Tempest

I must give you the background for this piece;

First of all, I'm trying to depict an epic battle between two super heroes who were good friends, but the jealousy of one turned them into tragic enemies. So this scene was in my mind, and one day I'm going through all the special features on the second disc that comes with the Star Wars Episode III CD, and so I hear a lot of John Williams' Battle of the Heroes (Anakin vs. Obi-Wan on Mustafar theme), which has a very similar premise, and then I sit down at the piano and I'm just playing around when the theme the french horns play have.

I now have a sound in my head and I get the bit parts and the trumpet ornaments into Finale and I have produced this. However, I am yet to hammer out a chord progression, so the melody remains unsupported except by the sixteenth note runs which don't ever change, although they probably should.

Really I'm just looking for your opinion on the theme, because I know that I need to just study composition and especially orchestration more before I try and proceed with this, however any suggestions or comments would be appreciated.

Mural for Piano Quartet.sib

tempest.MUS

If you keep that violin doing that, your listeners are going to slit their wrists.

If I were you, I would change it into a harsh minor soon, also I would put in a chord change here or there. A minor, kinda getting "blah."

It's got potential, keep working.

P.S. by harsh, I mean not so smooth. some disonance and make the bass have come "explosions" also use syncopation.

Lol yeah I have heard battle of the heroes from episode III, and it sounds like your going for a similar thing.... the repeated violin part, and the theme with the brass, it has a similar sound to it, not like a copy but similar..... my suggestion is to use that little theme as a motif, and to work off of that and build some tension and release, especially after you've iterated your main idea, thats all good and great, but after you've stated it it needs to go somewhere.

Originally posted by I'm my own Toccata

If you keep that violin doing that, your listeners are going to slit their wrists.

Agreed. While that would be terribly interesting to see, it would probably generate some bad publicity. I just had that in there because it gave me the feel I needed to create very cheaply. I'll definitely develop that. In the very beginning that part will not move quite so far (maybe 1-1-3-5 every beat) and it will change with the chords that I now have my first ideas for (I'll post those when I get back to my other computer).

This is my game plan for the rest of this;

After the introduction of the theme sort of like it is here, I'll probably move into a more erratic-sounding (i.e. syncopated eighths-sixteenths stuff) section featuring some high woodwinds and brass and I'm definitely liking the idea of bass "explosions." Then it will get quiet, and I'll do something short with minimal parts, and from that go into a transition (possibly a full key change) and restate the theme with a lot of overlapping rhythms and hopefully I can end it well.