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Wrote a piano piece. Looking for constructive feedback...


OscarDude15

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So I read the description of your video, and the way I interpret this is that you're attempting a series of minimally connected vignettes that relate only by general motif. However, the composer's intent is rarely important when it comes to listening to music so I'm going to do my best to look at this without a score.

To me, there's a general lack of a dramatic arc to the music. Not only is this caused by the form, but the orchestration, especially near the end: you finally decide to stick with one style until the end, but it's not very finale sounding, even though I think you want it to be. In other words, your ending is less convincing of an ending than some of the other styles you put into the piece. You rely too heavily on the component parts (octave pedal and arpeggiated structures) that the registers are never filled and it ends up sounding empty. 
In addition, there are too many times where you pull the "dramatic buildup that leads to nothing" trick (it was extremely annoying at 4:57), and I found it to be rather irksome as the piece went on. This combined with your general lack of classical transitions (which would make sense if this was a more modern piece, but it is not), outweighs the connecting power of motif, in my opinion.

It was strange to me that orchestrational repetition was your crutch to repeat certain parts in your more contrapuntal areas. You have a general sense of your harmonic structures (save a few awkward transitions), but in places like 3:10 and 1:43 the repetition of the two note figure discerning the harmony was extremely pronounced and generally non-fluid. Takes away from some of the better moments throughout the work.

You also often structure your measures in such a way where it seems like every measure is essentially an elaboration of a chord with arpeggiation and nonharmonic tones used to slightly divert from that path. Normally this is used as a pretty interesting buildup tool, but again, if used to often, the effect is lost. Starting at 3:45, you have D, E, F#m, C#m all relatively clearly pronounced, which is fine, if this wasn't so common a technique you implement within the piece. Everything starts to sound like a cliché at that point, and I generally don't like audiences to just casually listen to music without thinking. 

Touching on the form of the piece, each section is varied on its length. This is generally okay, but the shorter vignettes don't particularly sound like intentional tidbits of music; it instead sounds like you don't really know where to go from there. In other words, it has the potential to sound like lazy writing, and this problem is exacerbated by the lack of smooth transitions. Because it's clear much of this piece is cinematic in nature, rather than strictly sticking to any past tonal forms, your journey ends up having too many plot holes for it's own good. The harmonic of this motif, when it does switch is extremely welcome, like near the end at 5:24 (even though the first E∆7/E7 polychord is a little odd), especially when it resolves to A major. The rest of the time when you're exploring your VI - VII - i progression becomes stale since very rarely is that developed. So many opportunities to reharmonize the motif and it was disappointing to not get as many different views of the theme as I could have. In other words, development was very selective.

Overall, the piece certainly works, I just personally find it a bit too randomly structured, even if it was very structured in your own mind. Provided you have your theoretical reasons for your choices, everything I say here is worthless. Just offering another opinion.

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