PeterthePapercomPoser

What kind of options could this poll have? We have a few ideas that we've already come up with on the discord, as potential topics around which to base future competitions on. Not sure if those would be appropriate for just a light challenge or if we should save them for a bigger "money" competition? Do you have any specific suggestions in mind? If you'd like to become more involved in this whole process we could invite you into the Staff/Judges corner of the YCF discord server, where we discuss all of these things and plan out the competitions/challenges. Let us know!

Also a good guide on how to write for drum set in general:

Hey @JorgeDavid! Long time no see! I think this is a very quaint little waltz that you've performed yourself! I don't think you're having as many troubles performing it as you make us think saying that you "need more practice"! LoL My favorite parts of this are the unexpected cross relations between the melody and bass like in bars 4 and 20. In bar 4 you have a G natural in the melody contradicted by a G# in the bass while in bar 20 you have a D in the melody with a D# in the bass - great idea! Usually these kinds of cross relations would be heard as mistakes in A minor but you used them deliberately and made them sound intended and I really enjoyed them! Great job and thanks for sharing! P.S.: I think even if you were using a notation program to realize a rendition of this instead of performing it yourself - in Musescore, for example, I would liberally use rit.'s and accel.'s to make the tempo sound more rubato and humanized.

Hello @Loctobers! This is certainly quite interesting! After having listened to the original piece here I think I better understand how you made this orchestration and how the original piece was generated. It has a trance-like quality to it with the heavy delay effect. Your orchestration adds quite a lot of original content to the piece! Very well done! I wish you had provided a score for a more detailed review. Well done and thanks for sharing!

Hey @Alex Weidmann! I think I personally wouldn't use the chord sequence function in Musescore (if I was composing on the computer) because it would prevent me from trying to imagine what kind of stuff I could use to fill the sonic spaces of the music. Also, later, when I would want to add more parts to the piece I would probably have become accustomed to the harmony and I'd become inflexible to use different harmonic/accompanimental ideas. In general though, the reason why I prefer nowadays to write my music on paper is because I found that being able to immediately hear what I'm composing was not conducive to composing. Like in creative writing - it's like the difference between the brainstorming or quick-writing mindset and the editing and proofreading mindset. In the brainstorming or quick-writing mindset you just throw out all ideas no matter how bizarre or impractical - the goal is to just keep writing and keep the pencil moving. In the editing and proofreading mindset you weed out all the little mistakes, grammar, punctuation, spelling etc. If I compose music on the computer the two mindsets interfere with each other too much. When I'm using Musescore I'm almost always already in the editing/proofreading mindset. It's because hearing my music immediately puts me in that editing/proofreading mindset before I even have a chance to complete my musical thoughts as they were meant to be conceived. It's distracting for me. But this has turned into a rant. I can't tell what piece this was inspired by - maybe something by Vivaldi or Bach? Some of the melodic ideas are interesting! The reason why I guessed Vivaldi or Bach is because of the Baroque-like sequences you employ in some parts. But where's the soloist? Thanks for sharing!

Hello @Celloliver and welcome to the forum! This is a modest little piece! I do have to admit that often, with the double stops and two cellos playing together it can sometimes get a bit muddy. But you do often have the melody in the highest range of the cello which is a beautiful expressive tessitura for the cello. I like the main melody and I can definitely follow the melodic line throughout the duration of the piece so it seems to me like you're not a total beginner to writing music! Great job and thanks for sharing!

Hello @dhslamas! Glad to see that your really old pieces still make it to completion! I don't usually like pieces for a solo instrument because it's easy for them to degenerate into exercise-y shows of skill over actual musical content. But this is very interesting rhythmically, harmonically and melodically! The performance of course brings much to the table - did you play this yourself? Great job to whoever played it! It would be really interesting to try and orchestrate this little etude in a Stavinsky-style! What competition was this written for? Well done and thanks for sharing!

Hello @erionmahony and welcome to the forum! I really like this dark and mournful piece! You use plenty of dissonant crunchy chords left deliberately unresolved, and non-harmonic tones such as suspensions in the melody that are really heart wrenching! I really like the change of key. I am wondering though if you didn't intend to use a Contrabass section to play along with the choir rather than a solo Contrabass. In fact, it would make more sense for the whole string orchestra to be present in this piece and to slowly bring each section of the string orchestra in one by one to create a sense of building. That's what I would do. Great job and thanks for sharing!

Hey @Markus Boyd! What a brooding introduction in A minor! The transition to the main theme in A major seems a bit wonky though. The chord four bars before the Allegro begins (I can't see the bar number in the video) is a German 6th of V (a C, E, G, A#). In the classical style, this chord should resolve to V 6/4 or II, tonicizing the V - E major. Maybe you could draw out the transition into some kind of longer macro-tonal scheme to arrive at A major more smoothly? It really seems sudden and tacked on right now. Especially since that high E in the Flute goes to D# before resolving back to an E on the downbeat of the Allegro .. it definitely sounds like it wants to resolve to V. But I really like the style of this classical symphony so far! It's not quite Mozartean nor Haydnesque .. it's all your own with an idiosyncratic use of space in the orchestration that neither of the aforementioned composers practiced! I especially like the Cello and Viola line in bars 52 - 55. Another bar that bothers me is 99. Correct me if I'm wrong but it seems like the chord there is a suspended 7th chord? D, Fx, A, C is how I see it spelled which makes a D suspended dominant 7th chord. I am not sure how I would resolve this chord. Perhaps I expect the chromatic motion in the Bassoon to go from D#, to D down to C#? But overall this is coming along quite nicely! I'm looking forward to hearing the development section next! Great job and thanks for sharing!

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This is the first I've ever heard of this practice, but by all means, your education is probably more recent than mine! LoL Are you referring to the Eb Neapolitan chord in meas. 33? I actually thought that chord brought the "more hopeful" feeling you were trying to target in the A minor section. The way I approach modulation is also a bit unorthodox. I don't usually target a specific key to modulate to - I just let the music modulate wherever it feels like it should. There was one time that I modulated to a completely random key by rolling a 12-sided musician's die. LoL I thought it actually worked out quite well. I don't think your modulation is that un-smooth in this case - after all, A minor and D minor are closely related keys, being right next to each other on the circle of fifths, it shouldn't be difficult to get to one from the other. But I think, perhaps the harmonic rhythm and the timing of the modulation was a bit too predictable? That's my hunch. But don't feel compelled to change it just based on my hunch - if you want to experiment with it, perhaps doubling the harmonic rhythm of the chords of the modulation would inject some excitement into it? Those are my thoughts.

Hey @UncleRed99! Glad to see/hear that you've finally moved on to a new piece! I think the proper name for a string quintet + piano combination would be "Piano Sextet". Traditionally for example, a duet of Violin and Cello with Piano is called a "Piano Trio", a trio of Violin, Viola and Cello with Piano would be a "Piano Quartet" and a quartet of 2 Violins, Viola, Cello with Piano would be a "Piano Quintet". So I'm just extrapolating that this would be a "Piano Sextet" based on those naming conventions. I'll address a few things that bothered me about the score before actually talking about the music: There's a few things to note here. First, when writing pizzicato strings, you don't need to add a staccato marking for the pizzicato. It's redundant considering that pizzicato is already a very percussive and separated effect. Also, you have the Bartok pizzicato at mf, followed by a regular pizzicato at forte. That doesn't really make sense considering that Bartok pizzicato is achieved by snapping the string as hard as possible so that it hits the fingerboard. The Bartok pizzicato would naturally have to be louder than the regular pizzicato just by the nature of the effect. Also, there's a special symbol for Bartok pizzicato that string players recognize: I think it would be more concise to use this symbol. Here you have the indication to play legato contradicted by the separated 8th notes. If you want the player to cancel their pizzicato playing and return to bowing you can put "arco" or "ord.". Now about the music. The first thing I noticed is that this is a very quiet piece. I had to listen to it on my Bluetooth speaker to really hear it better. But I think the problem is also that when the piano is playing the melody alone without the support of the strings, the piano melody is often simply inaudible above the accompaniment. Especially the grace notes are lost because they go by so quickly. The way to counteract that is to of course use MS Basic soundfonts for the piano so you can bring out the melody in high relief by using higher velocity values for those notes (which you can edit in the "properties" tab). Unfortunately, the Musesounds samples don't currently respond to velocity changes so you'd be forced to use the MS Basic soundfont for piano. But imo (since I do this all the time) I think the clarity of the melodic line is to me a much more sought after commodity in music than the supposedly "better" sounding Musesound sample. But that might be just me. Overall, I like the melancholy vibe of the piece! The only thing that bothers me is that the key changes seem to be inserted into the piece just for their own sake. And the modulations should be led by the melody for them to make audible sense and create a more breathtaking effect. Thanks for sharing!

Hello @BachGirl! Thanks for your interest! You can send @mercurypickles a message by going into their profile and clicking the "Message" button (if they don't respond to you in this thread).

Have you had enough time to read it yet?

Thanks Henry for pointing this out. @Churchcantor In your own words: So basically your posts so far could basically be summed up as "Haven't yet had the time nor mood to listen to it yet." I would rather hear what you might have to say about the music once you actually do listen to it, instead of posting 6 replies to my topic which don't discuss anything about the music. Before you replied, my topic had one reply by Chopin and was still on the "Works with Few Reviews" List. But now that you've cluttered the topic with meaningless posts, the topic is no longer on that list and is less likely to receive actual substantive reviews from the other members of the forum. There are places on the forum where you can post this kind of content though - such as in Off Topic - Journals. Or in the case of the Russian cartoon - either Random or Repertoire. Or you can tell your stories by posting status updates in your profile. But I think you are trashing the forum with the way you are currently using it.