A Morning Hymn

This is entitled A Morning Hymn and depicts a sunrise, however the sunrise has a much deeper metaphorical meaning such as closure, a new beginning, or hope! Enjoy!

sounds great. the mood of this piece really does depict a sunrise and a new beginning or hope.

thank you for listening! :)

Greetings

This is a very poignant work, Michael! Of course, that is no surprise to me. Your writing is pretty much the opposite of my own. I tend to write works that are fast and in minor keys. I love your writing very much. You have a website, right? At any rate, there's not much I can criticize here. The piece does remind me of John Mackey's "happier" compositions, but you really do add your own style to the more beautiful works. I don't think I could write anything close to beautiful/poignant. I really liked the mallet percussion stuff starting at measure 9. All-in-all, this work is exceptional. You never disappoint me with your works and I can't wait to hear any new works that your currently writing!

Peace,

C.L. Winston

Thank you so much Mr. Winston, probably one of the kindest reviews I've received of my music!

Very nice! One thing I noticed, is that you use a lot of dissonance- It would be really nice to hear all that dissonance resolve into one giant, harmonious chord. It felt like, most of the time, when you would expect a resolution, there's always just a hint of dissonance that throws it off. I mean, a lot of the time, you want that building of tension, but in this piece, it feels to me that if there was a hint more consonance in the right places, this piece would go from GREAT to EXTRAORDINARY.

-MF

Hey Michael!

This is a very nice work here. I like how you have 7th chords in there sometimes. I think it really works well in this piece. The oboist.. holy god, they're gonna be so happy to play all these big solos! :D The little percussion line (2 against 3) is nice but after a while it got a bit repetitive, a bit too.. the same. Perhaps at some point in there, you could change the rhythm slightly. However, ending with it works perfectly! Don't change that.

Thanks for posting this!

Keep composing :) (hey that rhymes!)

Heckel

I like this piece a lot and would love to hear what it would sound like preformed professionally. The harmonies are wonderful and very satisfying. I agree with MusicFiend though. The piece is great, but you would really be getting some oohs and aahs if you very cleverly resolved some of the tensions you build and don't resolve. From about 3:00 to about 3:40 you have a very poignant moment or at least a possible poignant moment that could just send people to tears if you do it right. I think, however, what happens is the chords you build alternate between each other and kind of flatten what someone might expect to be more satisfying then it is. I would love to hear the harmony open up and change after about 20 seconds or so of that section. Really have the bass line walk downwards and open up to a really full glorious (and different) sound. Have the top line sing out on the top note of the chord. Maybe take the trumpet and give it the root of the chord held above the rest of the instruments. Build dissonance against that trumpet line for a short sec and then resolve it in the most satisfying way you can think of. You also have this really full sound going, and I am not sure whether it is just the midi or the notation, but it drops out in the middle of this part I am talking about. I would not do that. I would just keep building.

Hope those suggestions help. I love what you have done with this.