JorgeDavid

Hi @Kvothe, I am not expert in counterpoint, so take my comments with a grain of salt. Most of your exercise would be technically correct, as it is mostly thirds and sixths. I see you have an interval of a fourth in m.14. This interval, in classical counterpoint, would be considered a mistake (even though in other types of counterpoint it would be acceptable). So, strictly speaking, your counterpoint is not wrong. However, most times counterpoint is used as an exercise by setting up some rules and learning how to compose while sticking to them. These rules can be really varied, but some of the common classical rules are: 1. Using mostly third and sixths (up to three times in a row of the same interval at most) 2. Trying to make the melody move mostly by step, with occasional jumps (making the melody as melodic as possible). 3. Contrasting contour between melody and bass to some degree, where at times when one goes up, the other down, and vice versa. 4. Avoiding parallel fifths and octaves, having fifths only in contrary motion, etc. For example, in your exercises the melody is jumping around too often, which, in classical counterpoint, would be considered something to avoid. So, while your exercises are not wrong, I think you would benefit more by setting up some rules and following them, since using sixths and thirds without consideration of the melodic contour would be easy and, while technically correct, I am not sure it would help you as an exercise. Hope it helps and thank you for sharing your exercises!

Long time no see, @PeterthePapercomPoser. Exactly around 6 months! Hope everything is going great! I was really busy and ran into another musical hiatus where I could not practice or study at all, but I finally restarted it last week. I was planning to focus on learning, instead of composing, as I want to improve my technique and also go through some partimento (rule of the octave, schematas, etc) and jazz practicing. But, after 3 days of piano, I happened to compose again 😅 Now that I am practicing again I will try to browse more often through the forum, I have seen you have kept on with your microtonal pieces! Thanks for your feedback! I also like that from the piece. I always had a tendency to use cross relations without even realizing, particularly in counterpoint, as I enjoyed the sound but in this piece, that G/G# one surprised me (I realized once I composed it), since it is on the same beat and on a strong beat. I think my ear grew used to major seventh dissonances from when I learned a little bit of jazz 😆 Thank you so much for commenting!

Thank you so much for letting me know about the notation error, @Kvothe! Because of the grouping the first bar (and similar ones) might be understood as 6/8. I did not know it but now I totally understand it. Thanks for noticing! I will fix it for the final version. Also, regarding the tempo, I guess I could get rid of tempo marking since the expression marks such as "agitato" might be enough to convey the mood of the piece. Sadly, I do not know any pianist, so I cannot get real-life feedback, but I will try to find out about how tempo markings are normally used! For this piece, do you have any particular suggestion about which tempo marking would fit best? Thanks for commenting!

Thank you so much for the feedback and I am glad you liked it, @TristanTheTristan, I really appreciate it! Regarding the tempo, I am curious about what is the convention with Waltzes. As far as I know, I am using the metronome at around 180bpm if I consider each quartet note as the beat (so three beats per measure). Or is it maybe common in Waltzes to consider the bpm as the first beat of each measure or to consider other particular measure (such as feel of the music)? Thanks for all the feedback of the parts you liked the most! And yes, there is a few notes that are different because I am constantly changing a few notes here and there and I will record it when it is completed. But 99% of the piece is going to stay as it is. Regarding the bar 93, I understand it is a weird bar. It is just a repetition of the same material already played (first in Amaj, now in Dmaj), so the bass note should be A, to have a diatonic F#min chord with the third on the bass moving diatonically. However, in that particular context I like much more the A# in the bass, I am not sure why. It does create a F#7 chord with the natural A on top. The fact that the bass moves from A# to G is strange, but I do like it. But I can imagine most performers would actually change the A# into an A thinking it is a mistake 😅 I am aware of that bar and might consider changing the bass note to the A. But for now I like it better this way. Thanks for noticing it! I also enjoy that part and, both the Maestoso together with the set of bars that you pointed out are my favorite part of the piece! Glad you enjoyed it too! Yes, the ending is quite overwhelming. I am not good at writing Codas but I am going to extend it for the final version, even if it is only a couple of extra bars. The ending now sounds too rushed and probably a few more bars to let the ending breath will improve it. 8.5/10 is really good!! Thank you so much for your encouragement and the nice words!! Thanks for listening and commenting!

Hello everyone! I composed a waltz for piano during the weekend. I wanted it to be "easy" to play so I composed it with an accompaniment that does not need jumps or the use of the pedal. It is still hard to play for me, so, while I practice, I leave it here with my initial live performance until I can play it better (it would sound awful with midi). My main concerns is always with the form, as I am not sure how do transition best between sections, when to repeat things or let them go, etc. So any feedback about that is more than welcome. The piece is in the form ABCBA. A is the main theme in A minor, which is repeated at the end. It is a frantic and agitated theme (and needs to be played rubato). B is a modulatory section and needs to be played without rubato and with the melody "singing". It is based on a long chromatic descending bass line so it is highly chromatic and there might be many compositional mistakes in this section. While it is the easiest section, I have troubles played it beautifully. You can listen to the only time I played it as well as I wanted in 2:01 from the audio. C is a simple lyrical theme in A major. The audio is really bad, it is based on different recordings so the quality of the sound changes a little. When I practice everything and have a finalized score and audio rendition I will update it! Hope you like it and any feedback is more than welcome! Thank you!

I am really glad you enjoyed the piece @Finish the Sextet! Thank you so much for listening and commenting! 🙂

Thank you so much for the nice words, @GospelPiano12! I am really glad you like the piece! I am also happy that you seem to agree with me over the things you enjoyed about the piece. There are some parts I am not so happy with but, in general, I was also really happy with the melody and phrasing and with that "modern but not too modern" sound (which, even though I know what you mean, I am also not sure what it consists in, but I also though the same 😅). Yes, I also would like to try orchestrate it in the future. I have two pieces pending to be orchestrated (this one and the Bagatelle No.2) but these days I am slowly learning orchestration while practicing the piano so I will probably do it a little bit in the future. They are slow pieces and I find I have much more trouble orchestrating slow pieces :S. Thank you so much for listening and leaving a comment!

I just listened to it and it was really beautiful! I knew Halo but, to be honest, I had never played it so I did not know the music. So I listened to the original theme first and then to your piece. I really enjoyed the piece. I think it is also great that you post everything in Musescore because the music can be played while seeing the score scrolling with all the instruments, so I might use your pieces to learn how to notate and use some instruments (Especially the percussion. In this piece the simple but effective use of the snare drum and bass drum is already something that helps me a lot, since I always have trouble imagining how to use and notate those instruments). I still need to gain some confidence for attempting an arrangement like that but I understand what you mean. It might be interesting to learn a a little bit more abut orchestration and then trying to apply the knowledge to reimagine some of my favorite pieces. Thanks for the advices!

Yes, mixing the study of an instrument with composition is not as easy is I though mostly because, at least in my case, if I do not focus full time to the learning of the instrument I feel like I do not progress at all. It is like if I learn only 30 minutes a day I cannot improve my piano skills and need to spend at least 1~2 hours on it everyday for seeing results. I also though about arranging other pieces for practicing, and it is a really good idea but, to be honest, I feel like arranging my own pieces give me that motivational boost that I need for taking real effort on studying orchestration. But I guess I should start considering arranging existing pieces even if it is just for practicing different orchestral techniques in a more mechanical way. I listened to the 'long artic midnight suite' and I really liked it! Specially the first movement. Even though the time signatures were unusual the whole movement felt so smooth! And the orchestration was great too. I did not expect the Spitfire instruments to blend so nicely with the MuseSound ones! Really nice piece! If I have to nitpick the couple of piano parts that started a couple of sections were a little bit to "new age" for my taste, but that is just a matter of taste, and it is not like they were not enjoyable. Thanks for sharing the piece! I agree. I actually bought in the past a few Berlin instruments for Musescore. And at first I thought "these sound amazing!" but as soon as I started composing with dynamics and expression markings they became quite unusable. Even the piano, where the change from mp to mf is like the change from p to ff in a normal piano. So, in the end, I ended up using only the MusesSounds. As you say, some brass are bad. I only like the Saxophones, that is why I used Saxophones for that Soli of the Jazz piece that I am still working on. I think it is not a bad idea mixing some instruments from Labs with the MusesSound! I think LABS work with subscription plan, right? I might consider trying it out in the future. Thanks for the explanation, @UncleRed99!

Thank you so much for the encouragement, @UncleRed99, I really appreciate it! In my case I always wanted to compose orchestral music and that is still one of the goals in the long term. My problem is always time. Mostly because of my piano skills. Practicing piano takes 70% of my time, which is only a couple hours a day, and I still do not learn as fast as I wanted to. But I invest on it because I feel it will help me compose much faster in the future. I did try orchestrating before. I have several orchestral books but I have no time to study them in an orderly fashion so basically I decided I wanted to orchestrate some of my pieces and read enough of those books for applying it to my pieces. 6 months ago I did my favorite one but it is actually more of a piano concerto than a symphonic orchestra. You can see it here from when I posted it in the forum! My problem is also that I do not compose that often. And I need pieces for trying to orchestrate them but I ran out of pieces hahaha. I pretty much posted here 90% of what I composed so I do not have many stuff and I rarely throw any ideas. Normally if I start something I finish composing something with it and post it. So for being able to orchestrate again I will need to compose some new things 😥. Now I actually have a piece I want to orchestrate, the "Bagatelle No.2" but I really like that piece so I put it aside to do it in the future when I have better skills. I heard nice things about the Spitfire LABS VST before! Do you use them in a DAW or it can be integrated with musescore and you use both sounds (Spitfire and MuseSounds) at the same time? Also, what audio plugins you use in musescore? What I do is using the reverb for all instruments as a group (instead of one reverb for each instrument) and also the ProEQ plugin, basically just setting each instrument to its family (for example, I set all strings instruments to "strings" option in the ProEQ). I feel the ProEQ plugin really make things sound so much more real. Thank you for the advice about labeling the piano grandstaff! I heard that is the best way to practice at first. Just composing at the piano and thinking about the sounds you want to writing it down roughly by main instruments and family, without going straight to notating everything in the orchestral score. Actually, recently I found a transcription of the whole "Lord of the Rings" OST that a fan made, exactly like that, with the piano and the outlines of the instruments and families and I am using it for listening to the score and seeing if I slowly learn something. I will need to try to compose for orchestra in that way myself too!

Thanks for listening and commenting @UncleRed99! Yes, since the piece happened to stay exclusively in the tonic key at least I tried to add some varied voicings to add some spice 😆 After all of you commented about the piece I listened to it carefully and that last section really made the piece drag a lot and made it feel even longer than it was. So I deleted that last section, made a new coda, and modified a few things here and there to try to make the piece a little bit less "bass heavy". It still drags.... but less haha. I still would like to add the initial section at the end but, for now, I deleted it and added a coda (I still do not like the last cadence of section B so I might have to modify that too to make the ending before the coda more conclusive). I might still consider adding a bridge in the future if I find some solution! I listened to the piece and it was really god! You are so good with the orchestral instruments too! It would still be quite hard for me to compose something like that but I guess everything times makes perfect! Thanks for sharing! Thank you!

Thanks for commenting @PeterthePapercomPoser! I did not know the prelude by Chopin. I think it is famous as somehow I think I heard it before, but I was not aware of its existence (really nice prelude, though!). The model was a really really simple Czerny beginner piano piece, a waltz, really simple. I used it as a model for the harmony and chords inversions of the first section, and that is the end of the commonalities. I guess my mistake was using as model for a slow piece a fast piece, since slow pieces need to be treated much different to a fast one. After composing it a similar piece came to my mind: Bach Adagio for Piano BW974. It is actually a Alessandro Marcello that Bach transcribed for the piano. Incredibly beautiful. The whole piece, with the exception of the coda and a single bar, has a constant accompaniment. However, there the accompaniment is less heavy since most chords are quite high (on the contrary to my piece or Chopin's prelude). For now, I deleted the repetition of the A section after B section since I felt that was the weakest part of the piece and also created a new Coda for relaxing the ear after such a constant stream of chordal accompaniment. I also tried to fix volume issues (with this accompaniment, making the volume correct between melody and accompaniment is so important) and modified the B part so it gets less "bass heavy" at times. No substantial change but I am happy it improved a little bit at least. Thank you so much for listening and commenting!!

Thank you so much Luis! I agree with you and everyone seems to be commenting the same. This is a strange composition for me because while I love the melodic contour that I composed I somehow did not manage to vary the harmonic content as much as I normally like to. I am trying to reharmonize some sections but it is not being easy. I changed few things here and there in the B section but I did not manage to make any substantial change yet :S. Thanks for listening and commenting!

Thank you so much for your comment @SergeOfArniVillage! I am glad you enjoyed the piece! 🙂 I though about your criticism and I totally agree with it. I guess I was not really listening and just stopped the accompaniment in those parts because it was the end of a section and did not give it a second though. When practicing at the piano it did flow much more natural to keep on playing the chords non-stop. I fixed it! I also considered your comment about a fermata here and there to let the music breath. While playing it myself I felt I did not want a fermata but, rather, just a little bit of natural rubato here and there that the player would know how to apply to let the music less "robotic". I changed the piece to Adagio since I felt this implied better my intended interpretation and tempo for the piece. However, I did added a ritardando right before the final dominant chord that I think makes a much better ending. It is a pity that, of course, I did not manage to make the ritardando sound as I wanted to with Musescore hahaha. Thank you so much, your feedback was really useful!

This was so amazing to listen to! I listened to some of your other videos from YouTube too and I love so much your style of composing. So amazing that you composed this as a challenge! The piano also sounds really great, is it one of the pianos from MusesScore? Which one is it? Thank you so much for sharing!