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Bravo! What a pleasure to come back to take a look at the forum and find a whole beautiful sonata ready for a wonderful listen. Thanks, @Henry Ng Tsz Kiu As usual I wish I jotted down notes to articulate a nice meaningful helpful constructive and honest critique, but I haven't, so here's my superficial impressions. Wow! Dancing letters, and bird calls, and Beethoven quotes and spirit, and pentatonicisms, and random pauses, and self-citations, and myriad more things, all packaged in an incredibly cohesive and consistent dialogue that both stays within the confines of classical forms and pushes the envelope. At the same time?!? how do you do this? With mastery and an uncanny passion for c sharp minor, I guess? There are so many bits and parts that I loved (the andantino variation, the way the second movement - that to me started meh - grew on me maybe especially with the wonderful g flat section, the smartness of the scherzo, the interesting comfort of the first movement, where first and second theme look so alike, and yet are so different...), and not a lot that I did not enjoy (I remember a forte section in the second movement that seemed to me was compromising the balance of the movement, something in the general architecture of scherzo that did not persuade me, except that the middle section makes anything forgiven). Speaking of the mid section of the scherzo, that is such an interesting way to stay within the form, and yet - but with elegance and taste - step outside of it, a little self-referential joke about musical forms themselves, smart but also elegant and pretty to listen to, cerebral but lovely to the ear. Bravo! It is a real joy to listen to this, thanks again!

Hello! I finished a new piano song that I had fun playing and started as a sketch last summer. I'm happy to finish it! I hope you enjoy ~

hi @PeterthePapercomPoser thank you for the feedback as always! I agree with you it should be cut-time. No wonder it felt a little strange.. haha. I use a combination of Musescore and Dorico.

Hey @Alex Weidmann! So this is the piece you wrote that was inspired by "To Zanarkand" from Final Fantasy X? It's not bad! When I listen to the original piano piece, and compare it to yours the first thing that I notice is that, in the original the melody is brought out more in high relief. You can do this too if you use MS Basic Piano soundfont and offset the velocity values of the melody to about 32 higher than the rest to really bring it out of the overall texture. There are plenty of great emotive harmonic moments in your piece that get lost among the mind numbing narrative of imbalanced piano noodling. When you don't bring out the melody, the listener doesn't know what to listen for and retreats into a passive listening mode, which is what I think is happening here. That's my advice - thanks for sharing!

Hi again @kaiyunmusic! What a wonderfully sweet and relaxing piece! The musical content itself is great and I wouldn't change a thing about it! My only critique is with how you notated this. I would notate it like this instead: Your version is essentially in cut-time (or otherwise known as 2/2) while this version is in 4/4. What program do you use? If you wanted to convert your score to look like this you could select all of your notes and there should be some option somewhere for diminution by half or "paste at half duration" or something. Thanks for sharing!

That's actually easy to change. When the first note of the phrase is selected, Control-T brings up the little speaker icon above the staff. Then you click on it, and select "classic phrasing". (Why they've chosen to have portamento phrasing by default is beyond me!)

@PeterthePapercomPoser Thank you for the comment! At first thought I would like a gradual build up from the piano part, so I made the texture thinner and let the piano play first. Perhaps a short introduction will work. An example I can think of is Rachmaninoff's version of Liebesleid. Let me try and share again:)

Is that the secret manual for understanding this Scherzo 🤪

I might as well publicize the Google sheet since you're not the first to mention it: Scherzo Index

Yo Peter! Sorry I have been late to the party, due to laziness lol. Although I have listened to your excerpts tons of times, this is the first time I listen to a movement in full and with score. I must say, it sounds even more fascinating with a score at hand! I thoroughly enjoy this even though I have zero exposure to FF world, thx to my strict mum (time to blame your mum for a miserable childhood when you fail yourself in your real life lol!) I cannot and will not distinguish those 8 themes haha, just like Wanger's Leitmotifs which I can never remember their originals when they reappear at all lol. My most familiar theme is probably the Terra's theme because it usually starts a variation in imitation. I think this one really fits for a Scherzo. It sounds like an adventure and joyous wanderings but there is dark power underneath though not very apparent at the moment I guess. Btw, what are the short forms for the code of each of the 8 themes in the rehersal markings? The whole orchestration for me is fascinating and I will for sure steal something from here to my orchestration variations on your themes lol. lemme just take note of some spots I like: Beginning: I love all those imitations for the Terra Theme, it sounds like each team member is following the team's footstep into a journey to fxxk off the monster or final big boss, and the stretto treatment of the imitation gives excitement right at the beginning. The marching rhythm underneath with Timpani, Tuba, Cello and Double Bass is a pattern I should steal, though I may use add a bass drum to the snare drum as well. I also love both the Dorian C# and Phyrgian F natural in your themes as it really adds the folkore colour in the work. b.21 R Var.3: Love the very low register oboe, sounds dark to me. Since I'm also using harps in writing your variation, will you also follow the performance practice to the pedals the harp is using at the moment? You know what, I always get headached when I need to check whether the pedal notes of the harp is right. b.42 ES: Love the wind sextet setting, and then the string quartet plus horn setting. Sad the weird Musecore string sound sample which ruins the melody by always sliding ludicrously! b.72 FP Var.2: Love you start introducing the polyrhythm in flute in b.81, which will be used later for climax. Also, I really love the parallel fifth bass in b.89 as it sounds so prefectly disturbing! b.97 EA: I absolutely love the buildup here with both the tempo acceleration, tremolo, shorter and closer notes and more dissonances. I like the cilmax in b.117 esp. with the electric bass. Though, will it be great to add some brass here as well? It sounds a bit thin for a fff dynamic here for me personally. b.117 Scherzo beginning: I love the beginning. Though maybe for me I would also add a harp and a piano playing the low E here for that particular timbre, if there's not cost adding them haha. The new theme sound so peaceful, but the BD theme sounds greatly weird haha. I love the tremolo beneath and also your modulation to other keys here in b.170, since the music more or less stays in the tonal centre E for couple of minutes and it's the right time to add new things into it. And that G-Bb reinterpreted as G-A# to F#-B in flute, wow. b.180 L Var.3: Nice counterpoint between winds and horn themes even I forget where do the themes come from at all, and nice clash in b.183. b.196 FA: I really love the modulations here towards the hexatonic keys, they don't sound cliche as in many film music. The harmonic colour here is fascinating! Though, I may add a cresc. to ffffffff before the rests in b.207 and 211. b.218 AS Var.1: Nice relaxation! Nice imitation throughout as well. The polyrhythm from b.81 reappears as well. And that goddamn modulation to Db major in b.258!! It sounds so magical and refreshed after all those sharp key areas! But, it's so short!!!! And ruined immediately by the Kafka theme. Love the outburst of hextaonic G# minor and F minor at the end. It sounds unfinished which it should be for there are movements to follow. I remember Peter has an entire excel spreadsheet for all the themes he uses in each of the variation LoL!!!!!!!!!!!! Honestly I didn't remember any details in it due to my lazy nature lol. Very enjoyable! Looking forward to your other movements!! Henry

Thanks Peter! I'm not familiar with Outlaw Star, but I have heard some of the music from cowboy bepop. As I recall some of the composers from the Shinobi games originally worked under Joe Hisaishi, who went on to score studio Ghibli films, and I've always kinda heard a bit of his influence in the games.

Hey @Mooravioli! What an underwhelming piece to have as the first ensemble piece that you've had performed and recorded! I feel like your style is hard to get into, but it definitely gains from repeated listenings. The listener gains more and more affinity for this piece upon repeated listenings I mean. It's very esoteric to get into though. But I love your use of flutter-tongue and slap-tongue on the saxophone! Great use of extended techniques. Though I think that the music could be more unified and self-similar. I don't find myself whistling or humming a tune after listening to this piece. Besides just having cool techniques and unusual chords and progressions I think it's also important to give the listener a long-leading melodic line and a clear theme. But that might just be my opinion, and I'm a very thematic composer. You do you, of course. Thanks for sharing!

Hey @AngelCityOutlaw! Very cool track! Reminds me a little of Kow Otani the Japanese composer who wrote the music for "Outlaw Star" an anime that was popular right before the reign of "Cowboy Bebop". Thanks for sharing this cool "Asiatic" track!

I made these 8 mock-ups on 8 themes from Final Fantasy VI intending to use them to familiarize myself with the themes in preparation for writing a big variations piece based on them. At first, I only intended to write variations on the "Returner's Theme" but it soon ballooned out of control as I noticed how many of the themes in the game are inter-related thematically and so I had to include more. I am posting the themes here with PDF scores for your perusal in the order in which they appear in the game. Also, here are the links to the original tracks on YouTube: Terra's Theme - Terra is the main protagonist in the game. A half magical being (esper) half human. The empire takes advantage of her. Fight Theme Kefka's Theme - Kefka is the evil antagonist who overthrows the emperor to gain ultimate power and lead the world into ruin. Mt. Kolts Returner's March - The Returner's are an organization that is trying to resist the evil empire and Kefka and Emperor Gestahl. Martial Law - plays in town when the empire occupies it. Magitec Factory - In the Imperial capitol of Vector, the empire has constructed a factory to create Magitec armor granting magic power to those wielding it. The Gestahl Empire To go to the thread where I wrote my own original music based on these themes go here: