October Sky (For acapella choir)

Hi everybody!

I just recently finished this piece, my first real choral attempt,and so I figured that I'd ask for some comments on here!

Like I said, I've never really written anything vocal-wise before, so Ill gladly take any criticism about my ignorance of all things choir.

The text is a poem a friend of mine wrote, and I loved it and asked her if I could set it to music. She was overjoyed, but I don't think shes the kind of person that wants her inner thoughts displayed to the world....oh well, her name is on the PDF and I'm too lazy to change it.

I'd explain the music more, but I feel it speaks for itself.

I hope you enjoy "October Sky"

-Corey

A MP3 is available....

Here

October Sky.pdf

Hmm Very emotive. It looks quite challenging with all the time signature changes and things. Also, the parts are very broken up. Its quite enjoyable, though I think the sopranos might have a hard time holding that D on measure 33 for as long as you have written.

Also, the ending of the piece on your MP3 and the PDF don't quite match.

Oppps!

I uploaded the old unfinished score, but its all fixed now, the new score reflects some minor changes and includes the ending!

O.k, back to the music

Cyril-

Thanks for listening!

I imagined the piece would be hard to sing, I hope thats a good thing. Those choirs need something to challenge their minds...:toothygrin:

And the soprano holding that note...well, I guess stagger breathing is just the best way to go there.

Thanks!

-Corey

Those choirs need something to challenge their minds...:toothygrin:

Umm first off, I take some offence to that as a vocal music major. We are always put down by the instumentals! There is plenty of choir rep. that is hard, much more harder than this. Have you heard of Eric Whitacre, or Dominick Argento. Not every choir piece is like... I dont simple baby pieces.

Thank you, just had to get that in there.

Your piece however is actually REALLY beautiful. The text is just beautiful, and I think that you have set it well. I see the comments penguinsbyc said, like the ever changing time signatures, that would be fine. The conductor could easily let the singers know. Infact, changing time is not that big of a deal, in my choirs opinion. And that suspened D, you are right stagger breathing, believe I've held longer notes. The chords you are using are just great and I love how the piece changes and the sky changes. I reminded me A LOT of Aaron Jay Kernis' piece Newly Drawn Sky for orchestra. Overall very nice, would love to hear it live.

Great work, an excellent first attempt at choral music.

Umm first off, I take some offence to that as a vocal music major. We are always put down by the instumentals! There is plenty of choir rep. that is hard, much more harder than this.

I'm terribly sorry, I didn't mean any offense :blush:. My comment was more of an indirect attack on my schools choir program :toothygrin:. I've been to several of their concerts and although they are good, I have yet to hear a piece that really wows me. Now in my personal CD collection I know there are some really amazing vocal works. I even have a couple by Eric Whitacre, that are just so strikingly beautiful. I hope you can forgive my ignorance, I meant no ill being.

And thanks so much for the kind words. I'm terribly excited to get into this entirely new medium. I never really thought about writing for vocalists until this whole thing came up. Now I want to write more! Woo choir!

Its quite alright, we vocalist just dont like people thinking we are stupid.

And im glad you enjoy writing for vocals and Im glad you know Eric Whitacre. :)

Umm first off, I take some offence to that as a vocal music major. We are always put down by the instumentals! There is plenty of choir rep. that is hard, much more harder than this. Have you heard of Eric Whitacre, or Dominick Argento. Not every choir piece is like... I dont simple baby pieces.

Thank you, just had to get that in there.

I disagree with you. Barring the Flower Songs and Leonardo Dreams of His Flying Machine, Whitacre's music is a piece of piddle.

However, there IS really hard choral music out there. Krzysztof Penderecki's choral music is nice and tough, as is Norman Dello Joio, or Karlheinz Stockhausen...

My only issue with the piece is a question of range.

The tenors and basses seem a bit stuck in a rut. I notice that there is only one single voice crossing (at measure 40 IIRC) between tenor and alto. While this is over-all very good choral writing, I'd have liked to have seen a tiny bit more independance of range between the parts. As it sits right now, it's still a bit "piano chordal writing" rather than real choral writing.

Even while I complain about that, I DO notice that there is a good sense of vocal line.

There are some notation problems.

Where you have divisi, it is best to indicate it div./unis.

Get rid of ALL of those "phrase markings" you have.

Slurs are used to indicate multiple notes over a single syllable in vocal music. For example, tenor, page 4, measure 23, "and" should have a slur over those two notes.

Measure 26, the note spacing is off... the C-quarter note of the tenors should be moved back, closer to the preceding 8th note. The way it is written obscures the actual rythme.

Measure 31 is a mess. Whenever you have this sort of divisi-from-unison writing, treat the unisono notes as a distinct voice as well. It requires two lines of text if the held note is singing something different. If they are both singing ALL those words, then there should be NO "held" note. The rythme should be the same for both parts of the divisi.

Look at the Alto part. "sil-ver"... what does alto 2 sing? "sil-"? do they sing the "-ver"?

Does alto 1 ONLY sing "-ver"? Does alto 1 only come in on "-ver"?

You can see the confusion.

That part should have stems up AND down, indicating the divisi, with the SAME rythmic values in both parts.

The same thing applies to tenor and bass.

Measure 43 you do the same thing. Fix that.

And get RID of all those slurs!

Isnt choral writing just awesome!? I started about a year ago and it is by far my favorite area of composition. Anyway, moving on to your piece, I'm gonna be very picky here because overall I think you did an excellent job and I have no major criticisms.

First off: Measure 32, the second sopranos are (IMO) unnecessarily doubling the alto lines. I would remove it entirely as it would also create better balance in the chordal structure. It also eliminates the voice crossing you have going on here, its not as bad as most voice crossing I've seen and still is very tunable givin the surrounding notes, but trust me, most Sopranos absolutely despise having to sing lower than the altos and ultimately, a happy singer is a good singer :thumbsup:

Which brings me to my next point, also having to do with voice crossing. Measure 41, the tenors jump above the altos on "cloud". However, in this instance, though the jump makes it harder to tune, the tenors will LOVE you because they get to sing higher than the altos. And the altos wont care because they never listen to the tenors anyway ;). The issue arises in the doubled A. Take it out, have the first altos move up on beat four if you want, but I really think it takes away of lot of that punch from the tenor line...ie, let em shine for a bit, tenors thrive on that.

Oh, and in the same section of the piece, you might have to adjust the dynamics a bit so the tenors dont have to flex their butt cheeks quite so much. I'd cresc a little faster to "cloud", drop back off and re-cresc from there to sky. It creates more anticipation, kind of like a small preview of whats coming.

Measure 37: I personally would remove the high alto part. Have all the altos sing on the low D while the sopranos take care of the high one. It wont be quite so diluted and the soprano line will be more pronounced. You will still get the same dissonance on "that cool" because its a 7th-9th movement which is simply the inversion of what you have now.

And finally, back to measure 32. Keep in mind, this is shear opinion. I really think the C in the tenor line needs to go. It creates a tri-tone with the F# in the soprano which (again, to my ears) sounds kinda weird moving into the Major 9th chord following.

Sorry for jumping around so much, I tried to lay the above critiques out in order of importance rather than chronologically. And again, great job on this piece, I would love to hear a live recording sometime if you can find a group to do it for you.

Oh yeah, and about the time signatures: thank you SOOOO much for changing them all the time! It doesnt make the piece all that much more difficult to perform and ultimately the timing has to fit the music, not the other way around. There are a lot of composers that are scared to change time signatures for some reason, and I'm glad to see you're not one of them.

"My only issue with the piece is a question of range.

The tenors and basses seem a bit stuck in a rut. I notice that there is only one single voice crossing (at measure 40 IIRC) between tenor and alto. While this is over-all very good choral writing, I'd have liked to have seen a tiny bit more independance of range between the parts. As it sits right now, it's still a bit "piano chordal writing" rather than real choral writing." - Qccowboy

I found that the ranges were a bit low especially for the bass line. My tessitura is not very low so I would personally give more opportunities for the bass line to split into baritone. Mostly to give those with high bass ranges the option to sing higher. The piece goes down to low F's and E's quite frequently. I would consider writing more split bass parts, it'll also fill out to chord more too and it'll make the lower part sound even cooler. :) Just something to think about.

Thanks a LOT guys. Its really helpful to have these comments and I'm very grateful. A new score has just been put up addressing some of the issues everyone brought up (including the slurs :D).

A bit of ranting to go on though. I gave a copy of this to my schools choir director, and asked him for comments and/or if he thought if it was even remotely possible to have the choir sing it. It took forever, but he finally got back to me. He marked up the score, some of his comments were very good, voice leading, crossing ect.. that I wouldn't have caught on my own. However, the majority of his comments took away what I really thought was the soul of the piece. All of the dissonances he questioned and turned all of my favorite chords to very simple minor or major chords. I guess it just means Ill have to search else where for a recording :ermm:. I'm gonna head to a local community college choir concert on monday, see how good they are...and I get to see an "Every rose has its (t)horn" ensemble. Should be interesting :D

Again thanks everybody for the comments!

Thanks a LOT guys. Its really helpful to have these comments and I'm very grateful. A new score has just been put up addressing some of the issues everyone brought up (including the slurs :D).

A bit of ranting to go on though. I gave a copy of this to my schools choir director, and asked him for comments and/or if he thought if it was even remotely possible to have the choir sing it. It took forever, but he finally got back to me. He marked up the score, some of his comments were very good, voice leading, crossing ect.. that I wouldn't have caught on my own. However, the majority of his comments took away what I really thought was the soul of the piece. All of the dissonances he questioned and turned all of my favorite chords to very simple minor or major chords. I guess it just means Ill have to search else where for a recording :ermm:. I'm gonna head to a local community college choir concert on monday, see how good they are...and I get to see an "Every rose has its (t)horn" ensemble. Should be interesting :D

Again thanks everybody for the comments!

Do what you feel you need to bro. Only change something if, when the issue is pointed out, YOU realize the mistake and agree to change it. NEVER make a change based entirely on someone elses opinions. This is your music, and no one elses. Keep it that way :closedeyes: