First Part of First Symphony

I'm writting this Symphony in honor of my best friend, who died May 13th last year. He lived with me for 3 years, we did everything together... it was pretty tragic, I finished the exposistion and the intro, everything else is pretty close to complete but I want to put up a preview. I use the cello and piano a lot because he played those very well.

1__Introduction.mid

2__Exposistion_I.mid

On the introduction: I enjoy the melody, quite tragic and ponderous. A good use of the chords on the piano, though perhaps more could of been done with the piano. I liked the ending best, since it built up a bit and added variety

On the exposition: Once again, nice melodies :)....Nice use of the timpani to create a powerful, underlying rythm for the melodies, which seemed to follow a general form and structure. Once again, around the end the melodies were expanded upon quite nicely, with various use of brass instruments and the timpani for harmony and rythm.....ugh, man I'm tired...damn final exams...sorry for quite a bad review, but I'm trying to do history at the same time :P.

Nice piece(s), though. Sorry to hear about your friend :(.

people are hesitating because of the sensitivity of the peice! But I want criticism! ha!

I don't quite see how you separate the exposition from the development, but anyways....

it's a very strange orchestration so far. could you please tell us what the expected complete orcehstration will be?

a criticism: the sudden stop to flute solo is VERY strange. instrument ranges, what little I can tell from the MIDI, are boring. You are using the instruments all within very restricted ranges.

A symphony, no matter what sort of harmony you use, requires a few things:

1. thematic/motivic material

2. expansion/development of the above

3. over-all structure

So far, your two excerpts sound more like film underscore than a symphony. There has to be a sense of direction, that the thematic or motivic material is leading somewhere. A symphony is above all like a good novel: it has an introduction, it has the presentation of characters (themes/motifs), it has some sort of drama (development, different movements) and it has the resolution of the drama. Resolution doesn't have to mean "happy ending", but it has to resolve SOMEhow.

My recommendation is before attacking something as large-scale as a symphony, you should be working on devloping your formal skills - understanding musical structure, orchestration, harmony, counterpoint. All skills that can be gotten by working on smaller-scaled works.

and for your friend, I'm very sorry, I empathize with you. I know what it's like.

haha Qccowboy...

you obviously have no clue. You can't just strech instruments right away! Esspecially when you have so much material to expand on. I have like 9 themes lol

The development is in the works. And a, excuse me, a film score? are you shiting on my face? lol

no but cereal, thanks for the input. I'm a perfectionist, and I am a really 'smooth' voice leader so I don't use to much of a range unless I really want to push it out. I try to keep the music weird and exciting by changing styles/genres too.

What midi configuration do you have on your sound card btw?

hes so smrt :wacko:

:P ....

EDIT: now that ive actually listened to the first piece... i dont get it :happy: it just seems to go on and on...

lol bob, you're awesome.