Symphony No. 1

Symphony. No. 1 (rough draft)

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My main concern is providing interest (where there is none), and whether or not I need to revamp Theme1 (taking a new route), or fix the existing...

Where does it start to bore?

There are a few issues with crackling audio/tutti. (please excuse :P) Exporting audio from Finale.

Looking into better production...though my Sonar fatal errors when I upload MIDI data...bleh.

Flute 1 is actually a piccolo.

Interested in feedback.

Symphony No. 1

Hey, thanks for posting. This is a really great work, and I really enjoyed listening. I absolutely love the syncopated rhythm you use. It has an eerie feel, yet it has motion which is missing from so many pieces. I also like your development.

I think I would've liked to see more of a climax. You have really nice development, but if you expanded the climax a little bit I think it would add a little more depth to your piece.

Also, you have lots of difficult rhythms in your piece - Often it helps to use more ties. It's less confusing for the performer if you keep the beats exposed.

Thanks for posting!

-MF

Pretty good professional piece.

I knew the end of the development was unsatisfying, I will fix that now.

After cleaning up the score a bit, should it be good enough to present to people in hopes of a performance? I would not want to jump the gun :P

After cleaning up the score a bit, should it be good enough to present to people in hopes of a performance? I would not want to jump the gun :P

I love the opening of the piece but truthfully I began to lose interest half way through. I think the piece became too string heavy and had too many spaces where it felt like something more should be going on. How about some counter-melodies? This is a very solid start, though.

If you clean up the score you could certainly present it to an ensemble, but there is a lot of cleanup to do. Aside from the collisions, there are places (like m. 150) where you use "0vb." I've never seen that before. Either use a line on the 8va to show where it ends or use "loco" instead of "0vb." When you have divided string instruments use "divisi" and "unis.," but for divided wind or brass instruments you use "a 2" or "a 3" (depending on how many instruments are playing the same part on one staff), and it's unnecessary to say anything when the instruments split apart again.

Thank you Orpheus, I didn't know about wind a#, and had forgotten about loco. I was also afraid of being string heavy for that matter :P Though, I probably will leave that the same, as that doesn't bother me so much.

I've fixed several issues with places where I felt there wasn't enough going on, and worked out a climax for the development.

Thanks for listening, and helping :P

I think the timpani part is not easy to play. The octave jumps seem to me to be difficult. At least it's going quite high (ms 27)

Your melodies seem quite flowing. But when its so often octavated with the celli it gets tiresome to the ears. the melody is looking for a more gentile orchestration, like a single woodwind.

I think the piece moves quite slowly. Has some highly expressive moments, you seem to use the brass in an epic way. Good.

On the harmonic side the slow moving has negative side-effect, it gets boring... Thats a real pity because you have some beautiful material...

On general remark; I wouldn't divide the viola's, they are usual already outnumbered by the 2nd violins alone. Dividing will create a gap (because of the violas being too thin) between the violins and celli/cbasses

Yeah, I knew I needed to make sure my ranges weren't off the chart on the timpani, I haven't read much into percussive orchestration...I will now :P

In the recap, as of now the only variation I have going on is a total switch on the roles of string/wood, so the orchestration lends to a more gentle feel on the second half.

I'm still pretty unhappy with just change in orchestration over the same material, so I'm trying to write out a coda, and then I'm going to go back and see about making some changes to the recap material to hopefully add interest.

Could anyone point me in the direction of what is boring? Like jrcramer said, it is a pity, because I really enjoy some of the material, but apparently some of the transition is boring? Are you thinking there should be more ornamental gesturing going on? Counter-melodies - I was afraid of making it sound muddy, so I just used the orchestra for coloring instead. For this piece I'll probably just keep it simple, and spice up the coda in that manner.

Thanks again for the tips, I really want to polish this up.

Hi There,

I have to agree with the above posters that the piece starts exciting, but then the melody gets boring/confusing. This shouldnt be necessary. Try to tell a story. What story are you telling? What is happening? I think your music later on in the piece needs character. I need to see something happen in front of my eyes, just like many people "See" everything happen when they read a book. You might should try to listen to other symphonies and think why those are so good, and why yours isn't yet. It looks like I am really saying your music is bad or something like that, but seriously, it is not. I am just trying to help you to get the feeling you are expressing over to here, to the listener. If you ask for specific things you want advice on I might be able to help you further.

I would really appreciate it if you could listen to my latest piece too and comment on it to (link in signature).

Kind regards,

Hugo

Here is an update - I haven't overhauled anything, I kind of got in a writer's block, but things are cleaned up, fixed some markings, and added on to the developmental climax. The recap, as last stated was to be string/wood orchestration flipped. Then finally a coda...

I would really like to know where it starts to bore. I'm -very- unsure about it at this point. I can't decide if I need to scrap a lot of the first theme, and add a lot of drama...or just fix up what I have.

I don't intend on leaving the recap as is, I want variations...but I'm on the fence with scrapping. Seems though, as I'm writing this I'm falling to scrapping and going more dramatic....

What do you think?

Really Great Melodies and development! I salute You!

The climax at the end is a lot more satisfying then many of you think. Take a look at Rachmaninoff's First symphony, the end of the fourth mvt. is slow and almost boring listening to only parts of the climax. The climax at the end of this piece is very close tothe climax Rachy gave it. Good job!! I'll give it a 10/10.

Thanks for the kind words, and the critical ones -- I have grown a lot from this experience. As a first experiment with an orchestra, I am pleased. It was written, however, with the wrong intentions, therefor it's content is dull. I can still appreciate the colorings, as that held my attention for a bit. I am aware that the orchestration isn't very good - it was just an experiment. After all I learned quite a bit, and will keep writing sketches until I can generate a proper development of ideas.

But, I can't thank 'you' enough for listening to it, and commenting - it really does help.

Hmm.... You asked if it would be good for a performance earlier. In my own opinion: No. But, it definitely could be. The reason this piece isn't suitable for a performance at the moment is because of the way you use the instruments. What I'm saying here is that you have written parts for certain instruments here that are hard, very difficult, and almost impossible to play by a real musician. I'll explain it all right here. OK. In the beginning of the symphony everything is very good. I might say that the second violins are going a little low in their range but it isn't something to worry about. Violins can easily play were you wrote them there, but be careful and don't go any lower than that or you'll be writing out of their playable range. Your first real problem starts on measure 14. The french horns suddenly hit that high C. When the music is displayed in concert pitch that not is an F. It might not seem high then, but when you later convert the piece out of concert pitch the notes of transposing instruments change to higher and sometimes lower notes. You go much higher than this High C in your piece here. I always try to avoid going any where higher than an E in concert pitch. Your horns are far too high here. You can lower the high notes you have there down an octave and they might be fine, but take some more in depth looks into the music to see if some notes are just too plain high or low. If you don't know the ranges of the instruments you can find plenty of websites with their ranges. The other problem is the timpani. It starts in measure 17 with an upward scale from F to B flat. A timpani can't hit every note you have along with all the other you have written down in the rest of the symphony. Also consider looking at the range of the timpani and always be careful with what you write. Also make sure that the Clarinets don't go too high as well. If you fix this up, maybe make the piece shorter or keep the length and make it a little more exciting than you may be fine for a performance. Even though you have these fixable problems throughout the symphony here, I am still impressed by the length you tackled here. P.S. If you cut the time down to make it shorter it could make a good slow 2nd movement to a larger symphony. Take this into consideration freely!

-Jared

You call for a strange instrumentation...five clarinets but no bass clarinet? Six flutes but one oboe? Violas I and II, 6 horns? The orchestra's instrumentation isn't extremely flexible, at least not as much as a wind band, and calling for certain unorthodox instrumentations is a guarantee of no performance - especially if you aren't a known composer (I mean stravinsky got away with needing two pianos in some orchestral works, but he's the god damn stravinsky). You can look up standard orchestral instrumentation anywhere, and I suggest you do that. Also, if you divide up a single clarinet staff (or any wind instrument, really) in to multiple instruments, mark it at the beginning as "clarinets 1-2" so whoever is putting the orchestra together knows that's how many you need.

Why does your symphony begin with a full blank measure?

You have this interesting habit of putting dynamics under crescedi/diminuendos. They go in the same horizontal space.

Someone earlier mentioned that octave leaps in the timpani are hard, this is completely untrue. Assuming the notes are on different drums there is no "difficult" interval to play. The difficult thing will be playing the ascending line you have, since it will require changing the pitch of a drum mid-phrase. This is not impossible, a skilled timpanist can change pitch easily. Your range, however, is unplayable. In general timpani parts should be kept between the D below the staff to the A on the top line, but that is a full range of four drums. Occasionally a 20" drum is available that extends the range to middle C, but notes up that high sound thin and ping-y anyway. My suggestion is to do a bit of research into unfamiliar instruments - you can even find some info on wikipedia.

Similarly, your french horn parts are astronomically high. Try not to go above that staff (written pitches) for the most part, and definitely never above written high C.

You notate some rhythms in a very unidiomatic way, as an example I'll correct m. 55 in the timpani part. You have a dotted eighth note followed by a half note followed by a sixteenth rest in a measure of 3/4. In rhythmic notation, it is important to not obscure beats - in a measure of 3/4, the division between all three beats should be clearly seen by the player. This is not to say you have to use three tied quarter notes instead of a half note, but in more complicated rhythms, you should tie over the beats. Specifically, you should notate this with a dotted eighth note, then a sixteenth note tied to a half note, or if you actually want to keep that rest (which is pointless, frankly), a sixteenth tied to a double-dotted quarter, or perhaps to be safe, a quarter tied to a dotted eighth.

I would refrain from tempo markings like "Andante" and instead give a metronome marking...both is fine too, but the important thing is a number.

I have to protest your string parts around m.133 where you notate the same notes but use "8va" and "8vb" over them to change each octave...just notate the different octaves! As a performer, my assumption upon seeing that is that you are too lazy to write different notes and used the "8va" to cut time and effort. May or may not be true, but that's what it seems like.

It looks like over-orchestration isn't a problem for you, which is great, because that is the most common symptom of beginner compositions for large ensembles.

I have literally no idea why you choose to divisi flute 1 and clarinet 2 into three parts while keeping the other flutes and clarinets resting. JUST USE THE OTHER FLUTES AND CLARINETS! Same with horns. You do understand that divisi in wind instruments necessitates additional players, right? Multiphonics being the exception.

I've made it about halfway, but I think I'm gonna stop for now. It's clear you have musical chops, but lack knowledge of instrumentation to truly put together a large-scale work like this. My suggestion is write solos for instruments, and have them played by real players, so you learn by trial and error the things which do and do not work.