Thirsty Fish for Cello, Piano, Marimba

My second completed piece awaits your criticism.

Still some bugs to work out with Finale, but this is the best for now.

Feedback needed please!

Thanks,

Kass

MP3 - Thirsty Fish.mp3 - File Shared from Box.net - Free Online File Storage

mpc edit.pdf

Kassie,

If you don't mind, before I help you with this composition, would you mind answering some of my questions for you?

It will all help me help you for me to get an idea of where you are coming from, what your training is, and what your goals are.

How old are you?

This is your second piece you've finished, but what else have you done musically in your life?

What is your training?

Could you tell me about the piece. Is it programmatic? Absolute?

Will you be getting this performed?

Thanks Kassie. I see a lot of nice things with this and would really like to help.

Thanks for your reply,

I'm 18 and started composing about a year ago. I haven't had any training in classical composition, but I have been playing music all my life.

I played piano for 6 years when I was young, and have been playing the trumpet for almost 10 years. In the past I was more involved in jazz, but I studied four years of classical theory in high school.

I started composing last year just to try it out and I pretty much fell in love with it. I completed some pieces and badgered my fellow students to play them for me all year. For kicks I decided to apply to the Mannes late auditions for composition and I got in. I've deferred for a year and am applying to other schools as well while I am an exchange student in Belgium at the moment. Right now I'm just writing as much as I can, and trying to maybe get a few actual lessons in composition before I enter college.

The piece is maybe closer to absolute. I tend to start out with an inspiration or feeling, but I ultimately let the piece just take its course. In this case the title comes from a Rumi poem I really like.

I have some recordings of rehearsals I conducted with some fellow students in high school, but the year ended and I didn't get a chance to have it performed yet. I would like to at some point.

Does that help? :)

I'm using what I've gathered from my years as a musician and what I can look up on my own to write my pieces, so I really really welcome help with anything technique-wise and things like that.

This had quite a nice atmosphere and moved along well. You've got a pretty good idea of what the three instruments can do, and your parts are not at all problematic to play - in fact they're quite easy. You've also added plenty of dynamic markings. Just one notational point - there's a rit. in the marimba part in b.147 that is written in italics below the stave. As all three players are going to have to do the rit., you need to write it above the stave in bold like a tempo marking. Also the cello should use the tenor clef in b. 150-51. The music itself had some nice lyrical melodies in the cello part, but I felt that the piano and marimba rhythms were rather simple and a bit repetitive at times. The ending was also a bit strange - the cello starts a new melody but the piece ends suddenly a few bars later. You could also think about writing more idiomatic parts for the three instruments. There wasn't really anything that made them unique to the instruments you were writing for, apart from the few chords in the cello and piano parts.

are u handsome

i am darkangel , your proper wife

Thanks siwi :]

The rit. show up on the individual parts in Finale, but not the score. I will fix that.

As for the ending, the cello is actually playing the line from b.39 an octave higher...if that makes it a little less strange.

"simple and repetitive at times"

is that, to you, necessarily a bad thing?

makwingka,

Yes I am handsome, but I am also a girl.

I'm not sure if that's your thing...haha

makwingka,

Yes I am handsome, but I am also a girl.

I'm not sure if that's your thing...haha

i am not lesbian , but we can make friend , i love your music ^^

Wow Kassie! This is a very pretty piece. For only 1 year of composing, I'd say this is pretty impressive!

I liked this. Keep composing and your pieces will improve! :)

Heckel

makwingka,

Yes I am handsome, but I am also a girl.

I'm not sure if that's your thing...haha

wow I lol'ed :D

Thanks siwi :]"simple and repetitive at times"

is that, to you, necessarily a bad thing?

Depends on the context. Electronic dance music, for example, is, by its nature, necessarily repetitive. A 20-minute piece of chamber music need not be. The repeating rhythms in your piece didn't really spoil it, as it had a sort of vaguely minimalist feel anyway, but it was an area where there didn't seem to be enough development, particularly as you had some more interesting rhythms near the start. Simplicity itself is never ever a bad thing - good music is about making the simple interesting. Doing so, however, is difficult, and that's what we as composers have to learn.

My god I just love this!!!:D

imo there's absolutely nothing wrong with it exept a few tiny problems with the score. the music is just great!

i always had the feeling like you established a key but it sort of "floated in space" and never reaches the key tone. and you keep changing the "fundament", e.g. in bar 36 from g to a and then back to g in b44. This is just wonderful!

The change to Allegro in b66 is cool, too, and I love the cello line from b97; rythmically very inventive:)

The chromatic g, f sharp is very nice, too.

The ending might be a bit short, but as you mentioned above that it's the theme from bar39, it really makes sense.

Maybe you'd just repeat the cello melody there (just a suggestion;)), but I wouldn't change the last two bars... they make a nice ending imo.

Well that's enough from me now, again I REALLY LOVED IT! THANKS!