PeterthePapercomPoser

Hi @Fruit hunter! What a monumentally huge work! It's full of pomp and often very menacing and dark, but it's also not without its bright spots. I like your use of scoops/bends in the piece. I understand that in order to get Musescore 4 to perform those satisfactorily you had to use guitar notation? I'm interested in using the effect. I actually listened to your piece while reading a chapter from a PDF book on my laptop. Otherwise, I would probably not have had the patience to sit through a 40 minute work! LoL I love the dramatic tutti orchestral hits with what sounds to be an anvil accompanying (although I don't see it in the score at the beginning - I assume one of the percussionists must have switched instruments?). Nice ending! Quite an unusual progression of chords before the final bang! It sounds very incidental in many spots, often playing the role of background music for the scene you described being played out in the foreground (I presume). Did you come up with the story and characters yourself? You're quite the creative mastermind if so! Thanks for sharing!

Hey @AngelCityOutlaw! My ranking of these tracks from my favorite to least favorite is this: The title track - Fortune & Thrill Seekers Sleepless in Shangri-La Tropical Punch Kali Yuga I think Fortune & Thrill Seekers and Sleepless in Shangri-La seem to me to be the most melodically defined and lyrical. Tropical Punch is melodious but in a more simplistic way while Kali Yuga seems to me to be the least well defined melodically. Great job though, overall! I really enjoyed listening to these! Thanks for sharing.

Hey @Alex Weidmann! Beautiful job once again! I love the way you scored the rich harmonies of this menuet. The format of starting with the woodwinds, switching to the strings, then to the brass, then combining all the forces together was a really great choice that brought much body to your orchestration! Great job and thanks for sharing!

Hi @Nico_ and welcome to the forum! I think this is a pretty nice Baroque-styled invention! I don't see/hear anything about it that resembles VGM or SNES music? But it does make me question your intent with this music. To me it is very clearly pre-classical music rather than music meant as a background to a video game level or media music. I think the piece is coming along quite nicely in those terms! Keep going and thanks for sharing!

Hello @Isen Lark and welcome to the forum! Your video has a high production value both visually and aurally! The music is very emotional, although sometimes it strays close to cliche when the bass notes in each measure always move down by step as in the famous Lament bass. Like Henry said, it would enrich the music if you modulated, or possibly if you used more inversions or unusual harmonies with foreign bass notes. Like, I like to sometimes have a chord with a bass note underneath that's not the root, 3rd nor 5th or the chord but something more unusual like the 7th, 9th or 11th. That kind of approach to harmony can really bring some unusual sonorities into your music! Thanks for sharing this enjoyable piece!

Hey @UncleRed99! I know I've heard and reviewed this piece before, but being only a casual listener from the sidelines, I can't tell what differences or improvements you might have made. Nor can I tell if the improvements actually improve my listening experience or possibly, if they detract from it. I feel like delving deeply into the score and searching for the differences would be an endeavor that would require quite a bit more effort on my part (seeing as how I'd have to compare it to the original or however many previous versions of this piece you've made before this). It's the law of diminishing returns in music. In addition, I thought I'd share a pertinent parable about art in general that I think might be applicable or at least hopefully helpful to you: (from the book "Art & Fear: Observations On the Perils (and Rewards) of Artmaking") I find that this parable really helps me in my approach to composition and work ethic in general. I try to apply any lessons I learn to new pieces and to churn out a greater quantity of work with the confidence that the things I learn from previous works will manifest themselves in future works. I also recognize that trying to perfect old pieces with endless reworks would not be conducive to improving. In terms of time management, I believe my time is spent much more wisely writing new pieces. I don't know if any of that hits home for you or not. But I thought I'd at least share my own reflections on the subject and hope that that could be helpful for you in some way. If you disagree with my work ethic or with the parable, that's fine too. Thanks for sharing!

Hey @Aiwendil! Very nice and idiosyncratic rag! It does sound exactly like a haunted castle. I know that sometimes the titles of rags don't really have any distinguishing similarity to the actual music. But not so with this piece - I could even imagine it being played on the castle's church organ! Never thought that a rag would work well on a church organ. I think it would make it more creepy and characteristic. Regarding any awkward moments, perhaps you thought that measure 60 is too abrupt? To me it sounds find to go from C major back to A minor. For me, the middle section starting at measure 85 is perhaps too long and the retransition back to the main theme is a bit haphazard. Originally in the 1st ending to that section you end on a D minor chord, but the 2nd ending suddenly injects a F7 chord in place of the D minor (and directly after an A7). Perhaps you could make the 2nd ending include two measures instead of just one and replace the C# in the A chord with a C natural to more clearly prepare the listener to the retransition to A minor and recontextualizing that A chord as a pre-dominant (in essence with the same function as the D minor would have had in its place if the destination was A). That's my take on that. Btw - great intro and great conclusion! Definitely a strong piece here. Thanks for sharing!

Hey @Alex Weidmann! Very nice orchestration! About the rubato fermatas: in my experience, the use of the various different fermatas available in Musescore 4 have had sporadic effects upon the actual tempo at any given time. If you want to guarantee any specific tempo contractions or elongations I think the best way to do that would be with hidden additional tempo markings each beat. That would just be my own personal approach to that. I love this piece. Just fyi I compared your orchestration to this recording I found on YT: Ravel Prelude in A minor I think you did a wonderful job distributing the melody and accompaniment to different instruments and making the somewhat large instrumental forces sound like a chamber ensemble. Great job and thanks for sharing!

Hey @UncleRed99! Nice Brass Quintet! Definitely an ensemble I should write something for in the future considering I played Trumpet and French Horn. I think my favorite measures in this piece are 16 and 44 because in those measures you abandon the chordal approach to the music where it sounds like the music is just an elaborate but slow (I mean a slow harmonic rhythm) chord progression. Overall measures 12 - 16 and 40 - 44 are the most awesome to me, with a unique approach to melody, rhythm and scoring (I especially like how you create a natural delay effect where the 2nd Trumpet imitates the 1st at a delay of a 16th note. Where there's room for improvement is something I already touched on above: the harmonic rhythm seems like it's usually one or two chords per measure. You don't necessarily need more chords or anything, just varying the harmonic rhythm to different note values could be enough. And you could also have built some kind of accompanimental ostinato to kind of set down a cool groove underneath the melody to create a banger. I also feel like there isn't really a long leading song-like melody that really sticks in my head that I remember easily after listening to this. I've listened to this piece a few times while writing this review and somehow I still feel this way about it. Perhaps there are what you might consider melodies but they're just not unified enough or self-similar enough to really stick in my head? Or maybe I just have fringe expectations about this? Or perhaps they're interspersed too much with passages that are dominated by too many long notes and chords that don't seem to create a melodic impression for the listener? That's my impression. Thanks for sharing!

Hey Vince! Wonderful piece! And the production/rendering of the guitar is pretty good too! Regarding your arrangement - is this in the original key? I'm just thinking that it might make it easier to play if you transposed it to a key more common for guitar literature such as E minor or A minor. Have you thought about that? Nice French 6th chord you have there in measure 12 and 16. Funny though - it doesn't sound like a funeral march to me at all - there are plenty of hopeful moments. Perhaps a bit of melancholy mixed in. It almost sounds like it could be a slow and stately Renaissance dance. I really enjoyed this and I'm looking forward to hearing a live version performed by you! Thanks for sharing!

I'll quote for you a passage from Chapter 22 of Gabor Mate's "In the Realm of Hungry Ghosts" - a book about addictions:

I found this piece in an old notebook. I had originally scored it for 2 Clarinets and an Oboe and Bassoon. But after checking the Bass Clarinet range and finding that it had the same range as Bassoon, I rearranged it for Clarinet Quartet and finished it. The variations are as follows: 0:40 - I - Stack 1:18 - II - Leapfrog 1:54 - III - Siciliana 2:51 - IV - Lilt 3:38 - V - Waltz 4:39 - VI - Lilt 2 5:12 - VII - Scherzo 6:07 - VIII - Fugue 6:50 - IX - Synthesis 7:17 - X - Coda I've been told that the piece is a bit monotonous (I guess that's always a problem to contend with in variations pieces - making the variations different enough from each other to sustain interest). But let me know what you think! I welcome any of your suggestions, comments, critiques or observations. Thanks for listening!

Yet another microtonal invention. This time using syntonic commas to better approximate just major and minor 3rds. Although I am a bit puzzled why I had to use a three-syntonic commas sharp sign to make playback closer to a just major 3rd in this. Maybe it's some kind of Musescore glitch? If any microtonal aficionado knows, I'd be grateful for your help! I'd appreciate any of your comments, critiques, suggestions or observations. Thanks for listening and I hope you enjoy!

I consider this another palette cleanser. Just a simple piece without microtones meant to evoke a mood/vibe for the purpose of being background music for an Ice Cave location in a videogame. I'd appreciate any comment, critique, suggestion or observation! And thanks for listening!

Hello @Tunndy and welcome to the forum! I think this is a fun exercise to help you understand Khachaturian's composition and how it works harmonically and melodically! And, I love this piece! It's my all time favorite waltz for sure as displayed in this topic: What's your favorite waltz? But of course, people won't be able to help but to compare this to the original, and even if just by duration only, it pales in comparison. But I'm sure this was a very educational process to create this, given that the original was for orchestra and you had to arrange it effectively for piano, which you did with some personal changes that imo don't improve it. But you're fighting an uphill battle in this kind of mimicry because the original piece has 76 years of nostalgia already established for it. And people don't like knock-offs or off-shoots. But I'm not trying to discourage you - if you find this process educational then by all means keep doing this kind of composing! There's plenty of composers who make mock-ups of other composers' works for the same reason although usually they try to stay as true to the original as they can. Thanks for sharing! Edit: But there's also of course the endeavor of writing variations, reharmonizations, or re-arranging the original material which I definitely want to encourage since I myself love writing these kinds of pieces.