April 15, 200619 yr I need help. There are parts in this that just isn't right. I'm having trouble puting notes in the right spot so it doesn't sound off. Please can you give me some suggestions?!! Ensemble.MUS
April 15, 200619 yr I honestly can't really help you until you specify what idiom you are writing in. Your harmony has a lot of Oriental and Folk influences, and if the objective was to write music in an idiom similar to these, I feel it is quite successful. It's actually a pretty good piece. But if you didn't intend for this, I'd say the first step towards moving away from these idioms would probably be using less parallel intervals.
April 15, 200619 yr Author I am heading in that direction even though it was not my original idea when I begin. But, what I need help with is the fact that both the clarinet and the oboe is resting during a lot of the song. Who would want to play a song that you only play half of the time? In my opinion it would be boring. Also, I want to extend the piece with the french horn as the melody maybe even as a solo and I cant think of how to do it or at least make a transition in to it. I was thinking about combineing the begining and the middle sections so that the current end isn't exactly like first but I couldn't work that out either.
April 16, 200619 yr I am heading in that direction even though it was not my original idea when I begin. But, what I need help with is the fact that both the clarinet and the oboe is resting during a lot of the song. Who would want to play a song that you only play half of the time? In my opinion it would be boring. Also, I want to extend the piece with the french horn as the melody maybe even as a solo and I cant think of how to do it or at least make a transition in to it. I was thinking about combineing the begining and the middle sections so that the current end isn't exactly like first but I couldn't work that out either. Obviously, you have written this for more than 5 instruments becuase there is so much divisi going on. So far, you haven't scored any divisi for your clarinet or french horn yet, and the oboe is almost a throwaway part. Perhaps you should reorchestrate it for a smaller ensemble, like a septet, or even a sextet. Try using only one clarinet and a single oboe - and fire one of those flute players while you're at it. This will force you to be creative to maintain a depth of color, but perhaps you can do this with dynamics for instance. Your opening musical themes and and harmonic motifs are lovely, and the introduction of the rhythmic motif while maintaining a semi-pentatonic sound at measure 10 is very nice. But then it seems you go off your game quite a bit. An out-of-place flourish of scales in m. 14 immediately leads to yet another theme, which is rather weak in comparison to what preceeds it. And yes, I see that you revisit that melody in the flute, but why in the flute again? ..but that's besides the point. You simply have too much material by the time you've written 25 measures. In my opinion, you need to develop the wonderful themes that you have already presented in the first ten. If it were my peice, I'd delete everything after m. 14 and think theme and variation. BTW, this is one of my weaknesses as a composer, so in a convoluted (and possibly illogical) sense, I am qualified to see it in others' work. It's easy to come up with ideas. What's hard is staying on topic so to speak. I've only discovered this site today, but I've checked out a lot of compositions submitted here, and a common critisism that I have for almost every one of these is that they ramble from idea to idea. And if they revisit an idea, it somehow seems forced. I think I've always realized that this is a skill that comes with maturity - :innocent: For whatever this is worth. - Good luck with your work.
April 17, 200619 yr Author Thank you leightwing you helped a lot. I hope this is better than the one I had before, though I still think it needs more work and once again I'm stuck. Ensemble2.MUS
April 17, 200619 yr Well done!! Building on the 16th-note rhythmic theme while staying true to your harmonic pallette, then coming back and alluding to your first theme has made for a very cohesive introduction. Now get rid of that final D and keep going, building right out of the last line. Don't give your listener time to sense any finality. It's exposition time! Marry those two themes in a theme an variation OR, even better, take it somewhere different. Maybe a brief foray into another key or just add one note like a B or Bb to the scheme of the things, while changing the tonal center to Bb or C. Let another leightmotif spice it up, then slowly remove these elements and arrive at a recap. I'm just rambling, but you get the idea. You simply need to think up a formal plan in your mind that forces the issue. If you end up straying from your original idea, stop and take a close look at what you've done. Make sure that you really want to change the plan. Don't be afraid to nix the idea. If you really like what you wrote but it doesn't belong, save it to your bag of tricks for another piece.
