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Good evening again, dear friends. Although I have posted all the movements of the sonata separately, here I am sharing the entire sonata, where you can listen to all the movements one after the other for a better experience and appreciation of the work. It may not be something innovative, but it is the musical language that expresses me, and that musical language is classical pre-romantic. I hope you enjoy it. Thank you once again.

piano orchs.mp3 um (1).pdf

Hi my dear readers, it's me again. I don't understand many things here, but first things first. Imagine that I say this piece is evidently made by AI. It would be very easy to prove me wrong, @Vonias. Instead of submitting .mid files, a better, more detailed description of the process you followed would have clarified all posters here of what you did and what you have not done with it. Personally I don't care a single bit about that but we'll get to that point later. Please, consider that you are in a place filled by trained & experienced musicians and some of us have passed hundreds of hours listening to pieces just to give feedback out of either a brief or a more in-depth analysis. For some, not specifying that you were helped by an AI to make a better recording of your work and ambiguously describe it or talk about it with phrases like: may very well lead to confusion and even anger among others who consciously decided against using this tools in order to participate in an event in which ultimately your compositional ability is what we want people to show off, review and comment. Various AI tools exist to "help" with that recognition, but they are still in beta (mostly) and their own creators advise against using them as reliable methods. I took the liberty to pass the audio to some, despite you confirmed that the recording is AI: It basically says "Pure AI" 90% and provides a model. Tell me —if you want— if it hit it, this will make this developer's work better. But the thing is that you say everything else is not AI-generated. And this is where we get into trouble here. There are two different pieces here. A pdf submitted along the creation of the post that has little to do with the final mp3 you provided and the score that apparently resembles the mp3, according to you, 1:1? What's exactly the relation between the first and second scores? I can see some, let's say "adventurous" chords in the first score but not that many in the second. First score is half the size, begins with a different voicing. Rhythms don't really coincide, lyrics rest at different places "angel____ vs. an-gel cries___" . Midis are all over the place but you can clearly see the difference. Just pointed out some. What @AngelCityOutlaw is pointing out is mostly in the right direction but: That would not work. You need a seed too. If you do that yourself twice with the same material (and without fixing the seed) you'll get different things if you don't specify the same seed to the model, whatever it be. It happens with music, but also with LLMs and Image & video generators. And there are various tools to treat, import and export midis. Generating high-quality products using it is a whole 'nother story yes, but we ain't talking about one here, this is a <1 minute composition. Finally let me tell you that I don't mind if you just made the whole thing via AI, a part, or whatever. I would prefer you and anybody else in that situation to be honest and clarify things from the beginning to the rest of us who most likely are prone to and will have a listen to your piece, perhaps even giving some also honest feedback in exchange. Regarding that, the audio doesn't seem quite fitting. The strange autotune sound that the AI apparently gives to the singers sometimes and the strange cuts in vibrato feel off. The piece lacks development but it's a short "poem" more or less, right? For more info on this topic of using AI to make/export/import music on many formats, an AI that I have enslaved using a rectangular plastic card that spits money, may show you the way. Or maybe not, who knows: https://www.perplexity.ai/search/can-suno-or-similar-programs-e-2dN_8OipSNCC93.FtFGJoA?sm=d#0 Perhaps I'm late to the party, but these are my two cents. Sorry for my possible typos in advance... I am too sleepy. Regards!

🎄🌲🎄🌲---=== It's time for our annual Christmas Music Event!!! ===--- 🎄🌲🎄🌲 It's that season of the year again and time to write music in your adored wintry (or summery for those in the southern hemisphere), Christmas-y, Hanukkah-y, or Kwanzaa-y style! The only rule is that this is not a competition!!! So please review the pieces casually, only using the competition reviewing template on those who have expressed a desire/interest in having their music reviewed in this way! 🎅 In this event - anything goes! Submit music in the spirit of the holiday season of any duration or instrumentation! There will be badges given out for all the participants, of course! We will also give out "Ardent Reviewer" badges for those who take it upon themselves to review all the participants' music! You do not have to review any AI-generated works in order to receive the "Ardent Reviewer" badge. This thread will double as the submissions thread as well as the event announcement. Please post only links to your music posted elsewhere in the forum (so that it may be properly reviewed in its own dedicated topic). The following members have thus far expressed interest in participating: @PeterthePapercomPoser @Monarcheon @TristanTheTristan @AngelCityOutlaw @PCC @Crescent Roulade @Mooravioli @Wieland Handke @gaspard @therealAJGS @Vavrinec @Vonias The event opens on Black Friday, right after Thanksgiving! And closes on December 31st! Excited to see what we all come up with this year!

Also something else I need to say about this: So I, and others, can put in hours of work writing the music, orchestration, making detailed mockups, etc. but a guy who writes a Suno prompt and has a "piece" in 5 minutes is treated as equally-valid in this event? It isn't actually even his music. Where is the "fun" in that, exactly? Why even bother? You guys say you want more people to do reviews. What your reviews are going to become if this kind of thing is permitted is a bunch of people being like "Nice prompt bro, but I would've said 'romantic soaring strings' instead of 'cinematic'".

This one is a little bit minor, little bit dorian, kept it on the simpler side. 😄 I hope you enjoy, and as always all comments and thoughts are welcome! EDIT: Added Henry's performance... thanks Henry!!

Hello folks! Been a little bit (always is a little bit between when I talk on here it seems) I've been hard at work at college writing all sorts of stuff, but amid all the music I'm writing and playing for school, I've also been working on a personal piece for solo piano. Dedicated to someone I love very much, the piece is an exploration of love. Movement 1 is the only movement written so far, and it is about passionate love (maybe I'll call it Eros. Still figuring out names or if I even want names for the movements.) I'll explain the movement's structure so you can maybe understand what I'm trying to do. Intro: It starts floating on an A dominant 7 chord, overtop of which soars a delicate but sometimes dissonant melody with huge leaps. It remains in this uncertain space a little while. Then it bursts into arpeggios and a fanfare-like triplet motif in F Major, gradually building more and more, before collapsing into the exposition. Exposition: The first theme in F minor is fiery and built from two motifs, the passionate right hand and the rumbling left hand. Cadencing in the relative major, the motifs then set off to transition to the next area. The second theme is in the distant key of D major and is a beautiful transformation of the melody from the introduction. A recurring turn motif brings the melody to its PAC and the closing theme commences with triumphant arpeggios (you will hear the inspiration from Chopin Ballade no. 4) but is suddenly overturned by D minor with the rumbling left hand motif of the first theme, ending the exposition dramatically in Bb Major!! Unlike I think literally all of my other sonata form pieces, there is no exposition repeat before the development. Development: In the soundscape of the exposition's closing chord, the developed introductory melody quietly emerges, again unsure, interwoven with fragments of the first theme. Eventually the second theme's rumbling motif takes hold, and a series of violent sequences commences. At its climax, it collapses again in a whirlwind. Out of the bleak, emerges now the second theme, in a hopeful manner, modulating from Ab Major to E minor, and finally culminating in the most passionate and beautiful variation in G Major, with repeated chords and heavy rubato. It reaches its turn motif and PACs in G Major erupting into the closing theme arpeggios, but now being derailed again, even earlier than last time into C minor! And now we're at the Fugue, based on the same rumbling left hand motif that's been so persistent in the development. After reaching its peak, it sequences a little more and is now in C Major and has successfully set up the dominant retransition to the tonic F minor! Recapitulation: First theme is mostly the same as before. The transition is however different and more "bravura" than before. The second theme tragically is now in F minor, and doesn't get its old turn motif to cadence, and instead prepares to close the movement in the drama of the first theme. But it's diverged! We move away from that extreme low register now into the highest register as we hear one last time the full second theme in F Major, much barer and more suspended, but again with its cadence motif. But it doesn't finish quite yet. It repeats the motif, before slipping back into an A dominant 7 chord for the coda. Coda: Largely an exact repeat of the introduction, but what was before a solid dominant pedal, is now broken up by the tonic in the bass, giving a more resolved sound. With no more burst into F major, the movement closes on low D Major chords. Now the reason I really want your guys' feedback is because I want to play this for the dedicatee soon, and I just want to make sure it's perfect before I present it to him. I did show the piece to my professor, but he said it sounded too traditional and suggested I listen to Sciarrino for inspiration 🥲 Let's just say I have different taste than him lol. The performance isn't perfect, and the score is very unpolished! But everything should come across pretty well hopefully. Thank you in advance! 😄

“ The calm before the storm, the feeling of eating gas station sushi except instead of intestinal problems it’s your ears getting that treatment. Sonic diarrhea is a seven minute work consisting of random noises, groovy melodies, and the sonic equivalent of having a horrible stomach ache… it’s great for the performers too. They get to have a little bit of fun. Structure: this is treated like a Rondo if you may, (ABACA) we have the sonic diarrhea theme (A) , a calmer theme (B) and a very jazzy theme unexpectedly (c). Enjoy!”

not sure if I can meet the deadline, I guess I might be able to share a part of a multisection comp

Wow! Some surprisingly good counterpoint, though it's difficult to see how it will all fit together without the text underlay. Consciously or not, you've taken a cue from Niccolo Jommelli (1714-1774) in scoring your Requiem for voices and strings alone...his Requiem (1756) was the most popular and often requested of its day, until Mozart wrote his in 1791. The sparing orchestration makes it more likely to get played. I agree with ComposaBoi on just about everything he said. Measure 11: The tenor part goes dangerously low, down to B below tenor C; consider a D instead if it won't mess up your counterpoint. Measure 17: Awkward for Violin I - the C on beat 3-1/2 is icky to try to reach down to there, it means shifting a third down the fingerboard for one note, then shifting back up again; consider the G above instead. Measure 31: Odd ending, it seems to me. There is no third in the chord, and while that's not without precedent, I don't feel like it works here. Consider an E-flat as the final note in the Soprano and Violin I. Show us more of this as you have it! Well done!

The counterpoint is very impressive, so well done! I would have liked to see how the lyrics align with the notes, but I'm not sure if note flight is capable of that. I would definitely recommend musescore if you can fit it on your computer. It is free after all. The main issue is how you're writing for your forces. Violin octaves are a little unreasonable for a tutti section. It's too difficult without a good justification. I would either NOT have the octaves, or have the violins divisi. And the voice ranges are going into risky registers. There's a good short guide "ranges for choral singers: a guide for composers" by Chris Hutchings that's literally just a page and tells you pretty much all you need for writing for choral voices. You can probably find it online.

Idk, I still think the flow is off. Maybe its just a stylistic preference, but the cadences into rests, then starting back up again threw me off. I kept thinking the music ended, but then it kept going. It's nice as it is though, its a really great picture type of piece, like a tone poem. I just think it could have been shorter if you like it the way it is, to me its begging for contrast. Not necessarily something crazy, like throwing green paint on a black and white drawing. But for instance, your harmonic texture is nearly the same throughout. You change chords at the same rate, which makes it monotonous after a while. That can be fine, but we never went somewhere else, so it staled a bit to me. It was very pretty, and as always your coloring is fantastic. The sax is always a nice touch, and Im a fan of your style! Thanks for sharing bruh

Thanks for the opportunity to provide feedback, and sorry I think I forgot about your reply. I just rechecked my notifications and found yours, so here are my comments. Hopefully this isn’t too late. First off I think you have a lot of nice ideas. You have a composer’s intuition, and these ideas sound like things I would have written when I was first starting. You have a nice sense of melody and accompaniment, and each of the phrases seems to pair the melody with an accompaniment pattern or echo pretty well. I think this is a high quality start to future composing yet to come. Finding it’s already good, I think each of these ideas of yours could actually become their own pieces. Changing meters so often makes it sound like a separate thing, so could you consider making a separate piece out of something like measures 1-16? Then I think the next easy improvement in quality would be varying up your melodic and harmonic pacing. It sounds like each idea has a similar feel for 3 or 4 measures out of the phrase, so could you look into some of Ryan Leach’s videos on Period and Sentence form? Here’s one: Cheers, and happy composing:)

Hello there! Before, I had the project in mind of writing 12 piano preludes, and that was just dandy. I don't know how consecutively I'll write more, but a few ideas have lingered lately so I figured I would dabble at it again. Here's a very short one in C, hope you enjoy!

Wow! I drop this here and look away for a moment (or several weeks), and y'all bless me with an embarrassment of riches in your comments! I'm so sorry I'm just now getting around to replying, but I've been a bit unwell. I suffer from Bipolar Disorder Type 2, which causes dramatic mood swings fairly frequently (I also have ADHD, but that's another story), and over the last couple of months I've been having a lot more bad days than good...some days I have trouble even getting out of bed, which is a pretty serious depression. I saw my physician recently, and he adjusted my medications, so I'm hoping to feel better more often soon. Today happens to be an exceptionally good day by recent standards, thank God. Thank you very kindly to all who listened and commented. I'm going to try to reply to various points and specific questions in these posts in the order they came below. I appreciate your complimenting the orchestration. I've never studied orchestration formally, I just put down what I hear in my head pretty much. Are you an oboist? Just guessing from your user name. I should probably post my oboe concerto and see what you (and others) think. Ah yes! That secondary theme is one of my favourite moments in the whole movement too...and you mentioning it gave you a similar feeling to Beethoven makes my heart flutter! 🙂 Oh my God! 😞 I had no idea! I suppose I've never actually looked at a score for a concerto. Thanks for bringing this to my attention. Thanks! I'd love that too. There is a chamber orchestra in Wichita that performed my 9th Symphony a couple of years ago, I've thought of showing the score to their director to see what he thinks of it, and if he'd like to program. It of course calls for a first-rate flautist, but maybe he's got one in his back pocket. I'm going to take your suggestion and leave this piece just as is. Was it Beethoven who retorted, "it wasn't written for you" when someone complained that his work was unplayable? Everything is unplayable until some intrepid soul plays it. So, you liked my Polonaise eh! I'm very gratified. It still brings up the hairs on the back of my neck, especially the ending. I've written a number of Polonaise insertions in various movements of my work, but this is the first time, I'm pretty sure, that I made a whole movement out of one. It's so grand and expansive. I did some research online to see how the dance was actually done, and it's wonderful! I read somewhere that in Europe, and especially in Russia (and Poland I'm sure), the Polonaise was the first dance played, to give everyone the opportunity to show off their fabulous clothes. And yes, it was me who wrote that my favourite National Anthem is that of Poland, which amazingly enough is a Mazurka. I've written a stand-alone Mazurka as well, for strings, as part of my Sundry Dances collection. By all means, give your vision of blending the US and Polish National Anthems a try. They share the same metre, which is part of the puzzle solved already. Thank you! What inspired the piece? Nothing in particular. I was driving to my friend's house one day, and I came up with the idea for the opening theme out of thin air. it happens a lot like that to me. When I got home, I plugged it into Finale, and in a few hours, I had the orchestra introduction finished. I'm almost ashamed to say that I've never read an orchestration book. I taught myself orchestration, basically by writing down what I hear in my head...if I don't hear something in my head, but Finale playback sounds like something is missing, it's trial and error to find it out, but most of the time I hear things more or less fully formed in my head. I'm more like Mozart and less like Beethoven that way, though these days I'm trying to emulate early Beethoven more. Someone else here recommended Nicolai Rimsky-Korsakov's book, which I have been told is excellent. Hector Berlioz also wrote a "Treatise on Instrumentation" that I gather may even go even further afield, being that he was an extremely experimental composer for his time. Good luck! I didn't used to be a big fan of concerti either. It took me a long time to finally write a whole one (my Horn Concerto in E-flat of 2014). There are so many really great concerti that for a long time i just didn't feel like I had anything in particular to add to the pile. But my feelings have changed, and now I have several other concerti planned, though not started yet. I really want to write concerti for piano, violin, and 'cello. Thanks for your compliments and comments on all three of the movements. I'm so glad this piece made you feel "right at home!" And thanks for sharing this piece with your friends! By all means, if you'd like, subscribe to my YouTube page...I have literally hundreds of scrolling-score videos of almost all of my music that I consider worth sharing there. I can always use more subscribers. 🙂 I use an application call Bandicam. It's pretty easy to use. I recommend paying a few bucks to buy the full version of the software, or you'll have watermarks all over your music. Just set the area of the screen containing your score (in scrolling mode, preferably, if available on your notation software...I use Finale, for now anyway), hit F12 to start recording, then hit play in your notation software, and voila! When the piece is done, hit F12 again, and recording stops. The output is an MP4 file, uploadable to YouTube, and a WAV file. Hope that helps. Dear God, it's 4:17AM Central Daylight Time and I'm just now wrapping this up. Thanks again all of your for you kindness and generosity of spirit! All best!

Hey @Tunndy! Although I don't think that this orchestration is entirely in good taste (with some parts still sounding quite mechanical and robotic such as especially the triplet 16th note runs) I think it's a huge improvement over your other orchestrations of famous piano pieces! You didn't include the piano in the orchestration as a crutch, and you use the instruments mostly idiomatically, making good solo instrument choices and giving the different instruments a chance to imitate each other creating changes in timbre that were original and most definitely not intended in the original. I like how you let the solo flute lead with the main melody, using the strings at first only to outline the harmony. Later you include some variations on the main melody to extend it. Then you include harp arpeggios in a way that sounds appropriate to a harp rather than a piano. You also create lots of variation and contrasts between restatements of the melody that in the original were the same. I like your use of dynamics and thickening up of the texture and creation of dramatic moments with the timpani. All in all, I think this was a very successful orchestration! (despite some things I would have excluded) Great job and thanks for sharing!

Hello my dear composers. Here my 3rd movement of my Piano sonata no 2. A Menuetto with Trio . I hope you like it

Nostalgic vibe there. Do you think of the harmony first or melody?

Beast of a piece, let me know what you all think!

Greetings! Haven't stopped by in a while, thought I'd take the occasion of winning the 20 Year Membership badge (!) to drop in and share a big something I finished recently. This is one of those pieces I have worked with, off and on, for many years - I began composing it in 2001 and just finished it this summer. I cannot account for exactly why it took me so long to bring this to completion, except that for much of that time I didn't feel worthy of the material I had sketched, and couldn't readily come up with ideas to match it in quality. This piece is in my usual Classical style, unusual mainly in that I have employed an exceptionally large orchestra, including three trombones. Ostensibly, it is written for instruments of the period, roughly 1800 to 1810, though I have it on good authority that the flute part is in places nearly unplayable on a flute of that time - not impossible, but extremely difficult in such places as the frightful two-octave ascending chromatic scale in the first movement, and the mortifying cadenza in the third. Ordinarily I would have edited the piece on such advice, but there comes a time when artistic vision must prevail, and this was one of those times. The opening movement is a standard Sonata-Allegro as typically modified for concerti in the Classical period. The second movement (Andante) is broad and expressive. The third movement is a Polonaise (Vivace alla Polacca) in the form of a Rondo. I hope you enjoy the piece, and as always I look forward to any comments you may have. Thanks!

look @Henry Ng Tsz Kiu it has only been a year of me exploring the pipe organ lol but thanks for tagging. surprised you weren't interested in those random pauses... I like the modal harmonies of the piece but I think it would really benefit from specifying the registrations, as the score currently stands doesn't look idiomatic for the organist, and the default computer playback isn't doing wonders

I feel that emotional writing in the 7th hits me.

I've recently been rediscovering the Metroid series Crazy story: About 12 years ago, I covered this song with a friend on OCR. I believe our mix is still up, and someone actually made a guitar hero cover of it.

Seasons greetings one and all! Just wanted to share this little experiment I tried this week, where I deconstructed Mozart's Requiem, then used little fragments to try and fashion a new piece. Later I decided to quote part of Mozart's work at the end: so it ended up a bit like a theme and variations in reverse. Not sure I'm done with it yet; though it may be finished? Including part of the original work probably just serves to show how weak my choral writing and voice leading is compared to Mozart's! I've a feeling it's a complete failure; but was fun to try. Anyway let me know your thoughts, if you have time.

If you're just wanting an orchestra to perform your uncommissioned music, then they may charge a rate to print sheet music copies and otherwise prepare the piece. Especially for student pieces. Like, recording an orchestra for example typically costs 10s of thousands per hour. In concert music, if they commission a piece, they would pay for that piece and then pay out performance royalties to the PRO on top of that. Also in concert music, if they did not commission the piece, but choose to perform it in a concert, the composer is paid royalties through their PRO. BUT I'm not aware of many orchestras outside of music college ones being in the business of playing concert pieces that that don't already come from classical repertoire, films or video games anyway. In short: If it's for a concert and you're trying to get them to play your piece in it, they may want some amount of money to prepare the piece, but not a raw fee simply to "play" it. They have to pay to play it. But it is a bit of a moot point. Most orchestras, at least that I'm aware of, won't even give an unknown composer consideration for concerts.

“Parallel fifths are allowed as long as there is a reason. There are moments when, to give a different timbre and texture and make a difference, it’s enough to truly justify it. Nothing is forbidden; otherwise, our horizons would never expand.”

Nothing wrong about parallel fifths, just write them, if you mean to. Do not write them in pure counterpoint, unless you mean to.

lol where do you quote this from? Tao Te Ching has only 81 stanzas…

Updated with @Henry Ng Tsz Kiu's performance... thanks Henry! I think so!

Hey Vince! Nice prelude! Does this mean you're just going to keep writing more of these periodically? It would be cool! I think the tonic 6/4 chord in the last bar makes me expect a V before resolving to the final chord. It's such a well worn norm in classical music to hear the I 6/4 either followed by a dominant or a cadenza. Considering that a V/V and bII6 are both pre-dominant function chords, I don't think it would be unusual to transition from one to the other, especially since the V/V can function as a tritone substitution of the bII. But there are no bII's in those bars. In bar 2, the implied chords are V/V, IV, ii7b5, with an anticipation of the return to the tonic in bar 3. Then in bar 5, there is a resolution to vi. The only place where a bII appears anywhere in this piece (as Vince mentioned) is in bar 9 beat 3 but it's in root position with the 3rd omitted. But thanks for sharing Vince!

Piotr, Thank you so much for doing this massive Muzoracle casting for me! I am absolutely blown away by the effort and thought you put into interpreting it and composing the music. I love how you translated the 'Silence' card by starting the piece with a single, isolated A note, and then brought the music to a beautiful, balanced place with the Violin's high chord for 'Harmony.' It's amazing how you used that whole ensemble—the Trumpet, French Horn, Flute, Violin, and Vibraphone—to tell the story of the cards. Hearing how the piece resolves on the final E♭ major chord after all that complexity gives it such a confident feeling! It actually makes me feel quite hopeful about my breath, notation !

Hello again @Tunndy! Nice ideas! I think the following parts with 16th notes: should be notated as either being in 6/16 (or you could double all the note values and use 6/8). I've marked the strong beats as red down arrows and the weak beats as black up arrows. That's at least how I hear the rhythmic stresses in your piece. Thanks for sharing!

The ideas you have written down are very good ,either continue with the structure you have with your peice or use these ideas in variations and what not. it looks like you already set up some variations as well. Sometimes I think when a dotted quarter note that is unisonly played feels a little bit amateur to me. If you wanna sound professional, definitely fill in those spaces. Like a downward 16 note run you could use. The flow and direction of the music is very open and you could benefit from a lot so definitely keep on finding and trying what works best for you anyways good work and amazing work.

thank you so much!

Morning @Thatguy v2.0 Here is mine review of the prelude: The overall structure is built is first on opening phrase. I love how you use this idea and expand on it. The anticipation of each chord of each phrase is nice resolution of the chromatic raising line. I think the implied harmonies: I-V/V-bII6-I. This now makes ask...why are we going from V/V to bII6? 🙂 The answer: this is not a typical resoultion of the seconary dom...

Hi @Vasilis Michael! It's as good as your usual style with fleeting harmonic progression like the one go to Ab major at the start of B section of the Minuet in b.8. The Trio is really dreamy and definitely with Schubertian influence there, especially that turn to minor in b.56. Thx for sharing! Henry

Hi @gaspard! Nice performance. I always get fascinated by early instrument performance with lots of ornaments. The Virginal is a beauty both for its acoustic and its look. English music was much more colorful than the Ars Perfecta back then. Thx for sharing! Henry

Hey VInce, I like the simplistic style here and the smooth voice leading. I will make sure to try this on piano and record it. Henry

@PeterthePapercomPoser I acted as if I was real judge in official competition. Entries have to meet the core requirements before passing onto the next round. So that is what I did first. I check to see if they meet the core requirements of the competition. If they failed, at least, I could look over the score help them. But it would go further than. If entries pass the first round, then, I come back and do score check and playability. Once that is done, I look at different textures, harmonies, and such. I notice the entries used a modern harmony: clusters, chords built on seconds, atonality, ect. I loved it. In the 20th century, traditional forms, we all used to, is throw out the window. So we have to be more creative with time, form, and structure. I have a feeling with next one: entries will be tonal. Hahaha

I think this question comes from the wrong place philosophically. When one asks the question "How do I compose faster?" one is really treating themselves like a machine, the assumption being that the more trial and error, the more one learns. Take this anecdote: While this anecdote addresses the concept of craft, it doesn't really get at inspiration. I believe that the question any artist or composer should really be asking themselves is "How do I enjoy music more?" or "How do I enjoy writing/creating more?". Without addressing this question one is quickly going to crash into a wall called "burnout". The pattern behind one's creative output is likely to become something akin to this: 1) Overexertion 2) Exhaustion 3) Creative stagnation 4) Increased self-doubt 5) Repetition. Asking the question "How can I enjoy music more?" will lead the composer towards music that they want to emulate, setting up a pattern of: 1) Discovery 2) Epiphany 3) New utility 4) Integration (or Refinement) 5) Sharing 6) Repetition (I won't lie, I partially used Google Gemini to help me come up with more healthy creative habit steps)

I think it's a pretty good piece of music, so I'm satisfied with the result... 😄 It seems that blatantly copying someone's style is not my real superpower at all... Thanks again!

But I invented the baromantic style. There's nothing wrong with that! I'm an innovator...

Hi again @olivercomposer! I think with the way you're using the ornaments and little trills here and there, to me it sounds more Baroque now! LoL

Hey everyone. I have been going back and forth on my first piano concerto for a long time. Unfortunately, I reached a point where my original design has acted as a roadblock for me to finish the first movement. I decided to restart the work and compose from scratch. I will add more context below, however as an introduction, this excerpt is the entire exposition of my first draft. It is five minutes long and I wish to have it preserved here on YCF. So, sit back, and follow along to the work-in-progress of my first concerto! 🎹 ________________ CONTEXT AND FEEDBACK: I started this project back in June 2024 when I improvised the first theme in one of my practice sessions. I fell in love with it and immediately knew I found a theme worthy for a concerto. I am sticking to late classical (and possible romantic hints) for this work. Hummel, Shostakovich, and Rachmaninoff are the main three sources of inspiration for my orchestration. It follows Sonata-form, however using three themes (1st, 2nd and closing theme) in the exposition. Recently, as I have been diving heavily into the works of Mozart, Haydn and Beethoven, it has dawned on me the level of sophistication each composer had in their writing. How Beethoven would use elements of the first theme to make his second theme, and later use the first movement as basis for theme and variation writing or fugal writing in his third movements. So, after a break in the first half of the year, I have been looking at this exposition and tried to add sophistication. However, I noticed so many gaps in the structure. As it stands, it feels like a compilation of several themes versus one long work showcasing the transformation of the motif and form. As a result, I have stopped working on it and grabbed a blank manuscript and wrote down the key three themes I want to use. I have yet to start rewriting, as I want to give my brain a break and simply ask for feedback. I would appreciate comments on form, orchestration and anything you deem fit. Please do not hesitate to be blunt either! (I may try to write pure double exposition instead of this quasi-expo before the first piano cadenza.) Thanks in advance!! 🙂 _________ EDIT: There is no English Horn in this work so far. I used my Orchestral template and forgot to remove the English Horn from the instrumentation page. Also, The score is NOT TRANSPOSED; it is a concert score)

Thanks for the feedback! I had similar thoughts. Since I am aiming for this style, it makes sense to use an even measure count in my phrases. As I am currently at a football game, I will reply in more detail, however, I will move to the discord so I can share a certain photo of my themes.

Hey @MK_Piano! Great ideas so far! I think what I find confusing about the beginning of your main theme (after the short 4 measure introduction), is that at first it seems like you start the piece on an accompanimental one measure vamp in the strings. So the phrase actually seems to start on measure 6 in the Bassoons. That serves as the antecedent phrase of a musical period. It lasts for 4 measures from bar 6 - 10. That's just fine and dandy, but then the consequent phrase doesn't come in until measure 11 in the Bassoons once again. So it seems like you might be including that one measure vamp again as part of the phrase, in which case it becomes an acephalic five measure phrase. I know Haydn and even sometimes Mozart were known for writing five measure phrases. I am not sure if it is working here. If you are happy with it - definitely keep it! But to me it would sound better if you concatenated the phrasing so that the consequent phrase would start at bar 10. This confusion about the phrase lengths continues into the 2nd iteration of the phrase at measure 18. The phrase starts right on beat one, so this time its not acephalic. But then it continues for five measures from measures 18 - 23 with a slight 3/4 hemiola that's then concatenated to terminate on beat one of measure 23. To me this definitely starts to sound awkward and confusing in the phrasing. When I first listened to the piece without looking at the score, it sounded like you changed meter to 3/4 and then abruptly back to 4/4. I felt lost as a listener, not knowing where the phrase was going rhythmically. So although kinda awesome, the piece does have many structural flaws that confuse (at least this) listener. When the piano comes in on the theme later on in the piece (solo), you do concatenate the phrases to 4 measure phrases and I think that does kinda work better. But I think as far as the big form and macro-tonal plan is concerned, the piece seems to repeat too much. I think if you had included the contrasting 2nd theme in the exposition before doing a 2nd exposition with the piano that would have made more sense. But I have personally never written a piano concerto in sonata form before - I've just written two theme and variations pieces for piano and orchestra. So all my experience is in concertante type piano concerto writing. Thanks for sharing and I hope some of what I had to say was helpful/useful!

Overall speaking, I quite enjoy the format and atmosphere of this competition. I think the judging mechanism of this competition is good as, 1) Variety of awards/ scoring criteria - It gives recognition to the composers for certain aspects of his music, and allows (specifically growing composers) much specific target/ direction to enhance. Moreover, appreciation to "good" music in some cases where the music is not fitting to the given theme, but is still pleasant to listen to. 2) Qualitative - Please keep the scoring template optional. IMO the scoring template is a benchmark to distinguish the relative performance of each entrants - while the scoring scale may be inconsistent between different judges (i.e. non-linear and subjective), at least that serves as a tool to establish consensus between different judges the rank of each entrants.

Hello everyone! My thoughts about the Halloween competition: 1. The scoring sheet help to me to scored each entries as I review them impartially. 2. I think it will be those who are new to grow. 3. There are so many entries, including me, that wrote in different styles. I think if we had a competition that highlight these styles it push members to write new styles. 4. Maybe we can one in the future that monetary reward. But now? 5. For now, let us keep for fun until members mature enough to do official ones. (Even on here)

In all the years past, the Christmas Event was just an event - not a competition. It was a completely free event with no limitations on ensemble nor duration and no judges, or scoring. The intent was just to channel the spirit of Christmas (or the holidays or winter) in the music in any way the participants saw fit. And there were only two types of badges - participant badges for everyone who submits music and community organizer for whoever bolstered the event through an announcement post and submissions thread. There was never any popular voting or anything like that either. Sure, that's a great idea! Let me know what you think of the Category Definitions in the Competition Reviewing Template that I just added! Thanks for your input!

Hi @UncleRed99! Clearly I forgot your original post so I will just treat this as a complete new one lol. I think so too, I enjoy this Japanese style music with a slight sadness but not too much. I feel like in b.51 the transition to a louder passage is a bit abrupt, maybe add a gradual transition with a volume crescendo before it? Because for me it's the only place I feel abrupt in the entire piece even though there are other spots with the tacit after a fermata. I feel like the trumpet melody in b.61-63 is too high in its register and will overpower the other instruments. Overpowering is ok but I think it doesn't fit your style here too much personally. And in b.53-57 there's an imitation between oboe and saxophone, but I think the oboe is overpowered by the saxophone so the imitation is not the most effective. And in b.94-95 I feel like the accompanying figure is given too much emphasis particularly with the 1st violin and trumpet. Maybe remove the trumpet? I sound nitpicky, but I do enjoy the piece! Thx for sharing. Henry