Piano Sonata No.2 (The Sanderson Sonata)

This is the first piece I have posted on to this website. I hope you enjoy it and it would be great to hear what you think.Link to youtube just incase their is any trouble with listening here.

Piano Sonata No.2 (The Sanderson Sonata)

I do like the initial ideas, and the first two pages were a very pleasant listen. However, I got tired pretty quickly of he left-hand arpeggios after that... the harmony kept me ''on my toes'', so to speak, for the first part, but after the E Major section, I got the feeling the piece was simply droning on, mainly because of the pattern in the left-hand. Shifting the melody over to the left hand once in a while could be a great help, as well as trying to get a type of ''ebb and flow'' effect going with regards to the rhythm, without necessarily changing the tempo (rests are very useful to that effect). Because of that, I wasn't particularly moved, or interested by the end. I don't think there's anything unpleasant about your melodides or harmonies, but I get the feeling they are wasted on a boring rhythmic pattern. I think reworking the left-hand part to include varing rhythms adn patterns could do wonders to this piece, which seems to have very good potential.

I see. Yes i will definitely go back to it and have a look at changing the left hand. Thanks for the feedback. I see where you are coming from and maybe in a couple of weeks I will repost it with some modifications.

Thank you.

First of all, welcome to YC

Now. about your piece.

Melody: What I really like in it is that you have a pretty good ability to write MELODY. This is something many people do lack, but your melodic line is really good.

Texture/figuration: As PranoidFreak pointed out, the left hand is pretty tiring for the ear, and you should definitely refactor it.

Harmony: You have good sense of harmonic progressions, but one thing you should not forget is that along with main chords there are inverses! My ear longed for inverses throughout the piece. For example, in bar 6 and/or bar 8, I wanted to hear an E-flat in bass. Really, if you enrich your whole piece with a lot of inverses, it will be much MUCH better.

Form: If I say that this isn't a sonata form, you'll probably point me the two main subjects the development section, the reprise,etc., and will disagree with me. But remember that the form not only means placement of themes/sections in time, but also the placement of climaxes. In sonata form. I can't say why exactly, but this didn't seem a sonata for me. This is really more a prelude. Never mind though

Voice-Leading (or whatever the English term is ) : You have qiute a few (hidden) parallel octaves and fifths in your piece. With richer texture, this don't matter, but taking the tempo and the thin texture into account, these really punch me in the ear. Examples include bar 26-27 (Dflat-C) 27 (e-natural - g), bar 75-76 C-D and many others, Consider working them around

Beginning: I don't really see the purpose of the first two bars. Consider either removing them or changing them.

Ending: The B-natural in the one-but last measure does very bad things.for me. It seems really artificial. Just have a G with lengh 1/8 or do something else. The B-natural doesn't belong there

I don't want you to get the impression that all my review is critique, no, it is not. I just pointed out some of the bad things (in fact I may well be wrong,cause I don't have musical education). But the piece overall is very promising. Looking forward to listen to the reviewed version!

That'll be my two cents

Thanks haha

No this is good stuff I want to hear people's thoughts. Constructive criticism which is what i hope (and is so far delivering) this website can bring me.

I intend to be good not to feel good.

Thank you for listening to my piece and I hope when I do get around to modifying it that it is an improvement.