PeterthePapercomPoser

Hello @A Ko and welcome to the forum! It's so fun that you snuck in some themes from other composers' works! At around 4:10 it sounds like you're quoting Mahler - Symphony 4 or 5 perhaps? It's amazing that your first finished composition is this long and for orchestra - congrats! Incorporating other composers' melodies in your own works smoothly and seamlessly is quite a difficult endeavor and it gives the listeners a fun little Easter egg hunt to go on - very clever idea to involve the listener in the listening process in yet another additional way! Thanks for sharing!

Ah, ok. Thank you for the correction. I will be able to listen for that now. I did sense some changes but it seemed like an alternation between i and V and without a score, I couldn't be sure. Thanks for your reply!

Hi @Samuel_vangogh! You made this art? It looks great! The music is wonderful too! The delaying of the resolution to the tonic through repeated ii - V's is to me a very cool feature. The ending is quite unusual as well and despite not ending on the tonic, it still sounds finished. Also, something I noticed is that (at least in the beginning) the piece seems to be in the Acoustic mode (or Lydian b7 or Mixolydian #4). But there's plenty of chromaticism as well. The simplicity but exploration of non-harmonic tones is also a bit Satie-like. Thanks for sharing! P.S.: would you post a link to your artwork, if possible as a high resolution image? That would be really great! Thanks in advance!

Hey @Fugax Contrapunctus! Great idea! I really like how the canon starts on the dominant, making the F minor tonality only a later emergent property of the harmony arising from the counterpoint. I think the Musesounds strings are a bit difficult to deal with to get them to sound as intended. I wonder why you changed the articulation to staccato as each new voice enters when it wasn't staccato in the Cello? It would make the entry of each voice more obvious I think if they entered on a fully held quarter note. The beginning and ending of the canon, I think are the best parts. But the middle could really have used some space/rests in the line to imo to give the ear an occasional break from the barrage of constant melodic material that demands to be digested by the ears. Thanks for sharing!

Hi @Fugax Contrapunctus! I think your hours of labor on this unusual subject really paid off! I think the subject and the counter-subject are really well matched with each other with one moving while the other rests on quarter notes. It creates a kind of question/answer dichotomy between the voices and increases their independence. I think this is one of the best fugues you've written and seems really mature and less mechanical. It's very fluid, natural and spontaneous. The only thing that bothers me is the ending on a feminine cadence. I felt like the last chord came too early and should have been reserved for the strong beat of the next (non-existent) bar. Thanks for sharing!

Hey @Layne! Your harmony and main theme are full of tension! And the piece is saturated with the theme throughout. But you do have a contrasting middle section that doesn't use the main theme for a brief moment. I'm surprised nobody has mentioned this yet but your main theme sounds a lot like the theme to "Back to the Future", especially with the first 3 notes (F, Bb, E). Thanks for sharing!

Mark, I think what I mean by artificiality is that the notes lay flat on the page. It might be partly a result of you conceiving of the music as a visual structure. One has the impression that one is hearing a work meant to be experienced all at once, since it seems to have been conceived that way, in a sense. The same thing is true of Stravinsky imo. He worked at the piano and there's an essay somewhere out there about how the piano heavily influenced how he conceived of his music. There's sometimes a certain lack of fluidity where the music spontaneously surprises the listener at each moment of its playing. That's what I experience when I listen to some of your music and I interpret that as a certain artificiality. Thanks for asking!

Hi @Some Guy That writes Music! I love the song-like quality of the music and the breathtaking modulations! Some of the melodies sometimes sound like they're wandering around aimlessly up and down the scale in step-wise motion which doesn't make for a very interesting melodic content. Other times you break away from the step-wise motion and the music seems much more romantic and purposeful there. Although I guess the other extreme of avoiding step-wise motion would be to skip around to chord tones. Of course, that wouldn't be interesting either all the time. But you do show some good choice use of non-harmonic tones on strong beats to really bring out their beauty. Thanks for sharing. I really enjoyed the romantic flourishing and I loved the quiet ending!

Hi @Fugax Contrapunctus! This perhaps makes me think of a slow funeral march with its metronomic regularity and depth of emotion. I usually try to try to steer clear of orchestrating stuff the way you've done here where the choir is basically just doubled by the strings and woodwinds. You seem to have made it work, but I wonder if that will translate to a real performance. Perhaps with a careful balancing of the orchestra and a formidable enough choir, the orchestra won't drown the choir out. But you seem to have deliberately omitted the brass which might have been too forceful for the venue and the nature of the music, so I guess it's best to leave them tacit. Thanks for sharing!

Hi @mercurypickles! I really love the lyrical 2nd song! Perhaps they're both lyrical. The 1st song is lyrical in that it seems to continue a logical leading melodic line despite seemingly constant tempo changes. But you make it sound quite natural and smooth and beautiful. Thanks for sharing!

Hi @Alex Weidmann! I really love the tubular-bell/chimes in the latter half of the piece. Are you using microtones at all in this? The bells sound kinda cool and a bit out of tune. Thanks for sharing!

Hey Mark @MJFOBOE! Nice succinct multi-movement piece! I especially like the 11 pm falling asleep section - probably because of the close connection you have in that part to memories of your daughter. I also like how the piece starts over again as the new day dawns. I would have expected a dream-like sequence after the 11 pm falling asleep section though - could have made for some really interesting music! I also really liked the 3/4 hemiolas in the morning rush section. There is a peculiar artificiality to your musical style (I'm not meaning this at all as a negative comment though just an observation). Once again, I can't help but compare this artificiality of your style to Stravinsky. Thanks for sharing!

Hi Mark @MJFOBOE! I think your individual style really shines in this piece. In your other pieces, your style can be a bit dense and hard to digest. It's a bit like Stravinsky in that it's a style one has to get used to. But once one does, and in this piece especially, it really has its own unique logic and beauty! The way you extend and repeat your motifs in this piece is a really unique kind of development. The piece also seems like it's constantly building towards that final chord. Although I did find it personally a bit lacking, like a whole fanfare finale/codetta could have maybe made it sound more conclusive. Those are my thoughts. Thanks for sharing!

Hi @BipolarComposer! I really wanted to try and give you a constructive critique for this one. I think there are many pros to this piece: It has a mysterious and dance-like feel (especially with the percussion). The orchestration is differentiated and you achieve some nice contrasts! The melody is harmonized in very interesting ways including doublings at intervals that are different from the expected 3rds and 6ths, sometimes including whole chords as a doubling, other times 4ths and 5ths. Some of the cons (imo): The orchestration is sometimes very thin and at other times very thick and bombastic with seemingly no middle ground. Some of the instruments aren't being used very idiomatically (such as the pizzicato strings). The piece sounds kind of same-y dynamically and intensity wise. The dynamics and intensity only change by adding or removing instruments rather than creating crescendi or decrescendi. (Not sure this really applies after my 3rd listening.) The tempo could also stand from accelerandi or ritardandi in choice spots to help the music arrive at a point of higher intensity or recede from an intense section in a kind of denouement. The piece lacks to me the lucidity of say, a Beethoven Symphony movement. The melody seems to meander here and there without unity and relatedness. I think the go-to example for how intense a melody can be if it's masterfully unified is Beethoven's Symphony No. 5 1st movement. He builds the whole movement out of that single motif. Even the longer leading melodic lines are constructed in fragments out of that motif, blurring the line between motivic and thematic composition. This piece in comparison, sounds at times very leisurely at best and meandering at worst because it lacks that drive and unity. The ending as well is kind of a throw-away because it doesn't feel like the music has taken the listener on a journey and so the piece ends very underwhelmingly. The formal sections of the piece seem to all be in the same key and so kind of blend together into one long section despite the many contrasts you introduce. That's my critique, although of course I really enjoyed the piece! Thanks for sharing.

Hey @ferrum.wav! Since I saw that you recently listened to some of my old works I decided to dig into some of yours! I don't know how I missed this one! Great work! It's very easy to listen to and relax which is what I did the 1st time through. The 2nd time through I listened with the score. Very nicely crafted piece of music which seems like it could be a really great candidate for an orchestration! It would be great to hear this as a Flute concerto! Reading about your process reminded me of when I used to compose into my DAW back in the day (at the time I was using Cakewalk Home Studio 2002). It had the option of using piano roll, but also a really basic notation option which only gave you one 12-note set of enharmonics you could use for each key you chose, so I quickly had to get used to spelling pitches using the wrong enharmonics and the whole annoying process of fussing over correct pitch spelling just kind of went away which is what I suspect you like so much about writing in the piano roll. Another thing you talked about was how you could really meticulously control the velocities of all the notes being played by the piano and the tempo changes. I also feel like I used to have more control when I wrote into my DAW/sequencer in that regard, but I've learned to make use of Musescore MS Basic piano soundfont which takes into account velocity offsets if I want to include them. Musescore also allows me to change the tempo as meticulously as I want but I haven't really had to go in and fuss about with that very much given that Musescore has an automatic accel. or rit. which works from an initial tempo to a destination tempo pretty well. I think it does sound gentle and cold like a snowy afternoon. It avoids some much more easily made Christmas connotations/cliches. I don't know what Christmas Carol you quote here though, at least I didn't notice it. Thanks for sharing!