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VARIATION TROIS (3), is fully scored. very "tutti" variation, lots of moving parts. On the beginning bars, I contrasted the woodwinds from the previous variation with strings only.

Turmoil.pdf 25099099.mp3 A short brass quintet piece I wrote, originally just to serve as a sound pack demonstration for Vienna Brass sound library in Muse, that ended up becoming a full score. Thought this sounded pretty cool 🙂

Another ragtime piece from me. This one I'd really love to hear any thoughts on; I'm not really sure about a few passages and transitions and I'm trying to decide whether to revise it. Are there moments that sound awkward (in a bad way) to you?

Thanks for the comments! Yeah, the retransition from D minor to A minor is one of the spots I was concerned about. I had originally written it with a B flat 7 instead of an F7 in the second ending. So, the A7 resolving by deceptive cadence to a B flat, which then gets reinterpreted as a Neapolitan chord to lead to the dominant in A minor. But the modulation sounded too quick and unconvincing to me, so I tried to the F7 (functioning as a German sixth) instead, but I worry that the logic of the A7 -> F7 is weak. I've listened to it a bunch and go back and forth on whether I think it works. I may try tinkering with it. Thanks for the suggestions!

Well done ..... a lovely well balanced serene orchestration. Mark

Hey @Alex Weidmann! Very nice orchestration! About the rubato fermatas: in my experience, the use of the various different fermatas available in Musescore 4 have had sporadic effects upon the actual tempo at any given time. If you want to guarantee any specific tempo contractions or elongations I think the best way to do that would be with hidden additional tempo markings each beat. That would just be my own personal approach to that. I love this piece. Just fyi I compared your orchestration to this recording I found on YT: Ravel Prelude in A minor I think you did a wonderful job distributing the melody and accompaniment to different instruments and making the somewhat large instrumental forces sound like a chamber ensemble. Great job and thanks for sharing!

Hey @UncleRed99! Nice Brass Quintet! Definitely an ensemble I should write something for in the future considering I played Trumpet and French Horn. I think my favorite measures in this piece are 16 and 44 because in those measures you abandon the chordal approach to the music where it sounds like the music is just an elaborate but slow (I mean a slow harmonic rhythm) chord progression. Overall measures 12 - 16 and 40 - 44 are the most awesome to me, with a unique approach to melody, rhythm and scoring (I especially like how you create a natural delay effect where the 2nd Trumpet imitates the 1st at a delay of a 16th note. Where there's room for improvement is something I already touched on above: the harmonic rhythm seems like it's usually one or two chords per measure. You don't necessarily need more chords or anything, just varying the harmonic rhythm to different note values could be enough. And you could also have built some kind of accompanimental ostinato to kind of set down a cool groove underneath the melody to create a banger. I also feel like there isn't really a long leading song-like melody that really sticks in my head that I remember easily after listening to this. I've listened to this piece a few times while writing this review and somehow I still feel this way about it. Perhaps there are what you might consider melodies but they're just not unified enough or self-similar enough to really stick in my head? Or maybe I just have fringe expectations about this? Or perhaps they're interspersed too much with passages that are dominated by too many long notes and chords that don't seem to create a melodic impression for the listener? That's my impression. Thanks for sharing!

Quality dramatic writing. I like the sudden fast thirds in the third movement, really captivating. Some of the more technical passages especially the first movement sound more like Hummel or Clementi at times. Maybe I'm just cynical but you have quite a few passages that are directly modeled from parts of Mozart's sonatas. They are not out of place but it's quite obvious, I'd imagine, to anyone familiar with his sonatas. I like the places where your originality shines the most, I'd point out the harmony progressions and transitions I like.