Shine - for ocarina quintet

A piece for 5 ocarinas.

This piece is really very much out of range for the ocarina, I know, but hey, for now lets just focus on the sounds here =P

Thank you

shine.MUS

A very nice piece. I really enjoyed the beginning! It flows very well, and even reminds me of Vincent Persichetti's music. You seem to have a good sense of harmony.

However, although I can understand that you want to "focus on the sounds," the purpose of music is to be performed. It is a language that uses sound (not the Finale Softsynth sounds :P) as its medium, so, if you do not write within the ranges of the instruments, or if a certain lick is completely impractical, etc., then the chances of a performance greatly diminish. Without performances (the sources of the sound), there is no music. There are only dots and lines on a page. When a composer says, "I'm writing music," what he really means is this: "I am putting a set of instructions onto a piece of paper that will tell the performers which sounds to make." The sounds are the music, not the symbols. The computer can interpret these symbols to a degree, but the piece would be less likely to have a life outside of your computer.

That said, the piece fits together quite nicely, sound-wise. It strikes me as being a simple song of contentment. Well done! Are you a woodwind player?

What IS the range of an ocarina anyway?

This was a fun little ditty, kinda jazzy harmonies, fun to listen to, which I'd mark as a success.

Thanks guys;

Trumpetman - A very insightful perspective worth thinking about, about the purpose of music. I will definitely take that into consideration in the future, so again, thank you. And no, I'm actually a trombone player - and this was actually originally going to start out as a piece for trombone quintet - but I really liked the sound of the ocarina better basically because the tones are so pure, clean, and identifiable within a chord. So about 1/4 of the way into it I switched it up and started building the sound more around the ocarina than anything else.

Dev - the range goes from about a middle C to a high F on the staff. So really, it's very restricting to write for (which I guess is why it's not that popular of an ensemble, heh).

mp333333

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