Gumboot Jubilee

This is probably one of my favorite works that I’ve composed. It  has some fun rhythms within the 5/4 meter, which plays into the folk like nature of the piece. I’m curious as to what story you guys come up with to go along with this work-I always like to have a storyline or plot to go with every compositions I write. HAPPY LISTENING!

Edited June 2, 20196 yr by Jaylin Vinson

I think there's some potential in this piece. Overall there's too much repetition, and not enough harmonic movement, for it to really 'work' for me. Putting the tempo up a bit would help a lot with this. The slower chorale bit at L is very welcome, and it's good to have a build-up to a finale afterwards, but the piece doesn't feel like it's really earned it, because there hasn't really been any tension built up.

An idea that occurred to me right away is to have each bar in the opening have some sort of dynamic movement - for example, the first three individual bars would each start at (say) mf and then go to p, and then the fourth bar would start at p and crescendo to mf. It's a small thing, but it would make those bars feel so much more alive.

I think around bar 21 is when the constant key of f major first started to get a bit grating. The section at C would work a lot better if it was preceded by some sort of extended section in a different key which built up some slight bit of tension.

One piece that came to mind as I was listening to this was Ross Edward's 'Dragonfly Dance' - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kPOfCyWI2ok&feature=youtu.be&t=231 . It's similar to yours in that it's an upbeat dance-y piece which essentially holds on to one key/chord for a while - two whole minutes. In my opinion it's maybe a little too long, but there's enough rhythmic/dynamic/colour variety that it keeps the piece sounding alive.