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This is a piano sonata I've been working on. It's sort of a venting piece for me. I write it while dealing with the thoughts of being a gay man in a conservative Christian community, so I think it's applicable for Saint Valentine's Day, but instead of "I love you," it's more, "I wish I could love you (without being abandoned or shunned by everyone I know)." Kind of melodramatic, I know, but I'm pretty happy with it so far. I plan on making 2 more movements. Forgive my mistakes in the piano recording, (especially measures 246-7. Yikes, I butchered that)!

YES! But... There are barre chords, can you play them? Measure 3 has a C chord that might be tricky unless you bar with the ring finger like I do. The sheet music will sometimes have fingering, I don't know about showing which chord shape to use however. A lot of it is standard and easy though. Barre chords are extremely important anyways, so I'd play as much as I can with them if I were you regardless. I also thumb some of the shapes, as it would be hard to play without doing so (like measure 15) Thanks for the listen Peter, I'm always hopeful you share a few words about anything I post. I'm glad you enjoyed this, L did too. 🙂

Very cool guitar instrumental! I think this piece typifies a certain union between melody and accompaniment that's common in this genre. Like... you almost can't just isolate the melody and have it make sense without the accompaniment. It's a very beautiful performance and the sheet music is great... maybe I should try to learn this piece to perform for my guitar group instead of the standard fare pop songs and Bach lute pieces? My only complaint is that the sheet doesn't seem to specify when to barre on a certain fret which seems like a technique that might make this easier to play at certain spots. Idk... did you barre certain chords when you played this? Thanks for sharing this bittersweet piece! Now if only the people searching for lavender hand soap stopped bombarding this topic! LoL (then again who else in the history of Young Composers Forum can say that their topic got 5.2k views in just 11 days!?) Haha

Hey Jonathon, The beginning reminds me of the beginning of Chopin sonata no.2 but more extended here. The tempo markings are also very similar to that! I love that tremolo in the development section very much and the lead up to the G major section is a great one and a great contrast! Those diminished chord tremolos remind me of Liszt, and that sixteenth note pick-up reminds me his Dante Sonata very much. I think you can indicate m.g. and m.s. for the three staff passage in b.250. Ending on a six four chord is nice lead up to the next one. Maybe you can add an attaca at the end of the 1st movement? The second movement is a nice bittersweet waltz without the girl I guess? I think it should be Doppio in b.65. I think the transition to the Allegro furioso section is a little bit abrupt, but I love the energy there! Will you change b.141 to 157 right hand to treble clef? It will be easier to read! That Allegro section in b.195 is very much like the ending of the recapitulation of the 1st movement of Chopin’s 2nd Sonata (again)! You play much better than my playing on own pieces! Nice job playing your own piece! Looking forward to that! Thx for sharing! Henry

When I was active, it was just a hobby of mine, so I composed only for myself. I did not look for approval, however, I do value the opinion of others. And I do respond well to criticism after I reflect hard on their thoughts. There are different types of criticism to be mindful of. Those who are your general audience who may not have a trained ear, and those who are trained. And both types of audiences are critical in terms of the feedback that they can offer. But getting back to the question, I compose for myself because I enjoy the art. Creating melodies is fun! And putting harmony to the melody is also satisfying. Creating a story from your melodies and harmonies is similar to writing a book. And since I am someone who loves to create, writing music is just another medium to help satisfy my love for building things. It started with legos, evolved to music, and helped shape me into an architect in terms of computer programming.

Probably my best/most expressive work so far. I would love to get a feedback on this!

❤️ It's my fallacy as a musician. I grow my nails a bit for fingerpicking, but then I don't have the feel at piano anymore. Plus, most of the time I play guitar with a pick, and if my nails are a bit longer I'm constantly breaking the index nail since I'm a bit rough with a pick. So it goes. Thanks for the listen buddy, I always love to hear your thoughts on my music. P.S. Thanks for viewing my piece 5.2k times, I didn't know it would have that much of an impact on you 🤣

Hi @ComposedBySam, The opening is really expressive. The phrase Turing to tonic major is really Schubertian for me. I think the modulation in b.25 from F minor to A minor is slightly abrupt personally. However the A minor theme is very expressive with beautiful accompaniments and interaction, the pizz. Is good too. I like b.70 when you change keys with smooth voice leading. The texture in the next G minor passage is real nice. The cadenza in b.84 is lovely, but maybe a first inversion chord will make the Neapolitan chord less stable? It’s personal though. That D major theme after the cadenza is real nice. I think the Bb major modulation is good but I think you can extend the previous D major theme more since it’s beautiful and the mood here is suddenly changed. Overall I think this piece is a real nice work with very expressive power, with only slight modifications on the transitions will be great! Thx for sharing! Henry

Yes, I study with Bill. He's awesome! He has really helped me define my own composing voice despite being an older student with a lot of experience. I started this program at 33.

Composition is easy if you just write for yourself. However I think most of us want to write music for others to enjoy, and this is where the challenge lies. It's quite challenging to write a good and engaging piece of music. And the longer your work is, the harder it is to maintain engagement (I'm learning this as a YouTuber as well!). My biggest weakness would be key changing, modulation and harmony. This was much more of a problem when I composed music equivalently by hand (aka, by mouse). But the way I adapted and worked on my weakness was by this: I started listening to a lot of music Not only did I listen, but I observed and studied sheet music I started composing on the piano, which literally transformed my works I'm sure I have a lot of other weaknesses, but one thing I never seemed to have a problem with was coming up with a melody. I do believe writing good melody comes with practice, but to this day, I still think melody is a bit of a mystery. Like, what is it? Why are some melodies so engaging, and others, not so much?

i agree, when i don’t care about the outcome so much it happens very fast and usually doesn’t suffer anything for it. When i care a lot about the outcome it can take a very, very long time. I think the whole of my process could be boiled down to properly channeling the spirit that’s supposed to be communicated through the music. Even issues of technique are really not that at all; it’s the ability to channel something that accounts for everything, in my view. Nevertheless I think composing, no matter how intuitive you are, inevitably involves some grunt-work and the solitary, problem-solving or chore-like aspects of composing are not things that i enjoy and make me procrastinate a lot. I would even say that it stops me from being more into composing than i might otherwise be, because for those reasons it is hard. I don’t know if i deliberately challenge myself but i will say that, despite a lot of my music being very early in style, I think of myself as fundamentally attracted to novelty and very disinterested in mere replication of a style even if that can be a secondary target in some ways. EDIT: after mulling it over, i think one of my weaknesses is elongating my ideas to fill a satisfying amount of space for the listener. I think that I do ultimately do this but it’s difficult. I definitely find “intellectual “ or technical stuff gets tedious for me and i do have to consciously go about filling enough space when writing a fugue for instance, because i’ll often feel like i would rather move on after making the initial idea clear in the first few passages. i think i’m naturally more drawn to the visceral and decorative elements in music so whipping up the enthusiasm to enlarge fugues gets to be a chore which reminds me that, just in general, feeling like id rather move on to a new section when writing music is a big compulsion that i have to fight.

Hey Vince, I really enjoy the bittersweet and nostalgic mood here, it’s beautiful with slight sadness but it’s the sadness and imperfection which makes the memory more beautiful, just like te smell of lavender will be more fragrant than a real lavender. I really love the much more positive mood throughout the piece which focuses on the good and beauty of a past love rather than the sadness of it, which for sure reflects your attitude towards love. Weirdly even though this piece has a more rubato tempo, it reminds me of your prelude no.4 with the rhythmic pattern and very smooth voice leading. I love your playing very much, that’s obviously much better than a computer rendition! Looks like it’s mutually exclusive to be a guitarist and a pianist LoL! Henry

Hey Peter, That's an interesting topic! I always find it ultra-difficult to compose any piece. I always have to grind my brain out to write only a few passage or bars during a composing session, that's why I am such a slow composer. I have many weaknesses in composing. I have yet to find my own voice in composing, usually more influeced by the masters and in the palette of older music, like I can never (and shouldn't though) escape the influence of Beethoven since he remains my idol. Just like in my third Piano Sonata where you have left an incisive remark that it's more conservative which I perfectly agree. I think I start to find my own voice through my more pentatonic writing like the first movement of the String Sextet and my little Wind Quintet piece yet to be posted here, but still my voice is not distinctive enough. My use of rhythm is also more conservative and homogeneous and thus not interesting enough, especially in for the music fashion now. My third weakness is my orchestration since I have yet to write any orchestral pieces. I start to investigate into it now though and hopefully I will pick up on that after finishing my Sextet. My relationship would be to try to overcome them consciously, but I will give the preference to the music itself first. I never challenge myself with every new composition and even if I do so I don't have the sense of challenging myself. I don't flawlessly produce music since no music is flawless, but I do allow the music to compose itself. I always feel like my compositions are not composed by me but by someone else since I don't believe I can write them. When I write I usually wait for my muse to give me some inspiration and I will intuit them and write them down with no hesitation, and usually these passages are great passages even though I won't realize that at the time of composing, since I have no time to do so. I always feel nothing during composing. Maybe I do push myself to limits with my skills, just like my six part fugue which I have never done before. But I don't put myself that importantly. More important is the music that wanna be born through my role as a mother and that's all. Henry