almost too fast relative to the rest of the melody which is happening at the rate of 8th notes in the beginning. Almost like a recording of a piece being played too fast. Usually these kind of fast runs in the classical style have some kind of underlying logic to them - like being based on a melody or retaining the contour of the melody in between the additional 16th notes which make it more virtuosic. But your use of the triplet 16th's seems unjustified and like it's just an empty showiness or frippery without substance. I also feel like you could have given some of your phrases more space to feel like they fully have time to breathe. Like at meas. 35 - 36 it feels like you resolve to A minor too early. If this was my composition I would linger a bit longer on E7 or possibly just E major or extend that trill you have in meas. 35 longer to give the phrase time to breathe. When you resolve early like this it sounds hurried and like the listener isn't allowed the time necessary to appreciate the phrase as a living, breathing piece of music. Instead it sounds mechanical and un-mindful. But overall I enjoyed this bagatelle! Thanks for sharing.

Hi @Nazariy! Wonderful piece! It reminds me of a peaceful village or town music from a role-playing game although it also clearly has concert-piece potential. I love how you linger on certain notes in the melody of the Clarinet like at meas. 9 & 55 where you stay on the B even though the previous melodic contour makes the listener expect another resolution of a descending whole step. That's the kind of thing that makes the melody very memorable, unique and more interesting, rather than cookie-cutter (if you had also done a descending whole step there it would definitely be a predictable move). On a side note, have you considered having this played by an A Clarinet instead of Bb? Since this piece is in A major it would be in C major for an A Clarinet (and hence, much easier than the Bb Clarinet's key of B major). Thanks for sharing this beautiful piece!

The violin and piano combo was mesmerizing. Congratulations.

Hi @Guardian25! I think the main melody is quite beautiful and the simple harmony underneath is perfect. It's also a harmony that makes lingering on the tonic note very affecting. Usually I would say that using so much scalar motion would make the piece sound like it's meandering up and down aimlessly, but you seem to pull it off by giving the melody a meaningful melodic contour and by making the rhythmic placement of the motion a bit less predictable. The only thing that I think isn't very musical (at least in this rendition) is the cello's grace notes - they sound very robotic to me and it's also hard for me to imagine how they could be made to be more musical by a real life performance. But that just might be me. Somehow though, when the piano has those grace notes they don't give me the same impression. Thanks for this beauty!

Ah, yes. Boredom. The mother of all invention! LoL (or was that necessity?) Have you heard Ernst von Dohnányi's Variations for Piano and Orchestra on this same melody? It has quite a monstrous introduction that I don't like that's meant only for comedic effect to build tension and expectation for the Piano's innocent entrance playing the 'Twinkle Twinkle Little Star' theme. Also - there's a passacaglia at the end that I don't really like either. Most of it is good though - you should check it out! I really like this rendition - cantamus manages vocal renditions quite nicely! I do wonder how a whole choir sounds. And is there any way to add any reverb? The only bad thing about it is that it's so dry. Musically the piece seems to always be going somewhere harmonically and it's never clear where and what waypoints it might visit on the way. Very interesting to listen to - thanks for sharing!

Hey @Gabriel Carlisle! I listened to this most recent version above. I really like it! To me it's much more suited to depicting a stargazer, someone sleeping, or a sunrise. I don't really think it would fit the city in particular. I really love your use of parallel motion and major 7th chords! Also - very effective modulation to F# minor and back to E major. The tempo changes and poco rit.'s were also well placed and added much humanization to the piece and made it much less square even in a computer rendition. Thanks for sharing!

Hi @olivercomposer! I really like the really dark vibes of this piece. I think starting your melody on the #4 of the scale/harmony and having the first interval of the melody be a tritone is really bold and in-your-face and catchy too! Only when you resolve this #4 to the natural 5th degree does it become apparent that we're not in the Locrian mode (which contrary to popular belief is quite a practical mode to work with if you use plenty of other corroborating factors to center the piece in that mode so that it doesn't sound like it's the vii chord of a major scale - factors such as conceiving of the melody as a bold expression of the character notes of the mode). What's also amazing to me is that you manage to end the piece in the same key in which it started - and somehow I don't hear that key as the tonic! LoL Thanks for sharing this electric guitar driven edgy piece!

Hi @mazeth I personally enjoyed the section at 0:34 - I think it manages to marry the baroque elements with a more cinematic/storytelling approach to harmony. I think the Alberti bass would usually get tiring if used this much in a piece that stayed in a classical style, but since this doesn't stay in a classical style it doesn't encounter that problem. The middle section at 2:27 sounds especially tragic and melancholy and I love it (and it also comes at a time when the Alberti bass might be getting tiring if continued). The gradual way you bring back the Alberti bass by mixing it with the middle melancholy section is also great and shows great skill in transitioning. And then you return to the cinematic section from the beginning at 4:41. Very pleasing formally, melodically and overall, musically. Thanks so much for sharing this gem!

This year, on occasion of my mother's birthday, I decided to compose a fugue dedicated to her. Even though this one was originally conceived as a strict permutation fugue, the subject's head unfortunately turned out not to be quite suitable for a stretto and therefore had to be modified at certain points. Enjoy! YouTube vide link:

Very very very impressive!

Really very beautiful. Superb realization too.