Poem No. 1 For Voice and Trumpet

I wrote this piece for one in a collection of pieces for my girlfriend.

The X's at the end are meant to be free vocals

taking as long as the person wants and on any notes they wish as long as it makes sense (will be practiced and prepared before performance obviously)

This is my first time writing for voice. I am still editing it. This is by no means the end product.

It is meant for soprano, but I am making it a tad more universal.

poem_no_1.mid

poem_no_1.pdf

poem_no_1.sib

Not bad!

I thought that the piano part was O.K. ... can't really go into specifics though. It wasn't spectacular, but it wasn't too boring. Trumpet part was mainly support,.... but overwhelming support. It seems to me that when you have both trumpet and soprano, the trumpet will easily outplay the soprano.... You should probably put the trumpet part in a weak range and the soprano in a good range to fix that.

Overall good harmony, though the transitions and some of the progressions were a little awkward. 1:30-ish was the best handling of harmony imo. Try to shy away from just V7 - i cadences.

Good job.

Very nice. I hope your girlfriend loves it (and subsequently, loves you.)

A couple of things:

I know that it's annoying to get these trivial notation comments, but there are a few measures where you've accidentally broken up the rests and left them that way, like measure 1 in the RH of the piano and measure 9 of the voice.

In measure 4, RH piano: What kind of articulation are you looking for? A pianist would probably be looking for articulation there. If it is slurred, that might be a little awkward on the piano.

Measure 11, RH piano: I would re-write that in two layers, first layer: dotted half note chord G+D, second layer: quarter notes B C B.

In measure 21, RH piano, that's a pretty uncommon hairpin notation. I think that the fade out and in is implied in the phrasing. Unless you want it to be exaggerated, but I'm not sure if that's what you meant.

In measure 35, the 5-note chord is reachable, but very inconvenient to play, and most likely would be missed every time. Also, the following chord with the double sharp should probably be written enharmonically just as an F major chord, because I think that's what the music implies.

I'm not sure how I feel about the trumpet acting as just support and just mocking the vocals (or other way around.) I think taking a cue for some jazz harmony and making the trumpet a bit more "interesting" will add some flavor to this music!

I like the poem. One of my favorites

The prosody is not very good.

It doesn't feel as though you set the text to music, but rather that you fit the text to the music.

for example, you have at one point: IN-to HIS nest A-gain.

Your tonic accents are all skewered there.

This isn't the only place where the tonic accents are off.

(by the way, the slurs at that phrase are all wrong too... you have a slur on "into" and another one on "again". none are necessary.)

another example, from nearer the beginning has "if I can ease one life the aching, or ---" it sounds like the singer is singing "the aching or" (ore). The pause is in the wrong place for the text to make sense.

The NEXT word should have the long sound... "or cool -------"

Again, the next line you insist on the "or" instead of the right word to accentuate: "help".

I would have set your text differently:

If I can stop----------------- one (triplet)--- Heart- - from--

The prosody is not very good.

It doesn't feel as though you set the text to music, but rather that you fit the text to the music.

for example, you have at one point: IN-to HIS nest A-gain.

Your tonic accents are all skewered there.

This isn't the only place where the tonic accents are off.

(by the way, the slurs at that phrase are all wrong too... you have a slur on "into" and another one on "again". none are necessary.)

another example, from nearer the beginning has "if I can ease one life the aching, or ---" it sounds like the singer is singing "the aching or" (ore). The pause is in the wrong place for the text to make sense.

The NEXT word should have the long sound... "or cool -------"

Again, the next line you insist on the "or" instead of the right word to accentuate: "help".

I would have set your text differently:

If I can stop----------------- one (triplet)--- Heart- - from--

Thank you QC, This is my first time working with vocals. Thank you for commenting. I am on it...

New edit is up now...

Check it out folks. I tried to address all the issues brought to the table that I thought I had to fix. (aka most of dan's and qc's as well as taking into consideration jub's want for a more varied trumpet part)