Of Earth and Wind

This is a piece my first attempt at this ensemble, initially written for piano, I adapted it for strings, and after I was done writing most of the parts for the strings I discovered I had one instrument left: the Viola. I was somewhat at a loss of how to place it, so I decided to let it go off on somewhat of its own journey, which in the end is the uniting factor in the piece.

Of Earth and Wind

John, welcome to YC! Fun piece with many wonderful moments. Aside from the occasional awkward sounding counterpoint/voice leading, my main critique is that the music never rests. It might be nice to let the strings rest more often and vary your tempos. Also, I didn't hear too much changing of foreground, middleground, and background structures. Do you happen to have a score?

This is a nice work, John:

--Right from the get go it felt lively and inspired. It's always a good thing to pique the listener right from the beginning, so fantastic job with that :nod:

--Black Orpheous has a good point about the various techniques one can do on a violin that can add extra spice and life to a piece, such as pizz. or staccato, or...simply give certain strings a rest to accent certain others, bringing others to the fore while putting others on the back-burner :) What you have is pleasant and genuinely well-written, but some simple articulations here and there can liven it up further.

Thanks for sharing with us, this was very nice! I will give it an 8/10 for its wonderful melodic and harmonic sense, but taking into account the somewhat awkwardness of the piece.

Keep up the great work, and welcome to Young Composers :D Feel free to venture through yonder site, and add your thoughts on others' works, I'm sure they'd appreciate it :thumbsup:

Thank you for the advice, and some of those techniques mentioned are included but the software I'm using (finale) has poor quality for them. Thanks for the input tho, I'm going to try and address some of the awkwardness of the double bass parts.. There are however parts that the lower strings cut out and upper strings carry the theme onward, likewise a part that the lower voices carry a minorish section. I might go thru and lengthen them.