A Little Piano Suite (jawoodruff's competition)

This is my submission for jawoodruff's beginner's piano competition. I have to compose something for the piano that is technically accessible for a beginner. The entire suite is about 5 minutes long.The pieces are progressively harder. The first one can be compared to a classical piece. The second is romantic. The third is modern.1. Flower SongThis one is all white notes. It's just a melody with the 1-5-3-5 accompaniment. Then with some repeated chords.2. NocturneI spent a lot of time trying to get good melodies for this one. And I tried to put some chopin-ness in it.3. Dance of The WhateverMy favorite of the set. It's in a mixture of different scales, but it definitely has C as the tonal center.EDIT: I took last life's advice about the octaves and made some changes to the Nocturne. Also I just want to say that jawoodruff, johnbucket and JohnPaxMulligan are the most awesome people ever. And I'm not just saying that because they are judging this competition. That's all.

A Little Piano Suite (jawoodruff's competition)

I really like this music, particularly the first movement as it has such a great theme. If I was still intent on learning piano I'd definitely learn it as it's not easy finding beginner pieces that I actually like.

:happy: :cool:

A question/suggestion: How you feel about changing the last measure of the flower song, from the four 8ths you have written now in left hand, into two 4ths so you'd get 3 on-the-beat ending chords (and the low c)? I think it would give more closure.

First two are very sweet songs (I especially liked the first) with recognizable harmonies, although I can;t say wherefrom. It makes them pretty catchy (in a good way ) Third one is pretty fun, although it differs much from the others. Your entry is by far the best I've seen for the competition! Good job (I will put the standard for my entry up to the bar you raised right here... :happy: )

Probably the first entry to take his stated skill level seriously! This seems to be right at the level where the pieces will be challenging, but not impossible to achieve. The last one of course is harder.

I found it interesting how in the first piece, the first half is written with sort of classical-sounding voice leading in mind, then the second half goes into jazz-like parallel 7th chords. I thought it was nice sounding, and worked somehow. Interesting bit of pastiche. There were few 7th chords which lacked a 3rd because of voice leading, and I thought sounded a little hollow; if you could rework it a bit, so that the third is present, I think it would sound better. Not that doesn't already sound great.

I really liked the second one, had a very singable tune. I would watch the voice-leading though, you have a lot of octaves between the melody voice and the bass voice on the downbeat; it's not that bad, but sometimes it gives a feeling of too much closure for the moment in the piece, if you know what I mean. You mostly make up for this by not approaching the octave by step, which helps, but I don't think the octaves are always necessary for the tune, and the piece would be more flowing if the were less of that. Also sometimes it gets you into trouble like the hidden octaves at measure 26.

For the last one, you have this whole-tone thing, and you have the ostinato, and I think it's really effective. I like how you vary the material for each little passage, so that it never just simply repeats--keeps it interesting. No real criticisms here, though it would be nice if there were a contrasting section, it doeesn't really need it.

Good job! It's good to have pianists writing music for piano...

First movement was really good.

The nocturne really flows beautifully. I likes Also, it doesn't sound too difficult - simple, but very well executed!

Third movement had a nice vibe to it. Brought a few interesting images to my brain

Overall, good stuff mate.

I would have loved to join this competition, but alas, I have little time :(

Wow! Speaking as someone with pretty low piano proficiency myself, I think I would be able to play this, and all three sound really musically engaging in many ways. Great job, Ian! I kinda feel like printing it up and learning it just to better my inept skills a bit while successfully making piano music.

Wow, this work should be the winner of the competition, congratulations: is a very musical (and eclectic) suite.

Pedagogical question: Could you specify what skills are needed to develop to interpret each of the pieces? o an ABRSM level? I think this work have a very valuable pedagogic value, and the specification will be helpful for the interested people.

Greetings.

Thanks for the reviews you all! last life- I'm embarrassed to say I'm not even completely sure what voice leading is. I am completely ignorant about the rules of this. Maybe somebody here could teach me. The lack of thirds in the seventh chords is to make it easier. It's easier to play seventh chords with the fifth and seventh only in the left hand, I find. Silva- The skills needed for the first piece is just being able to play the common 1-5-3-5 accompaniment and repeated chords with a melody. The second piece introduces two other common accompaniments in the left hand: the 1-3-5 and the oom-pah-pah. The last one is considerably harder. There is quite a lot of hand crossing here. Again, thanks everybody.

Hand Crossing... Mastering the third piece first would bee a great excercise.

Thanks for your responses ;D

Ok, these are not beginner pieces. They are about the level of the easier to harder Sonatina's found by contemporaries of Clementi.

They are intermediate level. Playing Alberti bass at quarter = 100 is difficult for a beginner because they don't have the finger independence to play a broken chord at that tempo. Also, Alberti bass are deceptively more difficult than you think as the motion is up and down - therefore the wrist needs to be supple and used slightly to not tire out the arm and hand. Broken chord played in one direction as you do in the beginning of the Dance is more suitable for beginners - especially at the tempo you have or even slower. Playing scales rapidly with finger crossing is also intermediate - beginners usually can do finger crossings slowly after about 2 months, once they have five finger exercises down.

Hand crossing is definitely intermediate level too as beginners usually need to learn to not tighten their forearm and wrists when play notes before they even consider hand crossing. They also must learn to change position quickly - that is the fingers over d-a learn to move easily to g to d position etc.

As for the compositions - I wonder why the entries I have seen use the the Sonatinas of Clementi or easy sonatas of Haydn as their model?

What I do like about your pieces is that you do a nice job imitating the model and adding a few modern touches. I agree with last life - the voice leading is solid but sometimes it is blocky - so pay attention to his criticism.

Good luck with the contest!

Really like the first two Ian.. Great job.

How long have you been composing ?

Really like the first two Ian.. Great job.How long have you been composing ?

For about two years.

Although it seems I have melodies that sound too similar to that of other composers'. A few people say that they recognize the main theme of the Flower Song from a Mozart piece, although I don't know which one it is.