Composing something for my school orchestra, help?

My piece was completed and is under Cathedral in incidental music and soundtracks, so I removed it from this wall. Thank you to all who were willing to come on and take a look! :)

As you have said, the music isn't on the page, so i can't give you advice on which one i like best!

The fact that you have some melodies is a good start, you just need to experiment with these, try them on different instruments, add harmony, see what you can do by inverting, retrograding etc the melody, perhaps play short fragments of the melody on a few of the interments, until it leads into the full melody played by the full orchestra, have solo and full orchestra sections etc etc

Its hard to give you direct advice, as i have no idea what your melodies sound like, what instruments you are writing for, or what style etc etc. Just experiment with what you have and try to develop this into a bigger piece.

Thank you for the advice. I plan to post it today, or at least make another attempt at it...

Hi. Well to get right to the point. 1.) the introduction was well done. However, I don't think writing in unison/octave for a whole phrase was necessary. 2.) Quarter note section: I thought the colors and the instrumentation was a little bit bland/repetitive. 3.) Brass section: I would think that this part is very repetitive, somewhat lacking a theme/direction. 4.)Triplets at the end: again, very repetitive with the strings covering the winds (who have the melody) up. When you want the theme to be brought out you can: I: Place the melody in the strong range of an instrument II: Raise the pitch of the melody by one octave or III: increase the rythmic complexity of the melody.

I sincerely believe that, for a first piece, this is excellent work. The first few bars of the piece were brilliant, but as the piece went on, I felt that it was hard for me to grasp the theme. This can be done easily through repetition of the theme. For reference material read: Thematic Material and the Handling Thereof

well. That's my two cents. Good Luck.

When you were talking about the unison/octive not being neccessary were you talking about the glockenspiel and the flute being in unison? (Just to clarify.) Also, I think I will get rid of that brass part: I've tried way to hard to make it work and it refuses to submit to my will. Also, I'll try to work on the "quarter note section" and jazz it up a bit. (I'll talk to you later to ask whether we're thinking about the same spot.) I'll make an update, when I think I've improved it enough for more critique. :)