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Hallo @Fermata! Your asking about the issue of „monotony“ in your fugue. Sometimes it is not an issue with the composition itself, but rather a question of the interpretation or recording. Since you are using four string instruments „played“ by your notation software, you „naturally“ encounter the problem that the entire piece sounds somewhat monotonous. Even real string instruments blend the sound very well, in my opinion, but are not as expressive for individual voices. I can imagine, when played on a piano, the impression would be totally different. As currently discussed in another thread @PeterthePapercomPoser suggested to improve the recording by “fine-tuning” the articulation, dynamics, and tempo for each individual hand or even voice. I also had a fugue which I considered to be „boring“ and I was nearly to get around and throw it away. But then I applied such tiny adjustments in the tempo, for example to make the first bar of the subject a little bit „swinging“, which dramatically changed the perception. Since I do so now with all of my piano works, I know that it is a lot of work to literally maintain two scores, one for the printout and one for the recording. But it's really worth the effort to achieve a sound that is much closer to a live performance. Concerning the composition „as is“, I think there are no issues. With a short overview on the score I see that you already applied the necessary counterpuntual techniques (such as tonal answer, a recurring countersubject, inversion, augmentation, stretto). As in 6/2 meter with mostly half and quarternotes (perhaps in an older, more Palestrinian style), it would be not appropriate to add passages (in episodes) or countersubjects with a faster rhythm. Perhaps one could introduce a kind of diminution which doesn’t increase the rhythmic pulse by doubling the speed but is merely a rhythmic variant of the original subject preserving the quarternotes as the fastest ones, finally resulting in a 1.5x diminution (such as in Bach’s D# minor fugue from the WTC1 BWV 853).

Mother and Son 12-9-25.pdfHi all, Once again I resurrected an old work which needed a dusting off and a new look. It's called Mother and Son ... I describe the playful and sentimental interactions of a Mother and child as they play/interact in the park. Mark

Hi Tunndy, I notice your glissando lines have gone a bit haywire in Bars 54-55. Also in Bars 23 and 41 Violin II, you should flip the direction of the note stalks to make it clear what's going on there. Same in Bar 61 Violin I. Bar 55: some rests need deleting in the harp and Violin I. Same in Bar 66 Bass Drum, and Bar 69 various instruments. Plus a few more places where you have unnecessary rests. Bar 74: voices need tidying. Other than that good job! Also liked your recent Liszt orchestration of "La Campanella".

Another Persichetti prompted piano piece. This time the prompt was "24. Extend the following chromatically ornamented piano passage." The form ended up being ABACBA. Thanks for listening and I hope you enjoy and let me know what you think!

I don't know why, but it sounds neoclassical to me. I imagine this piece in an 18th-century drawing room. I think it has an intimate, somewhat playful feel to it. Good work on these exercises.

I‘m glad to hear that, and to see that you are not too „disappointed“ or overwhelmed by the discussions. Since I see that you are (again) in „good hands“ with @muchen_ continuing a detailed discussion, I will not go so much in detail, but give only some more general thoughts. I‘ve noticed your new version (v3.mp3 – not yet v3m.mp3). Will say that I put it together with the first one on my playlist and listened them, in a loop, perhaps a dozen times while walking. I do the same with my own compositions (where I use different piano soundfonts producing 10 different recordings of the same piece) and listen to them extensively while I take a long walk. This approach helps me to judge the piece whether it is fluent and I get distracted from my thoughts every time something „rattles“. Will say, a more relaxed review on the work thru listening only – being away from the score – is very useful to find out bars which need overhaul or get new ideas how a piece could be continued. Coming to the two versions of your invention I‘ve listened, I must say they are only slightly different (which is good in the sense that your corrections/modifications had no impact on the overall mood). The longer I listened them, the more I loved the subject with the repeated notes! Yes, in the first version there are the few bars, where the „octaves“ produced a bit „thin“ sound in the counterpoint. They have gone away in the newer version (what is good) except of – in my listening impression - two bars, one at the first subject entry in the lower voice and one bar nearly the end. So, I will now look to the score to see whether I can find out what I thought to have heard. ... The one bar which retains to sound „thin“ is bar 4 and the other one is bar 22. Yes there is an octave on an A on the second of the repeated notes. But I think, it‘s not the octave only - there are other ones on a C in bar 3, last of the repeated notes and on a F# in bar 5, second of the repeated notes – which don‘t need „correction“ in my listening impression. I think the „problem“ in bars 4 and 22 is more harmonic nature, I would replace the three sixteenth notes in the upper voice [G A B] with [E# F# G#] emphasizing the dissonance between B major and the four repeated A naturals. Because this was more detailed than I initially intended to be in this repost, so take it not too seriously. The more general question I have – and you probably have yourself – is what do you intend with, for example, this particular invention. If it is an exercise, you‘ll have learned something, especially about „octaves“ – and can leave it at that, going to the next one. But perhaps this is not the best idea to continue with the 1601st exercise, as you seems to me to be already somewhat „overteached“ and „overpracticed“. If you are about to create a „full fledged“ composition of it, we could further talk about episodes, cadences and a more elaborated ending. However, I suspect that you would prefer for that purpose another piece with a subject of your own, which than will be „complete your baby“. For that case, I would suggest you to put your composition in a more larger „framework“, such as in a cycle of, for example of six or twelve inventions, calling it somewhat like „Mein Notenbüchlein“ 😅. I think, that‘s quite enough for today! Greetings, Wieland.

Hallo @TristanTheTristan! Even your Sonatina has a length of a Sonata, I think it was wise to call it „Sonatina“ only, due to its youthful spirit and its refrain from the drama and heaviness of a „full-fledged“ sonata. So it is a cheerful, enjoying piece at all! However, what refuses me to count it as a piece that I would enjoy to put in my playing list is its hyperactivity expressed by the much to fast and repeating passages with ornamentations (trills, tremolos etc.) which heavily remind me on your signature „TristanTheTristanTristanTheTristanTristanTheTristanTristanTheTristanTristanTheTristanTristanTheTristanTristanTheTristanTristanTheTristanTristanTheTristanTristanTheTristanTristanTheTristanTristanTheTristanTristanTheTristanTristanTheTristanTristanTheTristanTristanTheTristanTristanTheTristanTristanTheTristanTristanTheTristanTristanTheTristanTristanTheTristanTristanTheTristanTristanTheTristanTristanTheTristanTristanTheTristan ….“. I can therefore only emphasize @PeterthePapercomPoser' questions about playability for a human performer and would love to hear the piece as it would be interpreted by a real pianist, whether it's a live recording or a recording from a MIDI file. In the latter case, however, more sensitivity to the technical abilities of a human pianist and their enormous nuances in articulation, dynamics, tempo, etc. would be required.

This time I wrote a piece inspired by an exercise from Chapter 2 of Persichetti's "20th Century Harmony" on Scale Materials for 2 Bb Sopranino Clarinets and Bb Bass Clarinet. The prompt was "14. Construct a canon for three clarinets in which each performer plays a different synthetic scale on a different tonic." Synthetic scales are scales that are "specially constructed, often non-traditional scales created by altering, adding, or omitting notes from standard diatonic (major/minor) scales." I chose to use the written C Acoustic Scale, F Ukrainian Dorian Scale, and B Phrygian/Dorian Scale. I've been told that I should have perhaps tried to choose scales that would sound more harmoniously with each other. But, funny enough, that's exactly what I was trying to do. I didn't choose scales at random but tried to tailor each part of the canon to the previous material by improvising a scale and only later figuring out what scale I was using. But let me know what you think! Thanks for listening! P.S.: I have added a 2nd version of the piece where I have changed the relations of the tonics to each other to be tertian rather than quartal as in the 1st version. In the 2nd version I use written C Acoustic Scale, E Ukrainian Dorian Scale, and G Phrygian/Dorian Scale. Let me know which you prefer!

Hallo @Frederic Gill! I have read the thread about your „2-part invention in counterpoint“ and since there had already been lively discussions I decided to take a look on another piece which has not got a review yet. I like the motif (or „subject“) which is indeed somewhat „stubborn“ because of its repeated notes (but there are many famous fugues with repeated notes in the subject). And so, your decision to vary the motif sometimes to avoid that repeated notes is quite a good idea. The counterpoint is well chosen rhythmically, giving the entire piece a continuous flow and its „funny“ character. As far as I remember from the other thread, there were some dispute about „parallels“ and „octaves“ which was – also in my opinion – somewhat „overteaching“ (I couldn’t follow all arguments or „issues“ without going into detail too deep), so that I can understand that you’ve deleted most of the posts. But to be honest, after listening to your E minor invention, I can understand what the other commenters meant: Not „parallel octaves“ (or „parallel fifth“ as to be avoided in counterpoint generally) are problematic, but only the occurrence of the same note (in an octave) on a strong beat that makes the piece sound something „thin“ at that particular note. This is the case in a two-voice counterpoint only. If you had a third or fourth voice there would be enough harmonic material overall (and that might be the reason that writing a two-part fugue is much more challenging than a three- or four-voice fugue and why there are so few of them). I think, you can solve the problem, for example by varying your counter-motif in that places where it creates the octave. You will then lose the smooth motion at these points and have to insert a leap, but that might emphasize the humorous character of the entire piece!

Well! That quite possibly might be the most interesting thing I've heard in a long time. A very tricky thing to put together. Myself, I've always found canons far more difficult to write effectively than fugues, so therefore I must commend you. This is a very effective little piece. I must say, I don't much care for the sopranino clarinet up top, far too shrill, and I find myself wondering if the whole top part mightn't sound better on a regular B-flat clarinet an octave down. I suppose the texture is more modern for it though as is, and therefore part of your plan. Great work!

Thanks for your detailed thoughts! When I mentioned monotony, I was referring more to the process of working with a long, slow subject - after a while the contrapuntal development itself felt a bit repetitive to write. The fugue was an exercise I worked out on paper with pen, mainly as a kind of contrapuntal puzzle, which I've always enjoyed doing as a hobby. That said, you're absolutely right that the playback could be improved. I didn't add any articulation or dynamics, so the notation software makes everything sound much flatter than it would in a real performance. I'll try revising it along the lines you suggest to make it sound more natural. Thanks again for taking the time to comment!

38 years or so, this was 1997!

Outstanding orchestrator and Better than thatguy (in this case I've outbeaten Julius Fucik and Leo Chernetsky and that was my goal) for "March Hare" march

I'm surprised no one wrote anything here YET, so: I'm a history buff, theory buff and orchestration buff I got performed just once... Am a period composer (of late 19th century and early 20th century dances) Brass aficionado and woodwind aficionado Dance music impresario for that matter Amorous romanticist Programmatic composer I don't know if 1930's cartoon music counts for "film buff" or "film music enthusiast" but I am a buff of that And I almost composed the soundtrack to a pastiche of that but that thing was cancelled so I'm not even a debatable "film composer"

A high tension piece that wants to resolve but ultimately fails in doing so. We almost get there at 0:20. It makes me wonder if you don't really want to go into teaching, or if you have anxiety over the prospect! Overall, I'd say one of your more interesting castings. Honestly, I was surprised that you resolved this at the end.

first time I ever composed for an orchastra, would love to hear feedback

it's been a while since I posted here, here's my attempt at covering Bohemian Rhapsody 😁 Bohemian_Rhapsody for orchestra.mp3 Bohemian_Rhapsody orchestra.pdf

I also very much enjoyed your work here with its introspective mood. I do have a question though; measure 28 - can this measure and others be played up to tempo? It appears to require great dexterity. Mark

Huh, those two different scales together remain dissonant, even after listening several times. Interestingly, while you separated the two voices clearly, for me the base clarinet „shadows“ the lydian fourth in the soprano, so that its characteristic is not so clearly perceptible. I was just a bit confused whether the score/recording is transposing or not. I think, the score should be read „as is“ since the scales (B lydian vs. G aeolian) are explicitly mentioned in the exercise. But whenever I listen to the recording, I think the clarinets are playing a whole note lower, thus are transposing ... However, very interesting exercise – while I would prefer a slightly more harmonic approach in my own compositions.

Hi everyone, I finished a new piano piece called Cloud Ame and wanted to share. I hope you enjoy listening and welcome any feedback! Thank you

@ferrum.wav thank you for your kind feedback and anaylsis! "Fragmented ideas" describe exactly my composing style and process!😄 I am happy you enjoyed the piece and the ideas come through I intentionally left out the musical expressions and markings out of the score (half of it is me being lazy and the other half is that I think music should be freely interpreted by the player) but I do agree I should add the musical markings to be clear. Maybe in the future if I have enough songs to publish a book. That is my dream 🙂

Hi, I really don't quite understand the theory underlying the composition ... (although as a retired professor of social work, clinician, and school administrator ... retired); if you have any questions about a career in social work feel please to ask me. Now about the music ... my only observation is the pairing of the English Horn with the French Horn. I think matching dynamics would be a bit difficult since the timbre and projection of the instruments are quite different especially in the lower and upper registers. The work is quite pleasant to listen to .... and flows quite nicely. Mark

A very beautiful piece that sounds intimate and effective. It sounds like it's being played live, doesn't it?

Hi all, here is a composition I began in 2011. I rediscovered it in my computer files and decided to rework it and give it some new life. Hope you enjoy the work. All comments welcome as usual.

this is a really nice and short piece !! despite how simple it is, i find it fascinating how you manage to use all of the fragmented ideas effectively. for example, how you use the cadence on b15-16 and the subsequent usages of which throughout for the ending and just leave it hanging at the V, it really gives you that floating feeling. add that with the gentle arpeggio, harmonies, and melodies and you've successfully painted a tranquil feeling on the mind if i could give feedback, i'd probably give ones for the score. maybe it could be given more information such as the tempo, slurs, dynamic, and expression markings other than that, it's a great piece. i thoroughly enjoyed listening to it. thanks for sharing !!!!!!

That sounds fantastic. Perhaps a version without so many annotations would be clearer. Although for educational purposes it's great. And well, you've left me wanting the second part.

MP3 Play / pause Persichetti Exercise 2 - 57 0:39 1:25 volume > next menu Persichetti Exercise 2 - 57 > next PDF Persichetti Exercise 2 - 57 Nice! You have a nice sense of atonalism. It has an eerie and mysterious feel to me. (ending on a V7? That is one reason.) Also the use of the whole tone scale is nice and surreal. It is not fully used, but definitely has the characteristics of it.

It'll take some time though.

Oh yes, please do. I'm convinced it will sound different - and better.

Here is an extended and revised version of the piece. I’m still experimenting with having a wider variety of instruments, for now they are the same. I’m in over my head with making arrangements like this so all feedback is appreciated

This time I share with you a musical quote from "The Occult" by Colin Wilson. And if you've gotten this far, thanks for reading!

“It’s a huge…comment!” Lol. Thanks for the supportive and constructive feedback. I have inserted my comments inside brackets: “It's a huge improvement from the previous piece. The countersubject you've written is very melodious, and you've exploited its scalar nature and its rhythm very well for the rest of the piece.” [The original motive is longer than you thought. There is an important stretto in this #10 (see pic) and I cannot take full credit for the scalar line and the rhythm]. “ The harmony in your counterpoint is very apparent and well-constructed too: the first bar outlines descending thirds, and the second bar is a dominant chord. The issues regarding accented 8ves are also no longer there. You can refine your countersubject slightly though. All of the semiquavers in bar 4 should be raised by 1 pitch. This will both highlight the underlying dominant harmony, and also lead to the E in the following bar more smoothly. “ [yes it sounds better! I made this change to bar 4, 10 & 22. I have also changed some registers because it became too high or separated. Then I made a few adjustments in bar 10.17 and 12.83 (see v3m.mp3) ] “With this change, your solution will be perfectly acceptable, but a slightly more musically "interesting" solution will be to turn the beginning of bars 3 and 4 into 4-3 suspensions.” [The motive ‘forbids’ that change, I suppose. It could be possible at bar 3. For bar 4, on the other hand, I cannot have there a 4-3 suspension because the 3 doesn’t belong to the V chord. In fact there was a 4|7 at bar 4 in the original motive, but I cheated and replaced it with a 8|7 because I wanted a VI, not a iv or a ii° chord. Am I wrong? Should I bring back the 4 of aiv or ii°? ] [And for the 3 other points, I’ll look at it closely and rework my piece. Thanks a lot for this precious advice ;)]

It's a huge improvement from the previous piece. The countersubject you've written is very melodious, and you've exploited its scalar nature and its rhythm very well for the rest of the piece. The harmony in your counterpoint is very apparent and well-constructed too: the first bar outlines descending thirds, and the second bar is a dominant chord. The issues regarding accented 8ves are also no longer there. You can refine your countersubject slightly though. All of the semiquavers in bar 4 should be raised by 1 pitch. This will both highlight the underlying dominant harmony, and also lead to the E in the following bar more smoothly. With this change, your solution will be perfectly acceptable, but a slightly more musically "interesting" solution will be to turn the beginning of bars 3 and 4 into 4-3 suspensions. Then I'd raise the following points about the rest of your piece: As mentioned before, your piece needs strong cadences to serve as musical punctuations. You need a V - i (or I) in the tonic key at the end. You also preferably need another in a different key somewhere else. The tonal scheme of your work is perfectly sensible: tonic - dominant - relative - tonic, and so a second V - i at the end of either the dominant or relative section is desirable. A third or fourth strong cadence may also be added at your discretion. Your subject + countersubject together is invertible (in the sense of exchanging bass with soprano and so on) and so you should invert it! Every opportunity you've had (bars 7, 13, 19) you've presented us with a modified version of the subject and countersubject instead. You are allowed to do these pitch modifications (and I indeed like them), but given you have presented the theme consistently throughout the work as soprano -> bass pairs, you should also present these modified themes as pairs. Utilising these modified pitches as new motifs in your episodes would also be desirable. Whilst you will find episodes like these (i.e. repetition of one passage, with slight modifications) in the oeuvre, far more commonly you will see different episodes being constructed completely differently. They have different lengths, and are based on different harmonic progressions. Melodically they generally still play from the pool of the motivic material in the theme, but the exact details vary from episode to episode. The reason why is not because repetition is bad - repetition is good if done sensibly! But the journey you take to get from the tonic to the dominant must clearly be different from the journey from the dominant to the relative, so a different approach is needed each time. Writing different episodes will also allow you to place the much-needed cadences at will. When you can employ this repetition technique however, is when your starting and ending keys are separated by the same interval. In your case, this means you can reuse your episode between the dominant - relative (v to III) as an episode between the relative - tonic (III - i). If the subdominant was part of your tonal scheme as well then it means you can reuse a tonic - dominant (i - v) episode as a subdominant - tonic (iv - i) episode.

Hi @TristanTheTristan! It's a vigorous sonatina brimming with your youthful energy! The only thing I didn't care for was the meaningless shows of impossible virtuosity. I think you are not composing for a human being but rather for the computer program which is a shame. Making music possible to be played does not make it worse which is something I don't think that you understand. But even with that - I enjoyed many parts of the piece - the adventurousness of the 3rd movement especially. But the 2nd movement was horribly boring and the melodies in the 1st movement were meaningless scalar passages. There are so many parts of your piece that are mechanical and robotic that I won't go through mentioning them by measure number as it would be too herculean a task. I don't know - don't you want to write music that could someday be performed? Or do you want to be known as a midi or Musescore composer for the rest of your life? Thanks for sharing.

I would be more along the lines of giving a good classical guitarist an electric to play around with for a couple of months.

Greetings @Wieland Handke! The F-natural in bars 3 and 4 of the 1st and 2nd entry is very much intentional, even though it does generate a certain degree of instability not present in the original, fully tonal rendition of Mozart's own canon. In fact, I should thank you for highlighting the matter of accidentals, as the previous version did not, in fact, feature completely real transpositions of the theme. There were a handful of mistakes every 3rd bar, not contrapuntal, but harmonic and thematic, as the continuity and integrity of the transpositions was broken with leading tone and its minor 3rd/5th of a dominant chord being raised a semitone higher. All of that has now been corrected, so unless any more oversights of mine were to resurface, every single entry should now be a real transposition to the lower major 2nd of the main 18-bar-long subject. I'm glad to learn that the current length of this canon would prevent it from seeming far too repetitive to the eyes of an educated listener. Indeed, I was worried it might end up sounding excessively mechanical despite the flowing timbre of legato strings, as monotony may distort even the most sophisticated of musical devices into pure pure noise after far too many identical, tiresome reiterations. It's a relief to know that to you it did not appear to be the case here, and I must thank you for your acute observations, for otherwise I might not have come to realize that the transpositions were not 100% exact. I should also probably check @PeterthePapercomPoser's take on the Persichetti exercises, especially considering this canon on different scales you just mentioned. I'm anticipating a gold mine of modal/post-tonal contrapuntal solutions! Thank you for this recommendation as well.

I was thinking about the ice that's formed here on the ocean. How in foggy conditions it looks like it never ends. I'd like to go sit at the beach of my cottage with an omni mic and just stare into the fog and play this... This is also a slight experimentation on both microtonal tunings (aesthetic) and in player's freedom. You'll note that my recording sounds a bit different to this (and was actually played on steel string guitar), but that's the point :D. I often feel that the player is not given enough free reign to interpret what they are playing - not enough free reign to bring themself to the stage. So this is a slight complaint to that I suppose. All thoughts, feelings, colours, landscapes, gibberish, textur 21st of jan.mp3 es that come to mind please tell me.

just checked this out and damn the orchestration rocks. Keeps that cute vibe from the original but makes it way bigger and emotional. Solid work!

MP3 Play / pause DDLC Your Reality FINAL 0:00 0:00 volume > next menu DDLC Your Reality FINAL > next PDF Your Reality just checked this out and damn the orchestration rocks. Keeps that cute vibe from the original but makes it way bigger and emotional. Solid work!

Very nice dreamy, yet mysterious and passionate prelude! I like the frequent changes of the time signature. While initially looking complicated, the rhythm of the piece has an intuitive pulse and a continuous flow. I noticed, that your score is without a key signature. But since you often change harmony from keys with sharps to keys with flats, this decision avoids that the score is cluttered with natural signs. And when listening and reading the score I like that the more serene passages correspond with the flats, while the more passionate passages feature more sharps! In some bars, I would like to see more octave brackets to make it easier to read when playing. Personally, I refuse to read more than three or four ledger lines. However, I agree, that too many octave brackets disrupt the visual impression of the runs in the score. I completely agree with @PeterthePapercomPoser's suggestions for improving the recording by “fine-tuning” the articulation, dynamics, and tempo for each individual hand or even voice. Since I do this with my piano works, I know that it is a lot of work to literally maintain two scores, one for the printout and one for the recording. But it's really worth the effort to achieve a sound that is much closer to a live performance. Thank you for sharing!

Unique and very calming. The crescendo and decrescendo throughout gives the piece an interesting sense of grounded emotional instability.

Continuing with the Scale Materials Chapter in Persichetti's "20th Century Harmony" I wrote this Clarinet Quintet. The prompt was "8. Construct a solo clarinet line in the lydian mode supported by phrygian string quartet harmony. Set both the melody and harmony on the tonal center Bb." Thanks for listening and I hope you enjoy and let me know what you think!

I've used an 8-bit soundfont here because I have not found any orchestral soundfonts that I liked. Everything has just too much vibrato and too heavy a texture from a HIP (historically-informed performance) point of view. I think Bach works well realised as 8-bit music so this is the approach I took. If you prefer audio which is faithful to the original instrumentation then I've attached a version of it here.

This may be a good idea... for example if a member collects some number of manually awarded badges they get an extra badge for it like Bronze/Silver/Gold Collector or something like that!

Continuing with the polychordal exercises in Persichetti's "20th Century Harmony" I wrote this Brass Sextet. The prompt was "2. Harmonize the following first-trumpet melody in six part brass harmony (three trumpets and three trombones). Use a predominantly polychordal texture with occasional unison relief." I chose to use two trumpets, two horns and two trombones instead of the suggested instrumentation. Thanks for listening and I would appreciate any of your comments!

Sad, I'm too old for it!

sounds like a video game theme. cool.

Make it more chaotic. You are not Bach. Maybe listen to some of my works that were supposed to be fighting song for a game. I am going to put them on here later.