Love your feedback on this new video of my work

This is the biggest piece I've written. Please listen if you have time, and if you enjoy it, please subscribe to my Youtube channel, as I'd like to grow it!

I listened to this twice, and liked it more after the second hearing. Here are some comments, both pro and con, hopefully constructive:

PRO:
You build some really nice textures over your repeating ostinato patterns. There’s enough variation in these textures to keep things interesting and create motion. The changes happening around 2:00, 3:00, 4:30, and 7:05 are especially good.

The orchestration is colorful and makes me want to listen more deeply. There may be more there than meets the ear (which coming from me is a big compliment, BTW). If you’re willing to share the score, I’d like to see it.

The piece is pleasant and upbeat. Assuming that’s what you were going for, it’s successful on that level. There are some brief moments of darkness or potential conflict, but these serve to contrast with and highlight the brightness of the rest of the music.

CON:
While the piece has a lot of energy, the energy feels mechanical and not at all birdlike. The music doesn’t fit the title, and I think you’re actually doing yourself a disservice by implying that the piece is supposed to be representational or evocative. It doesn’t succeed in that sense, even though it does stand on its own as a purely musical thought.

The repeating ostinato patterns that work so well in the first half of the piece start to get tiresome in the second half, and the harmonic flow becomes blocky and predictable. The cynical voice in my head started wondering whether all those ostinatos were really the result of conscious artistic decisions or just over-enthusiasm for copy-and-paste.

I think this piece does a great job of establishing a mood and sustaining it.  You're obviously rhythmically skilled because you don't seem to feel the need to stick to your originally 5/8 ostinato theme which changes often to 6/8 and 4/4 in the contrasting section in the middle.  I feel like the kind of energy and development you use in this piece is reminiscent of minimalism even if you don't establish and transform ostinatos that continue throughout the whole piece.  The melodic rhythms in the piece are actually quite birdlike and bring to mind nature.  It's as if a bird composed this piece and used the technique of melodic mining to use their natural "speech" patterns to produce melodies.  The return to the original material from the start of the piece feels pretty natural to me.  The piece progresses quite naturally and logically to me.  And the use of winds and piccolo specifically makes the piece sound very birdlike.  Thanks for sharing!

Thanks for your close listen Tom. I appreciate the close listens and your pros and cons. You definitley took the time to listen.

I hope that some of the mechanical-ness you heard is partially a result of a midi track. I obviosuly wasn't going for something mechanical haha. I'm sorry you didn't enjoy where the piece did go, but I can assure you I wasn't copying and pasting anything. It felt like an enormous piece for me to put together, as I don't often write for so many instruments. I hope to do better next time!

9 hours ago, PeterthePapercomPoser said:

I think this piece does a great job of establishing a mood and sustaining it.  You're obviously rhythmically skilled because you don't seem to feel the need to stick to your originally 5/8 ostinato theme which changes often to 6/8 and 4/4 in the contrasting section in the middle.  I feel like the kind of energy and development you use in this piece is reminiscent of minimalism even if you don't establish and transform ostinatos that continue throughout the whole piece.  The melodic rhythms in the piece are actually quite birdlike and bring to mind nature.  It's as if a bird composed this piece and used the technique of melodic mining to use their natural "speech" patterns to produce melodies.  The return to the original material from the start of the piece feels pretty natural to me.  The piece progresses quite naturally and logically to me.  And the use of winds and piccolo specifically makes the piece sound very birdlike.  Thanks for sharing!

 

Thanks Peter, once again, for your comments. It was a big piece for me and took a long time, I wasn't trying to mimic the exact birds, but I did take a lot of walks birding when the pandemic hit, and this piece was my impression of those experiences.