I am a little world made cunningly...

This is my first time posting on this site! Just looking for some feedback/suggestions on a few pieces. Unfortunately, all I have is a MIDI file for sound, so I suppose that will have to do. Thanks in advance for any comments!

P.S. The midi recording has some strange mistakes in it. Most likely because of not wanting to double up on accidentals when different layers in each part share a note. 

Edited February 27, 20179 yr by isaac1348

Forgive me, but I'm not really sure what genre this is trying to be. The parts with illuminated chords were quite nice, but all of the contrapuntal or flowing stuff was riddled with atonalities or dissonances and I'm not sure if they were intended or not. I'm pretty sure it's not strictly baroque, since parallel fifths are pretty common, and the non harmonic tones don't line up (what makes them sound wrong, by the way, is how brief they are in a given instance, which you might want to look at regardless). Regardless of the stylistic differences, the thing I would look for is places with crossed voices, since it obscures the polyphony and Klangfarbenmelodie you have established in some places. Food for thought.

Cheers!

Using my imagination to supply breathing, words, consonants, etc. I think it sounds pretty good, and what I hear in terms of dissonance are held tones through which other tones weave through and eventually resolve into a consonance, which to me sounded Lydian in many places. At least there was a consistency throughout to my ears. Maybe too much of a consistency, but it's hard to tell without the subtlety it requires. Thank you for sharing.

** I don't know why bar 79 was written using three back to back dotted eighth notes. It looks confusing, whereas writing it using ties for syncopation would be clearer.

HI Isaac,

I think this is a nice piece, but the MIDI file really doesn't do it justice. I think the form makes sense when you factor in all the breaths, pauses, and fermatas written into the score--but since these don't play back, the MIDI file is pretty overwhelming to listen to.

When I'm making a MIDI for an audience that may not be able to score-read well (which is probably the case on a forum for "young composers"), I often create a separate "playback only" file with extra rests and tempo changes written in so that the music "breathes" the way it's supposed to in a live performance. You might consider doing that kind of thing here.

I wouldn't worry too much about writing in a "genre" like the first reviewer suggested... to me, what you're going for is pretty clear, and I think it works well. I like the modal shifts and the variety of textures.

As I'm sure you're aware, this isn't an easy sing, and some of the dissonances will be hard to tune... but I think the individual lines make sense and are relatively singable. The exception to this is the borderline-atonal passage at m. 9 (that recurs later around m. 87)--as Monarcheon mentioned, the rhythmically-unimportant notes here don't always seem to fit into the same set the other voices are singing, and this will make them (as well as the chords they are building to) much harder for the singers to find. For what it's worth, I would leave the chords on beat 5 (in m. 9, 10, etc) as is, but make the fast notes leading to them as diatonic as possible to avoid overwhelming both the singers and the audience. The texture change already creates enough variety to keep the listener interested.

Aside from that, the music seems relatively consistent, harmonically and stylistically. I'd love to hear a live recording, if you can find a choir that's up to the challenge.