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This forum update was a big one, which is why I put it off for a year. But I have about 90% of things back. As of now, I just made another update. MP3s and PDFs are back and with improvements. We have proper view counts now (finally!). I will be working on getting our old colors back, and don't worry, the logo will be back too. Hopefully I can also bring back the chatbox, I just need a few more days. Another major update which has been quite hidden, is the integration of a new music notation software that I've been working on for some time. That's why I had to update the forum, I'm getting ready for a release of Version 1 soon. The early adopters of Music Jotter will be migrating here and I'll be using the forums for issues and customer management. I'll also be opening up a subscriber tier (The forum will always remain free but the subscriber tier helps me develop Music Jotter, for those interested in the new technology). Overall, this forum software also should be a lot faster, so hopefully we see some improvements with speed!

Hello again! I just finished my comments and am eager to share. Please find this PDF for your convenience! Go to the end of the score to see the final comments. May anyone else on this thread also consider checking out the comments and share your thoughts! M. Neupauer - The Great Lighthouse (ANNOTATED).Pdf

We already have "Counterpoint Wizard" badge for it! I myself receive it twice lol! We have the badge "Amorous Romanticist" for it, though no one ever receives the badge lol! What is featured in an outstanding Prokofiev writing lol? Only @Thatguy v2.0 himself can be better than himself until Thatguy vUlimited.0 lol Henry

I was listening to Beethoven’s Diabelli Variations again after quite some time, and I’ve become convinced that, personally, I believe it might be the greatest work ever written for the piano. It filled me with such excitement and inspiration that I sat down at the piano and wrote a variation of my own. Knowing the story behind this theme—that about fifty composers each wrote a variation on it—it felt like a great opportunity to test myself as well. Because of my enthusiasm, in a single sitting of about half an hour I improvised and came up with this charming figurational variation. I hope you enjoy it and appreciate it.

Hello Marek Please don't despair or feel Broken hearted, for trying hard to make a composition be appreciated, for being Special . It is appreciated and special , because its Totally Unique, your the one who created it. Medicine can taste Horrible, and make you feel ill, but in the Long-Term, it can actually help. and its the same with advice from those who are qualified to give it ,and without payment required, so thats a good thing. This is your First Post, and it was good, but MK's advice can also lead you to better things in future posts , so please don't be too despondent There's even greater scores for you to discover , in your future compositions. i wish you luck. MK.............. Im pleased your post was recognized by PeterthePapercomPoser!

Hello everyone, I don’t know whether this is the correct section to post concerning „technical problems“ and suggestions, but I’ll try it. Congratulations to the software refresh of the Young Composers Forum! However, since I’m working in the software branch, I know that customers can sometimes be a nuisance because they’re the first to notice what isn’t working or seems not to be working, or when something has changed from what they’re used to. So I'll have to get used to the new layout first. What I really miss – and I am sure I’m not the first one and that the staff will be already on working around that problem – is, that the attachments, i.e. the PDF files with the scores and the MP3 files with the recordings seem to be lost, which is a big problem for reviewers. Apart from that „bug report“, I noticed that there are a number of placeholders which await to be replaced by real pictures to make the forum „colored again“. Since I’m working for a while on my own website – which I would to present to the members of the forum, too, once published – I have done a lot of „artwork“ during the last few month, so that I could contribute a few pictures as well, if appreciated.

Hey everyone! I am decided to go ahead and publish my finished works on the forum. I may re-upload some existing works to match this shift, however, let this score mark the second part of this series! No.3 - Petite Sonata for Strings A Petite Sonata for Strings is a small work for string quartet I composed for my own experiment. I composed the second movement first as I was bored and wanted to try writing something using my theory skills. By fortune, I found some passion and within 4-days, I composed this work. Unfortunately, I fear there may be some challenges with the execution, whether it is for double stops or fast-pizzicato playing. I admit I am not as knowledgeable of string techniques and would love to hear some feedback or suggestions to amend any trouble spots! Feel free to leave any comments about the work and I hope to see you all in the next one! _______________ PROGRAM NOTE: N/A no.10_PetiteSonata_4Strings.mp3 no.10_PetiteSonata_4Strings.pdf

Hello everone 🙂 My first post here is part one of larger composition I am currently working on. The composition is called The Great Lighthouse and is inspired by Christopher Paolini's book Fractal Noise. Part one is written in largo - A minor and is called Discovery. Please enjoy and any feedback would be appreciated 🙂 Musescore: https://musescore.com/user/60829534/scores/32485457

First of all, I want to thank you for the review. - "diminuendo al niente" is exactly what I was looking for, thank you 🙂 Fixing this will be laborious, but relatively simple. - theme - I thought I had a theme, but apparently not, since several people, including you, have confirmed that they didn’t recognize it. This will be difficult to fix, as it disrupts the overall flow and feel of the piece. Actually, I’ll have to redo the whole thing. - accompaniment - This is my nightmare; I’m still struggling with it. Personally, I can’t stand whole notes anymore, but so far I haven’t been able to come up with anything interesting. In any case, thanks again, your review really helped me 🙂 Translated with DeepL.com (free version)

this piece was composed with me hearing absolotly nothing while in the making of it, I wanted to see how well can I make pieces like that. yipieeee.mp3 wadanada.pdf

I have just updated the track "Save Them!" to be more complete and correct - I had originally transcribed it slightly incorrectly and left some things out. I also corrected some dynamics so that the Violas can be heard. Thanks for listening!

Things added - drums- riser at start- bass near end part- added instruments for beat drop- anyway, here it is:

I have just updated the post - up to 13 themes now!!!

Thanks for the comment! I’m sure there could be plenty of changes to do, however, this work was one of my earlier attempts at writing for the orchestra. A time before I got any composition feedback from any mentors. I thankfully won a competition and spent a week working with composer Robert Bradshaw. During that time, he gave me tips on voicing, orchestration, and understanding tessitura. My rewrite was not to completely redo the work but polish it with the new information and techniques I learned. So, while I appreciate the feedback, I will not be rewriting certain spots in the work as I still want to keep it as is to show my growth overtime.

@Wieland Handke Apologies, I didn't think anyone would be interested in seeing the score. In any case, here it is.

Thanks for the comments! I wish to address the simple things first and go to more complex: 1. Big time signatures: Just a preference. My mentor told to use them on large scores to make it easier for a conductor to read. Especially if it is for a quick event like a recording session or few rehearsals. The score is 11"x17" and in-person, the measures are big. I am not worried about reading viability. 2. There is a melody. The entire works is based off the Augmented Chord (C-E-Ab). The arpeggio is the melody and throughout the entire piece, the note Ab is structural. 3. The jurors may have a lot of submissions and they may not listen to the entire work, however, I also have faith that they are smart enough to make proper decisions as they know their ensemble better than I do. I did research into their group and thankfully, they have published their previous programs. They have done programs to capture images, scenes, or landscapes. (See Attached) In my opinion, I wanted to submit this score based on the organizations history as it may fit their direction. 4. With the contrapuntal point, I feel that is just my style. I do reuse that theme and other themes a few times; especially at the end where it is prolonged forever. Thanks again and I hope this sheds some light!

Hello @Luis Hernández, I’m sorry, but today I’m writing only silly comments …. For the first moment I thought it were a piano exercise how to play a crescendo on a long, tied note and how to perform a tremolo just on a single note … 🤣 But no, its seriously! And your solution is a great example what can be done with orchestration if the underlying piece of music (or sketch) is well crafted! Thus it shows, that one should first compose the piece for piano (for example) or for a small ensemble before going to the full orchestration. (Unfortunately there was no score and reading from the video was a bit uncomfortable, since relatively small ...) Very enjoyed.

Hello @MK_Piano, I'm afraid my comments are nice, but perhaps not very helpful in terms of the desired feedback on the ensemble execution etc. Regarding the review of @interlect, I would not be as critical proposing to throw away the first half waiting for the „action“. Let me put it in my own words: there is no lack of „originality“ in the sense that something unexpected has to happen in order to capture the audience and the judges or that the piece is „boring“ in the first half. I think, you have done an excellent job to express the scenes about the ocean musically, and with your program notes in mind, I can imagine exactly which scene your music is actually „painting“. (And even without the knowledge about the meaning of the eight scenes, my imagination while listening would be very similar.) But the objection that the jurors could quickly lose their attention cannot be dismissed out of hand. I think that is an inherent „issue“ or „danger“ (whatever one likes to call it) of „programmatic music“, which is perfect in telling stories and depicting visual scenes or emotions. However - and that is my personal taste or preference as a composer which usually uses contrapuntual technique - there is no standalone musical theme which is exposed prominently at the beginning of the piece and than developed throughout the piece creating the required recognition effect (as opposed to, for example, Beethoven's 5th Symphony, to give an extreme example). In your first scene „The Shore, Waves Crashing“ you have musically painted that shore and the waves (for about 25 seconds) with timpani and base instruments. So perhaps it would be enough time to introduce a melody in these bars that is already present and developed further later in the piece? One could imagine a person sitting on the shore playing the melody on the guitar (or something like that)? A short sentence about the score, more for my curiosity: I noticed that there are in all of your scores HUGE meter signatures. Is there a specific reason for this (e.g. it is common for conductors to enter such time signatures for better readability?). While everything else is very small in a score for such a large orchestra, does this really help? Finally, my best wishes and luck in the competition! Wieland

I thought I'd share this short prelude I started last year and finished soon after (which I originally intended to use for Valentines' Day this year, but alas...). I haven't been writing much new stuff and am currently working on fixing up a few of my older compositions so this was one of the few things I did manage to conjure up in the past few months. I hope it's listenable? (as for playability, arpeggiating large chords is a must, haha)

It seems to me a very beautiful work. What stands out to me is that it’s conceived more as melody with accompaniment—sometimes quite elaborate—rather than in a contrapuntal style. The second movement is gorgeous.

It’s very beautiful and reminiscent of Brazilian harmonies.

If you mean this note... Yes! Better a D.

I really love the new feature of showing the views of a pdf file. Also the vintage brown color is back! Really love it. Henry

Hi @Luis Hernández ! Nice job on this orchestration! I did notice an apparent mistake in the horn parts in measure 6 - the top note should be (I think) a concert D (written A) since the harmony there is a G major chord. Overall though I think you really include a lot of fun interplay between the parts! I think it was very clever of you to fragment some of the phrases into question and answer contrapuntal roles. Like for example the interplay between the 1st and 2nd Violins in measures 28 - 29 is really a very creative orchestration decision! Thanks for sharing and I hope to hear more orchestrations!

Yes, congrats on the software refresh. But i also want to echo that it used to have the look/feel of a creative, low-key, grassroots composer’s group. Though the cartoon images were a little corny, i appreciated the vibe. Now it looks/feels like a cold office. If that’s because its taking time to reupload style, then you guys are probably already on it.

Oh, I didn’t know the story behind all this. I suppose it’s because Beethoven’s variations overshadowed everything else over time. Your version is very good — I find it has personality and is easy to listen to.

The beauty about music is that even simple things can sound complex or can be just as effective. Before you completely scrap your work (as we all know that is annoying to do), with the theme consider writing a 2-bar version, 4-bar version, and 8-bar version. You already have a motif or material to base from. You can do this separately on a manuscript or other file before the main work too. With the accompaniment parts: To Me, sometimes long sustains in the orchestra translate to when I use the sustain pedal on the piano. Where I take the long harmony I am sustaining from my improv and translate it to paper. The French Horns are great for gestures like this, or even simpler, the strings. (Bassoon + clarinets are good too!) Take whatever harmony, divide between the accompaniment instruments and just hit the harmony every few beats or on the beats. It’s probably the most basic way to pulse harmony.

In this case it was about orchestrating the sketch in the image; I might even make a collection of mini orchestral studies with these kinds of things.

Thirty years ago, I was an accordionist. Now I’m just a hobbyist. Feel free to leave any comments, they might not be so obvious to me 🙂

Yes you are right. I am in the process of writing more variations and have already released a Scherzo on 8 of these themes (I had to keep adding themes LoL). Thanks for your interest/comment!

Yes i understand , but your First line of post states: "I made these 13 mock-ups on 13 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" So i therefore assumed, you were going to take this project even further , by releasing an Original Composition, some time in the Future.

thank you! I just wanted to make sure that you and everyone knows that these are not my original compositions but covers/renditions/mock-ups of Nobuo Uematsu's original music for the game Final Fantasy VI - he's a Japanese composer.

The Dynamics adjustment to Save them ! Has resulted in a Lovely SMOOTH sound. Troops March On & Save Them ! , Combined & Interwoven has all the elements to a 1st Class Original Composition,sounding Pretty , Mainstream- Contemporary-Scored.

Here's a very short piano composition I composed for my daughter many years ago. Nothing extravagant .... simple theme and tone. Mark

There's some great stuff here. I urge you to listen to the aforementioned. There is GREAT advice given!

Any tips or suggestions?

What I feel like would be a better version is if you made this a canon. Then to end it you end with that starting 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:

A beautiful piece. It doesn't seem very complex, but it's very well structured (which, for me, is one of the biggest challenges). And the dynamic control is exquisite.

since I post a lot of songs that aren't relevant to each other, I made a whole thread instead.

kinda ambient.

Three of my favourite composers! I didn't realise I was channeling Prokofiev!

Here is a quick semi-improvised piece I made! 🔷--...-- - waltz for chapter 11 of a movie (or business).mp3 It is based on 2 basic ideas really, a Eb6/9 (or Eb6b9) to Db6/9 movement (with the occasional Dm/F) and a morse code idea that evolves into what resembles a 11/8 pattern (--...--/2+2+3+2+2). The idea in the very start is a Dbm to Eb#9 (omit5, sometimes with a 6 too; basically a reduced Hendrix). The tuning is Drop-D with the E-string tuned up by around 20-25 cents. This is a technique I like to use to make things sound out of place - or to give them that slight microtonal colour. My question would be building on this. Like many of my guitar compositions this was originally an impro session, then I recorded my attempts to redo that impro session. TWO CENTRAL QUESTIONS. *How much detail is too much?* (in notation) -> As this composition is highly impro-based and there are a lot of small improvisatory moments (i.e. the percussive sounds which have a specific place in the form but not specific rhythms or techniques) and I'm wondering how much of them has to be notated. Also there are moments where I purposefully "throttle" the rhythm, like towards the end, where the rhythm fragments and by effect the pace slows down. What's the best way to both visually AND verbally (an)notate this *fragmentation*? I want to have both visual and verbal, reinforcing one another. *What instrumentation do you see fit for this?* -> I want to add other instruments - or effects too maybe - to this piece once I notate it. My mind first wonders towards R. Dyens' ideas for Libra Sonatine if I recall correctly: Originally for guitar, arranged for gtr, contrabass, fiddle and percussions. Ensemble Dre's rendition (spotify) . But I am wondering what to do. Often these first feel so... intimate for the guitar to me, but I still yearn for other instruments to join. This is a long standing block for me. (I also want to know what you guys think of my, self-claimed to be hilarious title) Love from Finland, Pyry

Hello! I just finished listening and it's a very nice piece to listen to. However, with some things, I feel there are comments needed to be said: 1. You say Violin Concerto, and I must be honest, this is not a Violin Concerto. If you focus on the literal definition, it means solo instrument with orchestra, which you have achieved, but not once did you convince me that the violin is the true feature. It's like an orchestral piece for a movie soundtrack with a nice violin solo to match... akin to Schindler's List by John Williams. Concerto-style implies that you are highlighting the solo instrument, whether it's through virtuosic writing, or a distinct melody with light accompaniment. Instead, you have the solo violin dancing around the accompaniment textures versus a distinct and clear melody. 2. It would be more accurate to title this "[Title] for Solo Violin and Orchestra" versus a concerto. 3. It is very nice sounding. The textures, instrument pairs and gentle writing make this very nice and enjoying to listen to. You are effective in the execution. 4. The "Movements". You noted the start and end of each movement in a non-standard way. It reads as if they are attacca, or played back-to-back with no break. Overall, I did enjoy the listen. However, when you double-down on definition, I feel it misses points and does not truly match the caliber of the word "Concerto". Good work, and hope to see more!

Nice and comforting! What piano sound? Also there are musical markings to indicate playing 'freely' such as rubato and expressivo, etc

I tried

making a second version soon!

The first question, that came to my mind is: are the piccolo players you know skilled in circular breathing? If not, the beginning should be revised, no piccolo player can play these high a's without breathing and hence breaking the obvious attempt to maintain the pitch uninterrupted. I personally believe this is more appropriate to be the movement of a Suite, rather than a Symphony. The piece needs some modulations to other tonalities. The varied use of orchestration and dynamics help this music a lot, but there is no real climax or waypoint towards a certain progression of the musical material. You are relatively new in the field of composition. I remember my beginnings, and this is more ambitious than mine were though.

As a cellist, I personally like seeing the downwards arpeggio line, but I suspect Scriabin wrote it the way he did because he wanted to specify that the root(?) occurred on the beat. I see both having merit in different cases, but—generally—the arp. line is probably fine.

Thanks Henry for pointing this out. @Churchcantor In your own words: So basically your posts so far could basically be summed up as "Haven't yet had the time nor mood to listen to it yet." I would rather hear what you might have to say about the music once you actually do listen to it, instead of posting 6 replies to my topic which don't discuss anything about the music. Before you replied, my topic had one reply by Chopin and was still on the "Works with Few Reviews" List. But now that you've cluttered the topic with meaningless posts, the topic is no longer on that list and is less likely to receive actual substantive reviews from the other members of the forum. There are places on the forum where you can post this kind of content though - such as in Off Topic - Journals. Or in the case of the Russian cartoon - either Random or Repertoire. Or you can tell your stories by posting status updates in your profile. But I think you are trashing the forum with the way you are currently using it.