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Hi! I'm Harry Wood. I'm new to this forum and all things music honestly. I'm 30 years old, discovered piano a year ago and fell in love. I have no musical background, I've never played an instrument prior to this and I'm still learning how to read sheet music. I'm going for my grade 1 in piano later this year I hope. Started writing my own music 3 months ago as a way to express myself and my emotions, I'm very into neo classical artists such as Ludovico. I am struggling to know what to actually do with the pieces I have written. I think it sounds okay but I struggle to find people to show to see what others think of it. Below you can find 2 audio clips of my latest piano compositions, neither are finished and I will continue to work on them but I would love some feedback and opinions no matter how harsh it may be. I have fallen in love with writing music and I want to get better and that will only happen through honest feedback so please feel free to express your opinions and I will take it all on board. Kind Regards Harry. Far From Everything Far From Everything.mp3 As I am As I am.mp3

Hallo @HarryWood ! First of all, a warm welcome here at the YoungComposers Forum! Here are you among numerous music enthusiasts of a huge variety concerning their styles, compositional approaches and skills, so that I think, you’ll get the desired feedback. I was curious about what to expect about the style of your music, since you’ve called you a „new neo classical“ piano composer. The term „classical“ reminds me first to Beethoven or Mozart and „neo“ means for me to integrate more contemporary harmony and tonality. After listening to your pieces, they remind me more of Beethoven’s „Für Elise“, Richard Clayderman’s „Ballade Pour Adeline“ or „Comptine d'un autre ete – l'apres-midi“ from the French movie „Amelie“. Although all that pieces are very popular, that kind of genre is – as mentioned already by @Luis Hernández – somewhat too soft and non-exciting for me, too. Please don’t misunderstand that as a criticism on your person or your achievements in piano playing for about one year. The pieces sound good and have a calm mood, but putting some more ingredients in them would make them more unique: Whenever I think about what a good piece requires, the following things come to my mind: • First, a piece needs an idea how it could sound like, what mood it should have or which other pieces could be used as an inspiration (I think, that „ingredient“ you have already achieved with your pieces). • What a piece makes unique or captivating is a clever idea, creating a „unique selling point“, bringing some surprise to the listener. That is the „spice“ of the unexpected, for example a distinct harmony progression, an unexpected tonality or dissonances or a rhythmic surprise such as an unconventional meter (so I could imagine for your pieces a kind of Jazz harmony or somewhat more dissonant harmonies). • Another important thing is to think about the form of the piece. While this is a more theoretical topic, one sometimes has a good melodic idea (or even a number of), but the question is, how to put them together. So now the reflection comes, what the piece could be structurally, a simple A-B-A form, a rondo, in sonata form, a number of variations about the main theme? • A final question could be: In which context should the piece appear? I could imagine, that it is more satisfying to have an idea or „project“ of multiple pieces to be put together, for example, in a cycle such as „Six preludes“ or something like that. With such a framework in mind, you don’t run the risk of trying to create numerous unrelated pieces and perhaps putting them „unfinished“ away. The incentive „Now have I finished number four of six“ helps yourself to focus and you’ll see, nearly every piece is worth it to be retained. Looking around here at the forum would be a perfect place to get inspiration and don’t hesitate to „review“ other compositions too, even if they are from „more experienced“ composers. Every reply is welcome and receiving the „incentives“ (such as points, badges and finally ranks) does not primarily depend on the quality and quantity of the compositions you shared, but even more from the amount of feedback you’ve given. And, by the way, if you share your scores, too, the reviewers would be able to give more in-depth reply, for example also concerning the „art“ of score engraving. Friendly regards. Wieland

Those are very different things. If I buy a hydraulic press and use it to flatten a stainless steel pipe, obviously I'm morally responsible for flattening the pipe. If that pipe belonged to someone else, I can hardly evade responsibility by saying, "Hey, it wasn't me! It was the hydraulic press!" On the other hand, it's equally obvious that I can't lay claim to flattening the pipe as a feat of strength. If I cry, "Behold my strength!" as I hold the flattened piece of steel aloft, I am quite rightly met with, "Uh... you didn't do that. The hydraulic press did."

Hiihiiii!!! This is my submission for the Spring 2026 Landscapes Competition :) For my landscape, I've chosen the mountains of Zhangjiajie, China. The first time that I saw these mountains, I was awestruck by just the sheer scale of them. Massive peaks and towers, overgrown with centuries-old moss, reaching beyond the clouds. Really just gorgeous. I wanted to try to write about them. The piece starts off zoomed outwards, depicting the sparseness of the clouds, until eventually, a melody begins to creep towards the first real theme--which I call the garden theme. The focus is on the garden now, zoomed in, it's a sort of natural oasis along the side of one of the tall mountainous pillar. It's beautiful, lush, full, until the garden begins to die as winter comes. The harmony because sparse and vague again, with large spontaneous gusts of wind... just very dry sounding overall. That is, until months later, the clouds darken, promising a heavy storm. Anticipation builds, until eventually, rain comes pouring down, so densely that it's almost like a wall. It's the first rain of spring!!! After the rain settles down, the garden comes to life again with the re-entry of the garden theme!! The piece ends as the focus zooms back out onto the clouds, and the tension finally resolves again. My goal with the piece was to try to represent the life cycle of the plant life out in the setting of Zhangjiajie. I hope you all like it !!!! AmidstTheCloudsAndFlowers.mp3 AmidstTheCloudsAndFlowers.pdf

Nobodies reviews are more "official" than anyone else's and you're free to review whichever entries you want and in any manner you see fit (you can use the official competition reviewing template or review them any way you want or use your own template). The winners will be decided by popular voting polls.

E.A.S. | Electronic Ambient Space ELECTRONIC AMBIENT SPACE.mp3

Written for the 2026 spring Young composer competition this work for percussion quintet features a wide range of natural and man-made percussion instruments to represent the integration of man and nature. Few years back me, and a few of my friends decided that it would be a good idea to cure our boredom by bringing a already busted up child size guitar meant for learning and to "" sacrifice it into the woods.'' the reservoir is a large body of water near where I live so it was a short distance, which then led to an easy walk into a bunch of colonial ruins where we laid the guitar and watch it rot away. Far deep in the reservoir lays a broken destroyed child size guitar that my sister got for her birthday as a child or something like that it’s been ever since sitting around around in the house and had transfer locations from her room to the living room room to the my room to the wilderness it’s final resting place. My sister never had been fond of performing music in her life. In fact she is quite horrible at it so my parents smartly in intelligently got her a low quality guitar anyways fast-forward a few years later, and I am now experimenting with multi instrumelity. However, though I got fond of extended techniques, playing it like a hammered dulcimer and even bowing the thing after me becoming friends with the lead guitarist to my modern day chamber band sort of situation, he starts to play it and at that point it only had two remaining strings. We all anonymously decided that we should bring it to the reservoir maybe hide a secret note in it after all the band was just a bunch of board teens, wanting something interesting to do with our lives, so what ended up happening was we snuck into the Reservoir found a foundation of an old colonial house and threw the guitar in it other than impact damage ever since the guitar has been rotting away however, though quite often me and my friends still visit it’s resting place only to see it in more final pieces I’m pretty sure I got rid of the note since it had some secrets that I do not want people finding and still to this day. It’s been resting there ever since. Percussion five has a lot of handmade instrument specifically for this work . The alcoholics shekere; is just a bucket with crushed up beer, cans, or soda cans is meant to be played in a similar style to a traditional shekere . the facidrum; faci- Latin for bundle, a bundle of resident sticks attached and tied up to a frame . Chopping block; a semi resonant piece of wood meant to be played like a table and a practice pad All of the other instruments should be self-explanatory Keep note that since because this was written in musescore bunch of playback loopholes has been exploited, although that there are more than five staves these are to represent each instrument in the set up rather than the actual part parts of represented by the groups that are bracketed. This is to create custom percussion set ups, and to satisfy an easier workflow with sound fonts. ' Sacrificed to the wilderness.mp3 Sacrificed to the wilderness.pdf

Hallo @luderart as you frequently present compositions in this style—short, aphoristic pieces for solo instruments—your compositional approach differs from that of most other members of the forum, who often attempt to write full-scale symphonic works for a large orchestra. Yet in an orchestra, an instrument is merely a gear in a large clockwork mechanism and is subject to the conductor’s interpretive intent. On the other hand, dedicated solo pieces for monodic instruments seem to be rare, so that I could imagine that they are appreciated by players of the clarinet, bassoon etc. However, when I listen to them and look at the score, I sense a kind of loneliness (which is not a criticism, but merely a statement of fact): The solo instrument „utters“ its sentence, yet no conversation emerges, as there is no accompanying or contrasting voice. And even the score pages look a bit „lonely“, since there is remaining whitespace due to the need of only one staff for notation ... Here is another, similar approach to a piece for a solo instrument, the bassoon. The composer, in that case, decided to put the „sentences“ in a more programmatic context, depicting „a garden“ over the course of a year. https://youtu.be/ok_R4cstdGs Now, some short thoughts to the individual sententiae: No. 1 It serves as an overture, trying to gain the attention of the listener. The meter change from 6/4 to 5/4 in bar two is somewhat surprising, and, together with the two trills, reminds me of the bells ringing in the lobby of a concert hall, urging the audience to take their seats before the playful quintuplet melody begins. No. 2 A short, playful piece - reminding me at children playing around. No. 3 To me, the third sentence has a melancholic and contemplative character, which is only seemingly lightened by the eighth-note runs. The final question remains unanswered. No.4 The fourth one has a quality that even exceeds the character of a „sentence only“. Because it consists of three clearly perceptible motifs, which are used in sequences, it has enough thematic material, so that it could be developed further or used as a sketch for a much larger piece, too. No. 5 Again, a sententia which is a short piece of its own, now in A-B-A form, yielding a small exposition, a development and a recapitulation. (Fun fact for me is bar 11. in 1/4 meter with the sole purpose to place a rest ...) No. 6 Number six for me expresses the idea behind the „sententiae“ as its best: Although it has a simple texture with only staccato semiquavers, the rests at the end of the phrases serve as the period at the end of a sentence, thus structuring the short utterance. No. 7 With number seven – which also bears thematic material which could be developed further -, we come back to a more melancholic mood, somewhat a recapitulation of sententia number 3.