Thoughtful Conversion

My first large orchestra piece, written for my senior composition project in college. Each movement is tied together by various recurring themes and is based on the idea of some method of psychological persuasion, internal or external.

(Re-uploaded with individual movements...)

Thoughtful Conversion

--Edit--

I'm not sure why it displays the movements out of order on the listening page, but at least they're numbered. =)

Also, I don't know how to delete the original post I made that was just one sound file. Sorry about that.

gggggggg

Wow. I really liked this. The harmonies are interesting. Somewhat tonally grounded, yet without being really tonal. This really draws my attention. Can you tell a bit more about how you constructed this?

It is a nice set of character pieces. I agree with Zach that Pity is really likeable. I think it has to do with its more developed form. More contrasting elements? This could be an idea to expand other movements that tend to be on the short side...

At times the orchestration sounds like you write most of the time for almost everybody. But I can't say anything more without a score. If it is possible, please provide one in PDF format.

Thanks for the feedback! I didn't have the scores handy when I posted the mp3s but I can probably add them tonight (I'm at work right now).

The first two movements are noticeably underdeveloped for sure. I actually finished writing the last 3 movements first and the piece ended up being too long for what I was allowed in my composition studio at the time. I had to make the first two considerably shorter. There was even another movement that I took out altogether. That's something I intend to go back and fix one of these days.

I consider everything I write to be "tonal" in that there is almost always one or more pitch center(s). With this piece I dabbled in polytonality a lot more than I usually do. I tried to make it accessible at the same time, and so I treated all of my dissonances very carefully. I don't like to hang around a jarring idea for too long without balancing it out with a "neutral" idea or resolution (if that makes any sense at all).

I think the reason the orchestration seems really heavy also has to do with the fact that a lot of the ideas are underdeveloped. I did use a lot of varying combinations already, though. When I'm writing I usually start with bigger ideas and then develop them backwards by simplifying and cutting out the texture.

Hopefully looking at the score will be more insightful, lol.

The scores are there now.

Thanks for posting the scores. I have no time to go indepth right now (deadline, internship, while getting ill:( ), but I promise I will do.

2 little remarks. The dynamics are not connected to the notes themselves, but often just before the entry of a voice. Like in ms 6, ten sax. At first I thought this was intentional, until I saw at ms 48 hrns that you do connect them to the first note o a phrase too. This might just seem nitpicking, but in my experience, finale's human playback works better when the dynamics are connected to the note, and note places somewhere in a measure.

2nd thing. The measure lines of the piano are one staff too high. They connect Righthand Piano to Vibraphone, in stead of the left hand :D

As I promised, to be continued

Thanks for the tips! I don't feel like that's nitpicking at all. Anything I can do to improve the score musically or just visually, I'm open to ideas.

It's been a while since I've actually used Sibelius so I'm a little rusty, but I think what you said about the playback in Finale also applies to Sibelius. And I have no idea why the Vibe part's measure line is connected to the piano, lol.