In Dreams (for string orchestra)

I was prowling through my old stuff this past night, trying to get into the mood for writing sheet music since I've been mostly writing tabs for guitar the past month, when I came across this song.

Of all the heaps of Finale projects I have, most of them are just scraps and ideas or halves of songs. To date, I only have three I'd call complete on a basic level, this being the first. When I opened it up a few months ago - doing the exact same thing I was doing tonight - it was kind of funny to see sheet music with stacks of notes on every staff with several of them doubling or tripling each other. I realized I had written this before I could decently write or read music (not too long ago, maybe 4 or 5 years) and had jotted everything down by ear, listening to the MIDI string sounds in order to put whatever I had in my head onto paper.

I had originally written it without lyrics as a choral piece because I'm obsessed with choirs, but realized it sounded much nicer as an orchestral piece (I didn't like the "ooh" or "ah" MIDI sounds so I used the string synth ones instead way back when). I copied it all and pasted it into the orchestra template and went through deleting the excess notes (there were several), and then forgot about it.

I thought I'd post it on here because when I finished this song and gave it to my friend, he really liked it and put it on single repeat in iTunes, and it made me feel like I could make music for a living and that people would like the sounds that go on in my head. I'm thinking about going the extra mile to fix it up and learn more about editing something that isn't written for a choir, so if anyone notices anything I should focus on, go for it. I haven't put in any real dynamic markings or expressive text, and now that I think about it I wouldn't know what to do beyond that, so the more advice I can get, the better.

Anyway, here it is. Hope you dig it!

[Play or download the MP3 here]

In Dreams (Rough).pdf

The music is nice, but why did you craft the durations of each note in the 3/4 section such that metrically, the music may as well have stayed in 4/4? Perhaps you just accidentally inserted a 3/4 time signature and Finale did the legwork automatically.

There are some nice harmonic ideas which could probably be capitalised on even more by moving the bass and treble parts around more. I know it's tempting to sort of "fidget" around rather than go on a deeper journey because I have that problem with my own writing.

This song IS really nice. I in particular liked all the seventh chord chords, and inversions and such. It gave it a nice, "dreamy" feel. Which is obviously a good thing, cause the name of the song is called "In Dreams". I also liked in the middle when the strings began to play the sixteenth notes, and slowly build upon each other that was a nice touch.

I think that you could've done a lot more with that, and make more of a climax, and then let it slowly die down to the end of the song. :)

But all and all, it was very nice. :P

The music is nice, but why did you craft the durations of each note in the 3/4 section such that metrically, the music may as well have stayed in 4/4? Perhaps you just accidentally inserted a 3/4 time signature and Finale did the legwork automatically.

There are some nice harmonic ideas which could probably be capitalised on even more by moving the bass and treble parts around more. I know it's tempting to sort of "fidget" around rather than go on a deeper journey because I have that problem with my own writing.

ahahahaha, I honestly never noticed that was in 3/4 when I was re-writing it. I think I didn't know how to use the tempo features in Finale and wanted to make it slower, but I'm not even sure of that. That's definitely a detail I never noticed for whatever reason. It may have been automatic when I was switching templates, because that section would be needlessly more difficult in 3/4. Thanks for pointing that out.

I'll keep the bass and treble parts in mind when editing. I think that the song is so built on to the bass drone that it might be difficult to change, but it probably wouldn't be very fun to play. Perhaps I can make it flirt with 4ths, 5ths, and 7ths since it's on tonic the entire time. I'll definitely have to give it a try, since I feel the strongest moment in the piece is when the bass moves.

Matt

What you have here is how some people work their pieces. They write out the chord structure (which you have) and then find a melody that works within that structure. You have a simple melody started so that part can be expanded upon to make other melodies and than add in some harmony specific to the melody.

It just takes time and effort.

A very nice beginning here.

Ron

It's both meditative and moving... well, to my ears anyway.

Look forward to further installments as it progresses. :-)

--

Mike