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Never doubt me

Put on your ugly Christmas sweaters and DANCE, cuz I've got a treat for you! This is a piece that I started over a decade ago (the main theme, first variation and rondo were begun then) but have begun working on again since October 1st. This is by far my longest piece thus far, clocking in at just over 15 minutes. I tried to capture the joy and spirit of Christmas in these variations. I aimed to vary the types of different textures and ideas and keys present, sometimes having the orchestra or sections play with and without piano. There is some virtuosity and fireworks in the piano part which at times is a bit showy. Structure wise, I tried to make each variation smoothly connect to the next and to visit many distant keys throughout (mostly by going through almost all keys actually through rapid cycling through the circle of fifths). I also had quite a bit of trouble making the piano part and orchestra line up as for some reason, in Musescore (since I was using Musesounds for the orchestra and MS Basic soundfont for the Piano) the Piano eventually started falling behind the orchestra and I had to import separate files of just the Piano and just the Orchestra into Reaper where I could realign them if they started phasing. I hope you enjoy the fruit of my labors this Christmas! Any comments, critiques, or suggestions are welcome! Here is the form of my piece with timestamps: 0:00 - Theme 0:38 - I 1:14 - II 1:39 - III 2:12 - IV - "Transcendental" 2:36 - V - "Stately" 3:03 - VI 3:32 - VII - "Sneaky" 3:56 - VIII - "Flourishes" 4:30 - IX 5:06 - X 5:37 - XI 5:55 - XII - "Romance" 6:26 - XIII - "Romance Decima" 6:58 - XIV - "Minuet" 7:22 - XV - "Minuet Decima" 7:45 - XVI 8:16 - XVII - "Siciliana" 8:55 - XVIII - "Siciliana + Silent Night" 9:30 - XIX - "Waltz" 10:07 - XX - "Scherzo" 10:49 - XXI - "March" 11:31 - XXII 11:53 - XXIII - "March + Jingle Bells" 12:31 - XXIV - Cadenza 13:14 - XXV - "Rondo" 14:42 - XXVI - "Lilt" Edit: I've reuploaded a new mp3 processed with @AngelCityOutlaw's suggestions to get rid of clipping. Let me know if it sounds better now!

Hi, I enjoyed your quartet. Although, I cannot provide the wonderful technical advice you have received from the moderators; I did experience the work as comprehensive with some light thematic material that does engage you. Congrats ... Mark

What an impressive piece! (I can't believe you wrote 72 pages lol.) I'm not a huge fan of variation form because it becomes very boring very quickly. Mixing the standard variations up with the 'character' ones is a great way to keep the interest. The mixing in of Silent Night and Jingle Bells is very nicely pulled off! There's a good level of detail (wrt articulation, dynamics etc.) in the score overall, but I maybe would have liked a little more at times, especially in the lower strings. Maybe this would become obvious if I were to study the score at length though - you've obviously put a lot of thought into it. I thought the orchestration is fine, good, correct... but not as colourful and exciting as it could be? It would be nice for you to push the ranges more, experiment with different (unusual) combinations of instruments and even think about some (very subtle) less used techniques. (I'm not meaning anything crazy, but it could help elevate the colour and fun.) I'm also not entirely clear why your brass section only consists of horn and one bass trombone - at the very least a tastefully used tuba could help round out the sound in the louder sections. Overall though, an ambitious piece extremely well written! Thanks so much for entering the challenge!

Soooo... I have added one more bit in D major at the beginning to better establish the tonality before modulating in B minor, corrected the F sharp thrill in the transition from 3rd to 4th movement, and tried to get rid of the parallel horrors in the fourth movement. All feedback warmly warmly welcome no matter how harsh! Thank you so much @Henry Ng Tsz Kiu, your generosity with help and comments is always amazing to me!

Hello @In Son Zeng, Welcome to the forum! You can make a new post yourself with your piece, instead of posting it under another user's post! Also you can post on our Christmas event held this year! Thx for sharing and joining us! Henry

This 15-minute rendition of Christmas Carol is worth a full orchestral performance. Bravo! I am contributing some small pieces for Christmas. First, here is a groovy <Jingle Bells>.

That's probably what I heard then too. You can still get distortion even if using a limiter, but due to software or hardware reasons. For example, if your software has a limit of 30 for polyphony, go in there and set it to 128. If that isn't the issue, it could be a hardware problem such as low RAM. Not much can be done in that case, outside of an upgrade (and making sure you aren't doing anything on the computer during the recording process). You got it! Comes in handy for my YouTube video sound production 🙂