July 14, 200916 yr One of my more recent orchestral pieces. I have some hijacked themes near the end, but oh well. It's mostly a chord progression that is built upon throughout. Listening to it, I almost put it under incidental music, since it sort of has a soundtrackey/film scorey kind of sound. I don't mind if it's moved there to be more appropriate. I would love feedback, please. Enjoy. Grievances.mp3 - File Shared from Box.net - Free Online File Storage Grievances.pdf
July 14, 200916 yr This does have a soundtrack feel to it, but I am a believer that some of today's best music comes from soundtracks so I am happy with the piece being here. Just a little reminder about the score. Copy and paste is a great tool to have, but be careful not to leave things hanging around when doing so. For example in measure 41 there are some slurs leading to nowhere. The piece itself is very mellow and has a nice little ostinato that doesn't get boring real quick. Just for playback purposes, you may want to try putting some dynamic markings in between some of your hairpins. I find that notation programs rarely do hairpins well unless you increase the steps after a hairpin. For example, if you want to go from pp to p back to pp. You would do pp hairpin reverse hairpin (which takes you back to pp). Try instead doing pp hairpin mp reverse hairpin pp. Or for an even bigger effect especially for brass, go pp hairpin f hairpin pp. This is unneeded in a finalized score, but there are ways to hide the unwanted dynamic markings from the final score. Experiment with it some and I think you will hear some better recordings. NIce piece Ron
July 14, 200916 yr Just a couple notes - bar 33 and on horns are much too high. Melody at 42 onwards is a blatant ripoff of famous EH solo in the adagio of Dvorak's 9th...I would suggest using a more obscure melody if you're going to copy it and expect no one to realize. I agree it that's it a gorgeous line, but leave it where it belongs. I agree with rolifer about the soundtrack feel but it's not necessarily bad. It's obviously too short and undeveloped to be a standalone orchestral piece, but it's pleasant to listen to.
July 14, 200916 yr Author Ron...Thanks. I see what you mean about the nowhere slurs. In my mind, they'd carry into the next chord with the bassoon taking a breath before his next entrance at 43. The bass clarinet, with nothing to do, would be allowed to hold that note for an 'undetermined period'. Though, of course, this would have a note somewhere, probably on the respective individual part copies of the piece. It was a thought in my head that I never finished. I thought about putting a note there for playback reasons, but never did. You'll notice, one is a slur, and one is a tie. I was seeing which looked better. I definitely agree on putting limiter markings for dynamics between the hairpins. I listened to this so much when cleaninig it, I sort of became deaf to things. And now, listening again, I can hear where certain instruments poke their heads out individually instead of staying balanced with the others. Definitely a note well taken. Thanks for the listen. CB-OOPS...those horns were dropped an octave down after checking with my roommate, a horn player, who insists upon checking all my horn parts in anything I write. I guess I never saved after he corrected me. Good eye though. I'll make sure to re-save that, before I try to have it performed. On the dvorak theme, yes, I know. This piece was written for me only (the title says plenty), and the act of writing it made me feel better about the entire situation. In writing it, my chord progression seemed to exactly match that melody, unintentionally, so I put the melody in. I intend to change it if and when I ever print this for performance, or submit it to anything. And yes, I also agree that it's too short, but, again, for performance, or submission, it would be developed better, but this was written for me. I would never get an entire orchestra together to play 2-3 minutes of music. If I can get a whole orchestra, I'm milking some hour long symphony or some major work. Thanks for your input.
July 15, 200916 yr OMG man. I'm sure that God him/herself couldn't play that high notes in the horn parts. And there are 4 horn parts in an orchestra. Keep that in mind :thumbsup:
