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I'm writing a violin cadenza and the playback says it's about 2 mins long although I estimate a real life player would take about 2 mins 15 s. How long should it be?

I am not familiar enough with naming conventions about the barcarolle. I just threw that name out there because I thought that Beethoven's Fur Elise was a barcarolle and I considered your piece similar enough to it to warrant a comparison. Btw - I really liked the way you played it! It has a very personal touch of rubato. I wouldn't change how it's notated - it's very individual and not cookie-cutter as @gaspard would say.

Thank you so much for your comment and encouragement, @PeterthePapercomPoser! After reading your comment I learned to appreciate the B section a little better and tried only to make it a little longer instead of changing it almost completely, which was my original plan. I guess the only thing I can do for feeling more comfortable and less self-conscious about the contrasting, development, and variation sections is only to keep on practicing until they come up to me more naturally and learn to trust more my musical decisions. I checked the link and I really liked your idea of varying themes and musical ideas only a little (making it stay almost the same) but doing it in a recursive way so, in the end, it results in a totally different musical idea. I will try to use that as a practice for developing pieces in the future. Could it be considered a Barcarolle? I though Barcarolles were mostly in compound meters but I do not know much about the style. My piece is in common time, even though I cannot imagine it without the exact same rubato that I played it with (so sometimes I am even wondering whether I actually notated the tempo incorrectly). I ask about it because I will post the piece soon as a completed piece in the forum when I solve some audio issues but I have not idea how I could call it. I normally like to call pieces by the style it is in "Minuet in Fmaj, Waltz in Fmaj, etc...". In this case I am not sure what it is and I do not want to call it "Binary form piano piece in Fmaj" 🤣 Do you have any idea in which style/form this piece could be fit? Would Barcarolle be appropriate? Thank you for your comment and hope you are doing great!

There is no standard, of course, but one minute seems like it oughta be about the shortest, and three minutes maybe the longest. It might be worthwhile to look at the durations of some of the more well known cadenzas in the repertoire.

Hi @JorgeDavid! I think this is a quaint little barcarolle! The theme really works and is beautifully simple. I think every note you wrote here is essential and related to the main theme. It is so good that there's no shame in repeating it - Beethoven does the same thing in the Fur Elise. Also, your arpeggiation of the dominant chord happens very naturally and arises from the melody. As for how to vary your melody - you already made a quite successful variation in the parallel minor! Other ideas might be to change the tempo and meter to give the same material a totally different feel. Also - check out this topic: Thanks for sharing!

Hi all of you, I come back with this little steal to submit to you. The text is a dialogue, in this form of popular speech of the beginning of the century (last)... I wanted to make this alternation between the woman's love exaltation (With the complicity of the church organ) and the squeaky violence going crescendo of the man, while evoking the turn of a street song.In the end, we will hear the organ of barbarism to which the last word belongs... I sing the vocal line, which is not simple... Thanks !

I'm curious to whether this is for double string orchestra, or two quintets, simply because you chose the solo instruments for playback. I would be a little worried about how some sections would carry with dynamic difference between homophonic horns versus polyphonic strings. Part1: Really cool, the way the tremolos in the strings bother had separate and unison dynamic ideas was really cool. The texture of this movement is really cool. The more sparse melodic fragments were quite interesting. I myself am quite partial sustained melodic ideas, but you conveyed this sparser melody very well in this movement. Part 2: A good atmosphere. You are very skilled at connecting very different textures to unifying to a single environment. Atmospheric music is generally not my taste because it doesn't command me to feel an emotion like most, Baroque - Romantic period do. However, I think your music doesn't fail the way most music in this style does. It has emotional bounds that I feel. Part 3: Generally the same ideas as part 1. I really appreciate how even without a strong melody, you are able to very clearly connect the different sections. Also at 17:05, I can't stop hearing Brahms lullaby. I am scarred by that challenge we had earlier in the year.

Thank you! I really do appreciate your words. I actually am still working on the sadness and sorrow prompt. I have an idea with a different tonal system in mind, but I've been struggling to find the balance between sadness and tonality. I find the prompt words of sadness and depressed to be quite specific, with the picture in my head to be sort of empty, with a disheartening melody. Finding this melody has been the challenge for me lately. So I'm taking so time to find examples that complete the picture in my head. So far the most similar compositions to what I'm imagining are atonal works be Webern, and more minimalistic expressionists. This is a very different style than what I wright so finding the sweet spot has been a challenge. It may take me some time to complete the prompt I believe.

Hi @Syrel, I am glad that Mr. Peter Pencil has such a spouse Penny Pen who was able to call the Police for him. Either way, Peter the Polish Paper comPoser will politely peruse this piece. LoL Actually - my name on a writing forum I sometimes like to frequent is PaperandPencil which I thought was similar enough to make this silly message. I like this piece and how it constantly starts each section of the piece in a new key just all of a sudden - it's very bold that way. I also think that the piano is a very good lead instrument for this despite it being mostly orchestral - it's very well used as a solo instrument. I really like using piano like this if it's the focus of a piece with a little bit of delay added. Thanks for sharing!

Thank you very much. After reading yours and @MJFOBOE comment, I am going to study/listen to some music that is overtly pointillistic music so that I can immerse myself in that style more purposefully. Yes, the gospel choir joins right at the end. It was not planned beforehand. The idea just came to me at that moment. I could hear Amazing Grace in my head - and I did not not want to ignore what I could hear just because it wouldn't make immediate logical sense. If it came into my mind whilst composing, then I trust that it makes sense, somehow. Indeed, that they connect by being in the same key is merely a coincidence. If the two sections were in different keys, I would still be ok with it. "mostly quite enjoyable" makes me smile. (hopefully there is an added emphasis on the 'mostly!').

MP3 Play / pause Butterfly Net - Caroline Polachek 1:11 4:46 volume > next menu Butterfly Net - Caroline Polachek > next PDF Butterfly Net - Caroline Polachek That's a very lovely work.

Hey guys, a couple weeks ago I posted a study called "luscious" for string orchestra. Today I have it here as an expanded piece. The beginning is nearly the same, expect with an accelerando in the A'' section, so that when the A'' section appears at the end, it has more impact. There are many pieces of advice taken from others, importantly modulation. frankly, these are not fabulous examples of the modulation you have been asking for, as they don't don't happen on the climaxes of melodies, which does not come to me naturally. I'm working on another exercise which will hopefully do that in a convincing manner, however this was more of a brain itch than an effort to improve.

Thank you for giving it a listen and describing what you liked about it. It seems like you understood and appreciated my piece the most at the parts I also cared the most about. Thank you for listening! I appreciate your feedback from before, helping me get this piece right.

Hello @Aw Ke Shen! This piece held my interest much more consistently and really took the idea of repetition with variation to heart. I'm glad you're taking this avenue in your development and I'm enjoying it very much! I think there is still a spot where you sequence a certain figuration by walking up the scale step by step - for me that was still a bit predictable. But there are styles of music where more repetition or sequencing is expected such as minimalism. And there's ways of making that work if you want to explore that. Btw - I loved the canonic imitation between the right and left hands - a great example of repetition that enriches the listening experience because of a shift in the metric placement of the material. Thanks for sharing!

Hi, it was a bit of a challenge to categorize your style/work: impressionist - minimalist; however, I agree with the above insight as pointillist. I wonder what was your idea/purpose in integrating the choral work? By the way the orchestra has a wonderful texture/color. Mark

Hi @Symphonic! Very cool - pointillistic sometimes. There is definitely a recurring theme to this although it was quite unusual and disjointed. Or at least very fragmented/dissolute. I like also all the polyrhythms going at different rates. I was going to say - "but where's the gospel choir?" LoL But is this your own arrangement of Amazing Grace or a performance of someone else's arrangement? Either way the performance is quite good! You also don't really explain how the Palette piece is supposed to be connected/related to the Amazing Grace song. At the point at which they connect they're in the same key - at least that much is audible though. Overall this was mostly quite enjoyable! There were a few spots where I felt like you kept me as the listener waiting for something though. But other than that it was great! Thanks for sharing.

Hi @Awsumerguy! Listening casually without following along with the score it sounds like quite a charming piece! Although I feel like the melody sometimes is a bit unadventurous, lacking in cadential points lending to an impression of being a little lacking in direction (because it seems to wander up and down and clings too closely to the tonic chord for long periods of time and repeating itself over and over in essence creating a piece without any sections but consisting of a long exposition of the main theme over and over and with some key changes). Like I said though - it is a charming idea which I enjoyed listening to. Thanks for sharing!

liked it very much. the only thing I hate is the mechanical computer-generated playback

This dialog is pretty much correct I think. There's a difference between writing something abstract and writing something unidiomatic and needlessly difficult. Hiding behind supposed goals of abstraction and complexity to excuse bad writing is not an easily definable thing, but like pornography according to the Supreme Court, "you know it when you see it" if you are a relatively experienced composer. My use of harp is very sparing, but that's roughly in line with how it should be used. As Thomas Goss (of OrchestrationOnline) says: decoration, filigree, support. The harp is like dessert, adding great delicacy to a thin texture but rapidly becoming stale if overused. Every orchestration challenge he issues stipulates NO HARP CONCERTOS for a reason: beginner composers see the double staff and get overexcited about what they (think they) can give the harpist, and wildly overestimate the instrument's real capabilities. At the end of the day the harpist has an ungodly difficult part that just gets drowned or forgotten in the texture. Let the harp do what it does best. The harpist won't mind if they have to sit and count some rests any more than my poor trumpet players will. They're paid to do that, so to speak. Notice that some of the most idiomatic harp writing I employ comes in the come una danza sections where I use glissandi and rolled chords - two extremely common and standard harp techniques to just add some background lush flavor to the texture. The exact notes played, insofar as they make the right chords, aren't important. The most I have the harpist do in a foreground role throughout the entire piece is that little dainty rising scale in the reprise of the danza. Again, decoration, filigree, support. To the other point, this work is actually not drawing on minimalism at all. The glacial note values are an emotional expression tool, not an attempt to simplify or pare anything down. My contrapuntal lines are actually fairly intricate a lot of the time even when the note values are long and the textures are thin.

I have a silly suggestion, but I guess this may work. You can download the song as an mp3 file using Youtube premium maybe.

Brilliant!

Hey there First off, what a cool song 😄 I've never heard it before, but there was a lot of neat percussion stuff going on, like banging on things in the kitchen. She's got a great voice too. Nice mode mixture stuff, EDM effects in the bass, it's all great. Ever get the melody to work for the mp3? I use Sibelius unfortunately. What if you just copied the notes into a new file or something? I'm sure it's just a weird bug. What you have seems promising though. Looks like you emulated the guitar rhythm nicely with the string accompaniment. All the transcribing you did looks spot on

Hi @bored_comedy, I love your motivic play! You have that motive either stands alone along the chaos, tainted with chaos itself like the ending, or purified as in the middle section in b.11. Even the accompaniments are derived from the opening motive. You also use the augmentation of the motive, so basically there are 3 rhythmic layers here. It's funny since even though the music itself is chaotic and tones are clashing with each other, the materials themselves come from the same motive and thus very coherent. (Is that the fate of human being fighting each other? But they share the same moral rules and human reason lol but in constant clashes, thinking themselves right. That's the implication I get from this music) Maybe a 2/2 alla breve will better than a 4/4 time signature, given the tempo is fast? Thanks for sharing! Henry

Hi My studies about Forms led me to a variety of dances: waltz, mazurka, polonaise ... (and a lot of variants). I have also been studying the base of Bartok's Axial Harmony System. I won't comment anything about it, it's too long. Anyeay this piece is a song with trio combining traditional tonal harmony with Bartok's dodecaphonic tonal (and functional) harmony.

It's completely understandable to feel a bit disheartened when receiving feedback that challenges your approach to composition or orchestration. However, it's important to remember that constructive criticism is an invaluable tool for growth and development as a musician.