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The members have voted in this poll; Spring 2026 Competition Poll and have decided about the form and details of the next Young Composer's Composition Competition! As per the previous trend, this competition has no monetary rewards - only kudos and badges. Also in accordance with the results of the 2025 Halloween Satisfaction Survey, we are inviting the members/competitors to participate in the creation of the badge awards that will be dispersed at the end of the competition! So if you have any ideas for particular badges that would accord with the kind of music that will be submitted for this competition and the theme of this competition, let us know in the List of Manually-Awardable Badges thread and we will take your ideas into consideration! Please reply to this topic to declare your intent to participate in this competition! The winners will be determined by popular voting polls! Reviewing and Judging: The reviewing of the competition submissions will once again be spearheaded by our volunteer staff and those who wish to contribute their time and effort to reviewing the entries out of the goodness of their own hearts (and/or sense of fun!). You may use the Official Competition Reviewing Template, or jettison the template and review the submissions just like you would any other piece of music on the website! You could even make your own template! You will be rewarded for your efforts with "Ardent Reviewer" badges in three tiers: Featherweight Reviewer - for reviewing 33% of the entries Welterweight Reviewer - for reviewing 66% of the entries Heavyweight Reviewer - for reviewing 100% of the entries Thank you for whatever time and effort you're willing to give! Instrumentation: as per the poll, the members are free to compose for any kind of trio/quartet/quintet from a Pierrot ensemble to a kazoo trio to a quartet of Tibetan throat singers! Write for the serpent! You may use any combination of 3 - 5 monophonic or polyphonic instruments/voices. Pictures, Photos, Paintings: You may submit a picture, photo or a painting of the landscape you based your composition on. This is totally optional, but if you submit one, please do not use AI to generate your image. However, you may use a screenshot from a game. Or you can use a completely imaginary landscape. Duration: 3 - 7 minutes with a sweet spot of 5 minutes. Deadline: Tuesday, June 2nd, 2026 Entrants thus far: @Fruit hunter @MK_Piano Here is the submissions thread for the competition where participants are encouraged to post links to their composition (rather than posting their piece directly into the pre-existing topic - make your own dedicated topic so the members at large can review your music there): We are instituting a policy of not allowing any AI generated works in the competition. Because of this you will be required to detail how you created your piece and submit a PDF score or midi file for the perusal of the staff and members at large.

Let this comment mark my intent of joining this competition. Good luck to anyone who may join and I am excited to see whom may take up arms in this fun little game of music creation!

Here is my A level composition. I'm doing it roughly in the style of Chopin, but the overall style is just trying to be romantic. The structure is ABA, and the B theme is highly similar to the A theme. Things the exam board focus on are: 'Motivic development, form and structure, harmony, and texture. The time limit is 2 minutes 30, so I'll probably just play some parts quicker next time. Any feedback would be appreciated!Elegy in G#m.pdfWhatsApp Audio 2026-03-31 at 16.37.38.mp3

[INFO DUMP - WARNING ] You play this very wonderfully. Without the score, it is very pleasing to just close your eyes and listen. Easily very romantic, and as you said, very Chopinistic sounding. As an observation, Chopin's Op.48 no.1 Nocturne in C-minor feels like the source for your compositional style in this work; especially with the triplet recapitulation. Now to my raw comments, I have a range of things from literal score engraving and my own interpretation of the score from the eyes of another pianist: First thing from the score is the meter changes. I personally do not think you need to change the meter at all. Since you are imitating romantic style, I think it best to truly adhere to those compositional trends before breaking them. More specifically, the 2/4 bar at measure 5. It turns your 4-bar phrase into a 4 1/2-bar phrase and it only happens once? It is very atypical for that style. To add, you do not restate your opening melodic idea except the very beginning and the A' recap. Seeing the score, it does not imply a strong sense of A-B-A', but instead, a through-composed improvisation session that was transcribed. Even with 2 minutes & 30 seconds for this, I think you can bring the opening theme back to end the first A section, however, by modulating to the Dominant (As you did originally). With the B section, it seems more often than not, the left hand is the only hand doing 12/8. The right hand is still in 4/4 (or 2/2) as evident by all your duples. Just keep the same meter, and add triplets in the left hand, keep the right hand in a simple meter, and just re-add your 6-tuplets or other spots as you originally have. It will make the whole piece look and feel more cohesive to an outside view. Nearing the end, your "Recap" is not as strong or decisive as you think. We hear the opening material/ motif come back, but what about the harmony? Your piece is in G#-minor, so doesn't it make sense to end either in G#-minor or Ab-major? Instead, you never resolved the work by ending on an Eb-major chord, which is the enharmonic dominant of G#-minor. For musical clarity, please find a way to get us back to G#-minor. It is very common to use the END of the B-section as a transition into the opening key. Reference the Op.48 Nocturne I mentioned for this point. Lastly, the meter: You mark Alle Breve with Largo. If your reference Chopin Op.28, no.4 Prelude in E-minor, we see the same technique. If you play this, you need to keep the half-note intact; thus, it should be played faster. Your triplets in the B-section were too slow for the meter you picked. Alright, time to end! A nice work and very refreshing to hear. May these comments serve you well and if you would like to see these comments annotated for visual aid, let me know! Good luck in your exam and keep up the good work!

Thank you! I'm glad I was able to capture the intended mood of the overall work. Found the pattern while messing around on my MIDI keyboard the other day, playing with spitfire LABS VST3 piano sounds. Also, if you've seen any of my other works, you'll notice I tend to have a bit of favoritism for open-spelling chords & triplets / tuplets in general. 😅 I like the suggestions for the form, here. I sort of just allowed my ear to guide it up to the point seen in the post. If you have the time, I have an entirely different conceptualized structure written out in a separate score file, that was inspired by some creative liberty granted to @MK_Piano while in a discord call the other day. I will share this new info right here: Aurora-UpdatedVersion.pdf Aurora-UpdatedVersion.mp3

I declare my intent to join into this competition

I very agree with your approach to create a new piece having a musical idea in mind, if not yet a melody or motif to be used as the main subject, but a rather „technically“ one – here your choice of the interval pattern you described. Even if you did not invent a new chord or a new scale, this is a unique, this interval pattern is a „unique selling point“ of the piece and creates the mood of the piece which is indeed „ethereal“. And with your realization and recording so far, you have really caught this melancholic feeling with the warm timbre of the cello and the soft piano. I especially liked the small details such as the grace notes, the arpeggiated two-note-“chords“ and the triplets. Now, to get the piece continued and finished, I think it’s time to think about the form. Since it is already lengthy and although it has just separate sections, the listener is somewhat lost not exactly recognizing the structure and find out where the climax is. And in that sense it becomes a bit repetitive because there is a lack of contrast to the overall calm and „airy“ mood. Therefore, I would suggest to consider to put the piece, for example, in Rondo form where you could use the existing material for the different A (or A’) sections and there were room to introduce sections with a contrasting mood (in the B and C sections). For such a contrast I could imagine passages with a more dramatic expression or a final, triumphant resolution. Another possibility would be to have a section with a more distinctive and memorable melody (e.g. a „real theme“).

This original piano piece has very simple chords and melody, with the goal to create a soft, intimate and peaceful mood. Yet also with some underlying uplifting feeling and emotion. Simple, with 'stirring' quality if you know what I mean. Hope I achieved that. Let me know. 2019: This is an improvisation I made in 2019, recording live into my DAW without following the DAW metronome. So I had it in midi but measures do not follow a metronome beat. I couldn't record to a metronome anyway because there is much intentional rubato in this piece. 2026: Now I wanted to use a better piano sound and that was easy- just play the midi file with a good piano vst. The piano you hear is the UVI Model D Piano vst playing the original midi file I improvised in 2019 (with some minor note improvements) However what was not easy is creating the score! Which requires quantized notes. So I had a lot of work remaking every measure to have midi notes quantized, not for playing, but for the score. So the score does not play the piano but does show the accurate notes of the midi file that is playing the piano. Comments and suggestions welcome! score available for purchase at: https://www.sheetmusicdirect.com/se/ID_No/1956655/Product.aspx Follow score pdf:

Hello @MichaelJohn A beautiful piece with a calm, serene mood which I very enjoyed to listen! I must say that I did not spend many attention – when reading the score – to the harmonic structure of the piece (as Peter did), because I was really captivated and fascinated about the detailed performance concerning articulation, dynamics and tempo! I would love if every piano piece presented here at the forum had that quality. I especially like the accentuation of the melody which is interwoven in the triplets, so that even if the score looks „simple“, I had the impression that were more voices involved as one could think from a short look at the score. I just did not understand completely your comments how you created the score and recording: The recording is a live recording resulting into a midi file which you have now reproduced with a better piano sound. That’s great, so we know that you are not only able to compose or improvise that piece but also to play it in that intense and expressive quality. But what about the „quantized notes“? I can’t imagine what a software would produce for a „score“ from a live recording with such an amount of rubato, fermatas and accentuation … I’m asking such silly questions since my approach to compose is quite opposite. I first write the notes down (even not as a „paper composer“) but using notation software and produce my score and midi files from that input. And, yes, I’ve always the intention in mind how I would interpret it on the piano. Therefore I always maintain two scores, one to print out and one for the recording with a huge amount of additional articulation, dynamics and time changes to achieve a satisfying recording result. And I must admit, it would a hard work to encode that amount of interpretation you gave your piece!

What file type are you uploading?

Best imagery?

Hi, can you try uploading again? I tried and I was successful. Earlier this morning I did try to update the forum but was having some issues, maybe you tried uploading during that time. Try again and let me know.

Just something I felt today. Had the start floating around in my mind when I woke up, but the rest (especially the microtonality, my first microtonal harmony ever :D) came as part of the process. Pretty happy with this. If someone wants to check if the intervals are playable, please do. I also have no idea harmonically what is going on, it is all just based on what sounded right to me. Wordlike is a thing I started doing some years ago. Basically inventing nonsense words and connecting them to something abstract (or a specific meaning). I like to compose and then examine how I feel phonologically. Ano'ton, awash.n93.mp3 n93.pdf

Good job with this the micro tonality hits hard because it comes later in the piece. Great for warm-ups and also concert performance as well. I may need to look at the score closer, but it may be a good teaching device.

Thank you so much for your feedback! It is so greatly appreciated, and has brought to light so many obvious things that I just haven't paid attention to it seems! Everything you say makes complete sense, and will definitely help me a lot for the exam!!! Thank you so much, and I'll be working on all these points!

Yo, Since some people have asked about what I'm up to for film scoring I figured now would be a good time to make a thread. Firstly, I am scoring a very cool action/horror film that begins shooting next month, but they are looking to raise some additional funds. Check out this spoiler-free (mostly), behind-the-scenes video (which I also scored). The film stars stuntwoman and actress Alleya Bourne, whose work you may have seen on "The Last of Us" and the film's effects, including the animatronic creature itself are all practical and provided by an Emmy-winning team who have also lent their talents in prosthetics, makeup and puppeteering to Hollywood films like "Sonic The Hedgehog" and "Child's Play". The entire cast and crew would greatly appreciate any support you might able to offer, which you can do so at this link: The Customer - Film and Storytelling | Seed&Spark Oh and you can check out the teaser trailer (which features a heavily-reverbed version of a vocal track I wrote for it) for another film I composed for, a dark supernatural drama called "Crossroads" starring Dave Greason (MGM+'s Billy The Kid) Both will be doing the festival tours in North America later this year so you can catch them in a number of major cities! Thank you for checking it out and all the support the Young Composers community has given me over the years!

I wrote this song with the idea of going to basic mechanic movements in music. The idea was a piston engine that creates momentum. It works overall. Attached is the score I used along with the prompt. If you think it's that easy, you have to consider that this song went through a critical rasterization process before completion. Numerous renderings were created before this final version. I used my website to create the pitch pallete then composed from there to create mechanical alliteration. Piston_Vonias.mp3 Piston.pdf

All that hurts logic, Interlect. If you overthink it too much, then yes the computer composed it. If I overthing too much, I'm left vulnerable to where people can steal my music and do whatever they want with it, because thus they've proven that I don't own it. See where the problem is? I'll go with the ethics class I attended, as it's more rational by that point to provide ownership to the artist. I also stand by my work.

I’m trying to improve at improvising. I’d appreciate any feedback. Also im curious what kind of style of piano music this improvisation would fall into?

It’s been over a month and no one has to reply, so let me be the first! I am a professional pianist and Improvise all the time in my practice sessions. In my opinion, it helps to know certain structures or musical devices. If you know a chord progression, play the chords in the left hand on loop and practice a loose melody on top. From there, switch the roles and try to improvise the bass. Little by little, you can develop your technique as we do with all things, but to improvise well and fluently, you need to train your mind. You need to have knowledge and confidence in your music skill to execute complex passages. Start simple and get more complex over time. Attached is my little demo just doing C-F-G chords in the left hand and going for it with my right hand. YCF | Sample Improv.mp3

Found the manuscript...

I absolutely created it. In my AI ethics course, any user that creates with AI is the sole author. I'm also liable and held accountable if anything goes wrong, you know? But, if you must know, SunoAI had a hand in it, too. But then, that would be very confusing to give it to the robot. Think of it as a complement to the music I created. Thank you, @interlect !

Hello It sounds really nice and pleasant. It’s also very straightforward. The harp takes the place of the left hand, and the bass provides reinforcement. The strings accompany the melody, and at times they reinforce it in homophony. I think orchestrating this kind of “flat” music, with few dynamic contrasts, is difficult. But there are many resources in the strings that can be used. I’m no expert at orchestrating either; I’m still learning.

I'm an "older youngser" too - started at 52, but with much less experience than you....

I began composing 16 years ago. I got started on the craft much later in life than most people who write music. That has left me with a lot of catching up to do, to say the least. It also means I'm not exactly a "young" composer, although I still choose to use this website from time to time.

"Jesus was Born this Day," is a hymnal song that includes, Euouae. Haven't heard the amen since the medieval times, thought I'd bring it back to present. The chords are adventurous and don't make much sense. However, this was the palette that I wanted for artificial intelligence to include. AI, did pick up the tune very well, except for the Euouae that was wanted for Descant. Anyone know how to do that in a prompt for AI? I'm out of ideas, I even used the braille's "In accord," to get AI to pick up the command. Other than that, the chorus was botched to good effect, read as the melody after a vowel chant. In effect, AI made a new chorus. Overall, the song is represented well, and I am happy with that. Enjoy! Jesus Was Born this Day_Harper.mid Jesus Was Born this Day_Harper.mid Jesus Was Born on this Day (David Harper) - MSMT.mid

Yep, go back to menu, and go to the fractal fugue generator. It will 'remember' the set you used, then click 'generate fugue' then 'play.'

No instructions, yet. I'd be happy to oblige to creating them. Here's a background of the style of music the website was born from: Atonal Music | Definition, Examples & Background - Lesson | Study.com

Thank you very much, MK Piano, for the lovely annotated document! Not only has this information been crucial to Philly but I was able to make meaningful changes to a piece I will have performed at Temple University for wind ensemble. Your mouth is very well rounded. Also, I greatly appreciate the harp demonstration video. Thank you for all your dedication and thought. I am always changing and hopefully improving.

Go to "Edit Profile Photo":

MK-Piano .... Thanks for the annotated review .... ! This is a lovely post-romantic work ..... e.g, Howard Hanson. Mark

the third piece of this set, "crazed capybara", performed by Pavle Cajic: https://youtu.be/jCbbFmt-lDg

Thanx Vonias...but for me....ai is a "secret serial Killer"

This score was conceived on the idea of building a chord using an interval pattern built as: Root (Any note) > Perfect 5th > Perfect 5th (from the prev. note) > # Semi Tone > Perfect 5th. I found that this gives you (X)min9 every time, regardless of what note you start it on. But built with intervals like this gives it a very wide, open, airy, ethereal sound that I just couldn't get enough of. Additionally, there is some personalized nuance included in the direction and theming of this piece, that is intended to depict a feeling of melancholy, mixed with a sense of hopefulness; It tells a story of losing one's purpose within their life, and struggling to find their way back to a specific goal again. I am having a difficult time sticking myself to a certain structure/form, and struggling to find more direction as to where this piece could go... Any suggestions or comments are highly appreciated :) 32468483.mp3 Aurora.pdf

On my birthday, I will be in Poland, (again), so I decided to post this impro earlier! Allegro, Rondo. Adagio. Scherzo. Finale. 4 movements on Happy Birthday.mp3

It becomes catchy quickly. I can't sleep after listening to it 15 hours ago.

Absolutely! Form is where the depth of a composition lives! It's really simple. I always put form on graphing paper. Then the fun part in that is when you absolutely commit to form. It's not something you could half bake in music. Form, could exist as smaller compositions within the whole. Don't be afraid to be too violent with transitions. I think the difficult part comes when you try to make things too coherent, which is a viable solution too. But! Form is lost in that lucid 'elision' of notes where they become jumbled together, like melted cheese. On graphing paper, I create arcs of music on a concrete line and divide it mathematically. This also makes it easy to include advanced techniques in beauty such as: phi and the golden section. Try making a musical joke to in the form of ABACADABA. You'll have fun!

Hey @nathanstravinsky! I just finished my annotations and I am here to share! The attached PDF are my comments on your work. You will find a written out summary at the end. To add, I am attaching this 5-minute long YouTube video covering the Harp. I felt it important to make a dedicated video as some moments for the harp in your work were not practical for the instrument. For anyone else viewing this comment, it is a basic introduction to the harp for composers. Find both resources here: https://youtu.be/_Stiy-uh12k?si=luX9YTfy-8DASSxx N. Janco - Philly (ANNOTATED).pdf

Wow yes, absolutely! I have done some shorter text-based scores before, often with a lot of improvisation and have often had these sort of textures in mind, one way or another... But here's a question: How do you approach form or the overall arc of the piece in this process? Asking because it is something I often struggle with myself. -P

Ya! Sure, thing! It's a very long process to create this music. I love the experience of rasterization, the beginning song sounds NOTHING like the end product. It begins, simply: pen and paper. First, compose the song. Envision it as best as know how. Then becomes the fun part. So, I use Finale to create the sound and score file including Garritan instruments. Once I have the midi, I convert the midi file to a CSound score. From CSound, I also create the instruments, usually heavily inspired by, Kim Cascone! He's wonderful! That's all it is! But, fair warning: the process takes weeks. lol

Hello everyone, I'm back, this is my new piece, hope you like it! Op.9 Nr.2 Spring Symphony.mp3

Hi and thanks for nice review. I've found that recording to midi while playing an expressive piano piece without following the metronome creates the best result - a live and expressive piano performance. Because if I perform to a metronome the live feel is lost and sounds digital/computer like. But I WANT what I perform/improvise capture to midi anyway so that I have the performance captured as notes. I usually do not create a score with my piano works because of the work involved quantizing by hand every single measure! The printed score needs to be quantized to look correct, and be playable. This piece took hours of manually quantizing every measure to create a correct score. With my pop/electronic/etc music I do create notes in the piano roll to beats like you do. That type music I want played quantized anyway. But not an expressive piano solo piece that is not to played by a metronome. I should be that indication on the score!

I'll try to listen to more of your improvisation, but to hear that gawdawful tune for thirty minutes...

Yes, now it looks fine! The chords and intervals in each hand can be clearly recognized. I would also decide to have the beam nearer to the majority of the notes and adjusting the length of the stems is obviously driven by the means to avoid collisions with the dynamic marks – what you’ve well done in the example. I have also not read „Behind Bars“ and other standard literature concerning engraving. I usually try to follow my aesthetic feeling which has been taught by the good old hand-engraved editions, for example the Mugellini edition of the Welltempered Clavier (Breitkopf & Härtel) which I use to play from. For my note engraving I do not use MuseScore (or other software with a graphical user interface) but lilypond (which has a different approach, you’re typing the score in a sort of „software“ source code in a simple text file and lilypond „compiles“ it to a .pdf and .midi file). However, that might not be everyone’s preference how to work when composing, there is an interesting „essay“ from the lilypond creators concerning what make it so difficult to let scores produced by computer programs look as satisfying as the hand-engraved ones.

To Beautiful not be scored to Film.

I get it! It's a choral arrangement, similar to the setting my college choir used! No need to worry about hand size. I just put it in piano score because I did it in two minutes.

Rachmaninoff? Look at my piano writing! Naw, I keep it simple. Great pianist/composers can write that "busy" stuff. Thank you for the compliment: I LOVE Rachmaninoff.

Thanks for the comments! I must admit, nothing was intentional 😅. If I recreated a theme, then it was purely by coincidence. The most obvious one to me is the Mendelssohn D-minor Trio main theme. I didn't mean to use the same opening intervals, as I originally started this work at 1:00am and was just feeling the half-asleep burst of creativity do it's thing lol. I personally used Khachaturian as my basis in the Development section. It did only take me three days to finish and once I settled on the Rondo form, I admit I just took the easy way of CTRL+C. This said, It did give me inspiration to do more with the whole theme, and I did sketch out a way to make this a three movement suite. "A Suite for the Dead" would be the WiP title. When it comes time to ship the finished product, I would want to reorchestrate a majority of this work. To be honesty, the more I listen to it, while as catchy as it can be, it gets stale outside of the harmonic changes. The more I grow as a composer, the more I have the feeling I can do more with this work too. Thanks again for the comments and I would love to chat in more detail about it sometime.

Hey @MichaelJohn ! What a harmonically rich, bittersweet piece! It's full of longing and emotion and full of tons of creative harmonic choices. The harmonic identity also seems kind of ambiguous to me. The piece clearly starts in D minor and that's corroborated by the key signature, but you end in F major which is a nice hopeful ending! But I actually feel that most of the piece is in G Dorian. Very interesting - and you use plenty of F add4 chords which I really love the flavor of as a kind of backdoor cadence into G minor. Thanks for sharing this gem and I am grateful that you managed to create a good looking score as I really was able to appreciate the piece much more and deeply with the score. Thanks again!

Happy Birthday Free Sheet Music by Anon for Piano/Keyboard | Noteflight Your piece sounds interesting from a preliminary perusal...one would need a gun to make me write variations on Happy Birthday!🤣