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It took me a few months, but I finally completed my most recent work for orchestra. This piece is nominally in scherzo-trio form, with some slight modifications. Each scherzo is itself also binary in the manner of a sonata form exposition and recapitulation. The trio is actually a waltz, slowly built up from nothing via the gradual introduction of cliches. Though it seems to be unrelated to the scherzo at first, I bridge the gap with the transition back into the scherzo. The strict metric modulation to precisely half-tempo for the trio is critical. In the concluding fugato, both themes from the scherzo are combined simultaneously. Score video:

Don't wait. Just try some stuff out. You have no shortage of ideas, you're one of the most prolific posters I've seen. Take little tidbits from the themes you create and manipulate them. You seem to favor the classical era with your music. Fine, so what do those composers do? I would study their scores. Emulate what they do, and when you feel confident enough in your own abilities, you'll find ways to make it your own. But I think a good way to start understanding development of material is to copy what the greats have done, and when you feel like you've learned from their techniques, you can come up with your own. I CHALLENGE you to do this. I would love to see you just take one theme, and create ideas based off of that theme into music that has been developed from a single idea. Don't worry about how long it is, or how many sections you have, or changing key, etc. Just finish an idea and give it a cadence, then create something either contrasting that or building later phrases that stem from the original idea. Think small but smart. I'm excited to see your next posts, to see if you take my advice into consideration. If I see a simple binary or tertiary form from you in a future post, I'll be happy. If I see something called piano idea 523454235234 then I'll be sad, because it would seem like you're not growing, but rather shelling out another idea with the intent of it becoming something someday. Keep COMPOSING my friend. Any mouth-breathing meat robot can come up with ideas, but what do YOU as a composer want to do with it? You have lots of potential, and I'm excited to see and hear you continue to grow.

Hello Henry, Thanks a lot for your feedback. I am very glad about all your nice comments. This is very stimulating for me! Also, I am very grateful for indicating the spelling errors in the score. I should have seen them, but everything went a bit fast. I have now corrected them (a revised score is uploaded). The next thing for me will be writing the third movement. This is going to be a big “tour de force ”and it will probably not be ready before early 2023. But I am much looking forward to this work! Best regards! Hello Peter, Oh-Oh, what a mistake in my score! Of course you are completely right. The notation of the two 16ths connected to the dotted 8th is not correct. It should be the way you indicated. I have changed this accordingly in the revised score. I replaced the 16ths with a staccato with 8ths and staccatissimo´s. I am really grateful for your review! And please let me know if you see any other peculiarities. The piece is quite short, I agree. But maybe ok in the context of the middle part of a sonata. (The last movement will be longer!) Best regards, and thanks again! Hello Daniel, Thank you also for your positive response! The notes with the “sff” sign were perhaps a bit too loud in the (electronic) sound file, but on a real instrument, musicians could (would) play it the way they prefer. (I used staccatissimo´s as you will see in the revised score) Best regards.

So uploading WIPs is something never do. Or rather, never have done since waaaay back in the day. But I was messing around tonight with my guitar and jamming over a drum loop from a pack and thought maybe this is the start of something a bit more in line with the Guilty Gear sort of soundtracks. Curious to know what you guys think. Where do you see it going and what kinds of things come to your imagination? Thanks in advance

Hi! This is one melodic piece i wrote some time ago. I later intented it for small band group, so the pdf file has only melody and chords. And players can add background and second voice and also solo. C part is also ad libitum. the Mp3 file has a different background in A part. structure is AB-8 bar or 16 bar solo-CCA, but there is no solo part in the mp3 file, so it is ABCCA. EDIT: I added live recording (clarinet solo) mp3 file

Thank you for the review. I have been told that I do have a personal style that is evident in many of my works. Part of that style I believe is I write in a "modal" melodic style. Again that's for the encouragement ... Mark PS: One more thing - I am now filling out the texture with second brass and woodwind parts which will enhance the tonal fabric of the work.

No problem with putting a link on Twitter.

I like the character of this one. But have you ever considered taking some of these works and critically judging them and trimming them down to essential good ideas that you could develop to sustain more interest? Like if this were my composition I would get rid of everything after measure 16 and pick up composing this piece at a later time when my mind is fresh. Because I think up to measure 17 you create a pretty good logical and motivically-tight piece. The dynamic changes create interest, although I'm puzzled as to why you used terraced dynamics instead of a crescendo from measures 3 - 6. Was this originally a harpsichord piece? If so, some harpsichords are capable of terraced dynamics, but they only have two dynamic levels available - loud and soft. Thanks for sharing!

Thank you! The decision to put it in 3/4 was a psychological one. I've been mildly interested in the psychology of notation and have tried to exploit it purposefully. I relate it in my head to the Baroque technique of notating slow movements with really short note values to convey by means of the physical impossibility of playing it any faster that it was supposed to be slow. Likewise, conversely I use the absence of any short note values to convey the sense that the music is supposed to be flying by at high speed, as there are no short note values to slow you down. The other main psychological notation decision I made was to begin the trio in Eb minor rather than the more "sensible" D# minor, which would have avoided the awkward jump over into sharps later on to avoid landing in theoretical key land. (Originally, I had even left everything in flats, and the middle section of the trio was subsequently notated in Bbb major! I of course realized this was needlessly obtuse and fixed it.) I still feel that Eb psychologically conveys a different, mainly darker feeling than D#, though, so I wanted to at least still start off in Eb and flip to sharps purely for convenience.

I really love your passion and the amount of work you put into this! I'll touch upon a few points from memory after reading your responses... Investing in sounds I understand why many composers ignore this part. It's the same reason why programmers love to build but hate the debugging process. It's boring! But here is an analogy for you. As a computer engineer / programmer, if I am just building and not talking with the potential customer, and my software is unusable, isn't my obligation to fix the software before I continue building it? Otherwise, no one will use the software. Well its the same for composers, writing the music is just half the battle. Because guess what? The only thing your audience cares about is how it sounds. Most of your audience will not have the critical listening skills that I have, just keep that in mind. So having a really great audio output is extremely important. I clipped a part of my livestream where I talk about nuancing your music, and how important it is. The livestream is over an hour long so that's why I clipped just 60 seconds of it 😂. I challenge you to... Create your next composition with audio output in mind. Keep it under 5 minutes or so, this way you can practice working on your audio. Music Appreciation If you want to become a better composer, the easiest thing you can do is listen to other works! I listen to so much music, not for the sake of becoming a better composer though, but because I absolutely love music. The only reason why I became a composer was because of my love of listening to other works. It's the same reason why I became a computer programmer. Not because I wanted a job, but because I loved the art of creating new things. The more music you listen to (and I mean actually listen, don't just put the headphones on), the more well versed you will become at the art of composition!

Ok, so I will be a bit harder on you with this critique then. This piece sounds more like a short study on scales and octaves to me. If this was meant to be a composition, then a few things: Watch the parallel octaves. I'm not an extreme music theorist, but in this case your piece mostly goes without them, then you throw them in toward the very end without much of a purpose. There's no theme. Not all pieces need a theme, esp. if this is a study. But throwing one in there helps keep a piece interesting. The piece is really just scales. No articulations, dynamics, velocity changing I'm big on good audio output, and a good way to help not desensitize the ear is by paying a little more closer attention to point 4. Because even if a piece is just a study, you can make it sound more interesting by having a better audio output.

Thanks for the review, these piano scores are not my best as I am in a rut and due to this they dont show my true ability. As soon as I improve ill come straight to these scores and fix them. Ill probably leave everything up to measure 16 as you suggest and fix the rest.