JP S.

@Vonias Wow, I didn’t know your church would be singing it! What an honor. In that case, I’d like to offer my feedback if you’ll accept it. I really like the beginning section in mood, and I like how it’s more tonal than what you put into the AI. When I listened to it first, I thought the beginning Ooh’s were a non-lyrical version of the first verse of a hymn. Looking back they’re not, but if you made them so I think that would be a lovely beginning and certainly in style in the choral atmosphere I’m a part of. It’s like a precursor of what’s to come. If you were to go in and edit this, the biggest thing I think you should work on is the form. The first section is only 6 bars and doesn’t quite end on a rhyme scheme. I would recommend making it 8 bars and rhyme, in a period or sentence form if you can make it (those are the two clearest, most liked forms). Then go into the final section and make it similar 8 bars, but more final. Then you can end on an Amen if you’d like, and the whole would sound more fitting and like each part relates to each other. As a minor thing, I think having piano the whole time would be fitting for a more contemporary sounding piece. I don’t quite know what you’re asking about tradition, but I don’t think starting with an amen, or singing an aeuouae “Ah eh ooh oh ooh…” on a descant would make much sense musically, so I think the tradition in those two areas is fitting and helpful. I don’t think tradition is the only or best way on its own, but when it proves its own principles, I think you get a higher quality result when sticking to it. Would you mind checking out my piece and offering some feedback please?

@Cafebabe Thanks, and I will give this a helpful review too. I mean to start you have nice, clear harmonies. It creates a pleasant feel, and I like how you chose a string quintet which can make timbre and rhythmic changes easier to navigate since you have another voice. You also have a consistent tone throughout. I think the biggest thing you could do differently to make it more pleasant/interesting would be giving more rhythmic variety. The dotted rhythm is almost entirely the same in the beginning, even across all the voices. In the fugue, the running 8ths have little room for “breath” in the melody, so adding variety would make it feel more natural. I think you had more sense of melody & variety from 28 to the end, so nice job there. Would you mind checking out my piece for feedback please?

To anyone still following this post, I made a new fresh one here. It has the link to the music; would you please provide me some feedback?

Did you get the joke? Your title reminded me of “It’s beginning to look a lot like Christmas,” so I wrote a small parody.

@Vonias I don’t think anyone mentioned this, but it looks to me like you made the initial score in MuseScore (the font looks similar, and you wrote it on a “piano”). I noticed because you talked about the aeuouae, and it seemed you tried putting that in a descant and had trouble with the ai “replicating it.” Then you input that into Suno trying to get a close audio rendering of it (you said 100% audio input), and it gave you something similar, and that produced the second score which was rhythmically correct with the audio and had correct parts (SATB and Organ). This corrects any notion that he completely used ai, and didn’t use any compositional skill. @AngelCityOutlaw I was mostly commenting to try to help you with the vowels. As a Catholic who sang chant, the “aeuouae” are actually the last vowels of the words saeculorum amen. Almost every chant ended with the “Glory to the Father and to the Son and to the Holy Spirit…” prayer, of which the final words are “forever and ever, amen,” or “saecula saeculorum amen.” It would be different from the tradition to try to use those vowels as a descant apart from the words, or those two words apart from ending the song with the whole prayer (starting with Gloria Patri). The later choral tradition was just to end pieces with a longer, flowery “Amen,” so you could try that:) Cheers, and happy composing.

“I’m beginning to write a small oratorio, Everywhere there’s notes! Take a look at the fifths and tenths, some intervals are immense, At half past three my laptop screen’s aglow!”

Heyo! This came to me immediately when I saw the Marian Grotto when I was back at my Catholic college. Could you please let me know especially if the piano part could use any work, or if you think there’s a musically fitting way to reduce the range of the song? Also, is it ever too simple/boring/slow? The first video is of the whole arrangement, and the second has strings backing the melody so you can hear what it’s meant to sound like especially in the low range. Ave Maria Full https://youtu.be/Ei65cgc0m68 Ave Maria w/ Strings https://youtu.be/Z0t9bLS4dJA

I’m struggling to upload files, since it won’t accept video files or the converted audio I made using my iPhone. If you have any suggestions, I would appreciate them

Heyo! This came to me when I was on a pilgrimage back to my Catholic college immediately when I saw the Marian Grotto. Could you please let me know especially if the piano part could use any work, or if you think there’s a musically fitting way to reduce the range of the song? I just used my headphones to record, so if you have any free recording tips I’d appreciate them too. Thanks in advance. The first video is of the whole arrangement, and the second has strings backing the melody so you can hear what it’s meant to sound like especially in the low range.

Heyo! This is a really nice opening. It’s actually a higher quality hit than some of the drum corps hits I’ve heard! It has good movement, then ends on the sustained note, with the high trumpet accent at the end to bring in the energy. I also like that it comes in with a cymbal swell rather than starting with silence - I think without it the hit could feel like too much all at once. I understand the whistle (some directors do that, like the Disney College Band). My one tip, could you please make it last 16 counts? To my count it sounds like 14, so I would recommend moving the high trumpet two beats later, then it may sound fitting to have a little more movement beforehand leading up to that section. Cheers and happy composing:) Please let me know if this was helpful

Could you please let me know if any of that was helpful?

Thanks for the opportunity to provide feedback, and sorry I think I forgot about your reply. I just rechecked my notifications and found yours, so here are my comments. Hopefully this isn’t too late. First off I think you have a lot of nice ideas. You have a composer’s intuition, and these ideas sound like things I would have written when I was first starting. You have a nice sense of melody and accompaniment, and each of the phrases seems to pair the melody with an accompaniment pattern or echo pretty well. I think this is a high quality start to future composing yet to come. Finding it’s already good, I think each of these ideas of yours could actually become their own pieces. Changing meters so often makes it sound like a separate thing, so could you consider making a separate piece out of something like measures 1-16? Then I think the next easy improvement in quality would be varying up your melodic and harmonic pacing. It sounds like each idea has a similar feel for 3 or 4 measures out of the phrase, so could you look into some of Ryan Leach’s videos on Period and Sentence form? Here’s one: Cheers, and happy composing:)

Hey Nicholas! I can’t remember if I posted on one of your pieces before, but I also compose marching/pep band pieces and I want to support that as much as I can since there are so few on this forum. Anyway, I think you have some great ideas. Wanting to start with a mellow intro, using different ostinatos and layering them in, entering percussion, then building to a big hit. I think all those ideas are nice. I also like that you had a cohesive vibe throughout the piece. It felt very Tron -esque, robotic and repetitive, and the synth helped that atmosphere. I hesitate to say this, because I think most often this isn’t the highest quality option, but here’s my opinion and taste and you can definitely disagree with me. I think you would write a higher quality piece if you delved into your theme a little more and started from scratch. I say this because sometimes the minimalist, repeated short bits actually come off as boring. My MB did a show that was “minimalist” my Senior year, and it also felt boring and repetitive to me. With your theme of infinity, I think you could easily delve into the idea of moving through time & space endlessly, but in a way there’s still change. Like not an infinity of just repetition (ex. carrying an ostinato throughout the whole piece), but an infinity where a motif is consistently repeated but differently, a canon. You may be able to keep the intro in an ethereal light still, because I think that kind of weightlessness also conveys infinity. Also, something that I hear even DCI writers struggling with is creating a piece that feels like a cohesive whole, including the big hits. The hits often feel not led up to properly, not exited in a fitting way, or they don’t match the overall style of the piece. See what you can do so the hits feel anticipated in some respect, and that they match the style, including tension and resolution. Cheers, and happy composing

Hey Elma! Nice start in a lot of areas. Is this something you’re looking for feedback on? If so, what level of feedback?

You’re welcome. And after writing that, I realized that your flute & clarinet were the same dynamic, so maybe it’s just a thing you could solve using Musescore’s mixer then exporting? But at the same time, the flute’s middle range speaks very clearly and the clarinet’s middle range (written C4-Bb4) speaks the least clearly. Live players could more easily be instructed to match dynamics if you made a note. I don’t know which would be the most effective option, lowering the flute dynamic, raising the clarinet, and/or using 2 clarinets, depending on if you want it live or to sound cohesive online. But I think you’ll figure something out:)