waltz Vals Ahorcado

Hi again, ladies and gentlemen.

After some time thinking about what to post I thought that instead of uploading another nocturne I might ask you for feedback on my most recent video instead. The piece it contains is not very recent, more or less a year old. It's precisely the piece that preceded my first accordion sonata and my first piano sonata. I won't say much about it. It's my third piano waltz, it's playable, and it's hopefully decent. But you judge!

• Here is the PDF & MP3: Free sheet music : Rodríguez, Daniel-Omicrón - Obra Menor Nº40 - Vals Ahorcado (Piano solo) (free-scores.com)

• Since now free-scores possibly requires registration, for those of you who don't want to go under that process, you'll be able to find the PDF here in the post (but I do recommend registrating though, it's a great site full of hidden gems like YC): 40 - Vals ahorcado.pdf

Here's the youtube video created via Piano VFX, OpenShot and Paint.NET:

As always, I'm open to any feedback, comment, impression, thought regarding the piece (though it's a bit old but I may always consider your thoughts for my next pieces) the video, a part of it, both, or whatever 🙂.

See you in the forums!!

Daniel–Ømicrón. 

Hey - first I just wanted to say thanks for all the great reviews and observations you've been dropping around the forums both on other members pieces as well as my own.  I hope you'll always know that you're a valued member of this community.

I love the many differentiated dynamic levels you present in this piece.  The piece seems like it's always going somewhere, whether through gradual changes in dynamics or gradual changes in tempo.  I enjoyed listening to this piece over and over while writing this review.  That said I think you overuse arpeggiation as your main melodic material.  I'm kind of used to it by now and actually enjoy it but your melodies tend to start to sound like harmonic noodling after a while.  They seem to wander up and down the keyboard sometimes seemingly aimlessly and are interspersed with haphazard and jarring rhythms and the aforementioned arpeggios.  I think to improve on this tendency you could either play or analyze some Bach, whether the 2 or 3 part inventions or any of your favorite inventive or fugal pieces and notice how self-similar and concise the melodic material is.  It's most likely constructed out of a few very short and simple melodic fragments that are then manipulated through elongation or concatenation or inversion etc.  Your piece on the other hand has a bunch of unrelated complex ideas thrown at the listener in a relatively short amount of time.  And you connect those ideas with harmonic fluff.

Not that I didn't enjoy it though - many spots show lots of character.  And maybe you consider the characteristics I mentioned as the constituents of your individual style.  If that's the case then it's just a matter of taste and you can disregard my complaints.  Thanks for sharing though - I hope you continue to post your music and hopefully my comments were at least a little helpful.

5 hours ago, PeterthePapercomPoser said:

That said I think you overuse arpeggiation as your main melodic material.  I'm kind of used to it by now and actually enjoy it but your melodies tend to start to sound like harmonic noodling after a while.  They seem to wander up and down the keyboard sometimes seemingly aimlessly and are interspersed with haphazard and jarring rhythms and the aforementioned arpeggios.  I think to improve on this tendency you could either play or analyze some Bach, whether the 2 or 3 part inventions or any of your favorite inventive or fugal pieces and notice how self-similar and concise the melodic material is.  It's most likely constructed out of a few very short and simple melodic fragments that are then manipulated through elongation or concatenation or inversion etc.  Your piece on the other hand has a bunch of unrelated complex ideas thrown at the listener in a relatively short amount of time.  And you connect those ideas with harmonic fluff.

Hi Peter.

My idea yesterday was to just make a post and go but I could not resist looking at some other posts and well eventually I spent some hours on that lol. As I said before somewhere, I enjoy listening to all you guys' pieces and spending time in this forum, plus flooding it with my pieces doesn't seem beneficial to me nor to anybody else.

Regarding your comments: I will definitely take a deeper look into Bach and other Baroque composers, the overuse of arpeggios you mentioned may be true, this piece definitely has some in sections like M32-54 but I am not sure if it's a constant in all my pieces, though I must say there's another waltz of mine that possibly has even more of that. In any case, I believe there's still a long path to walk on. Specially at that time, I wasn't nearly as productive as I am now, nor I did not consume music the way I do now. 

Regarding the overflow of complex ideas I do think this is something I am starting to control. There are some pieces of mine in which I intentionally present many ideas though we can agree this is not very effective. At the time I composed this I wasn't thinking on my pieces on those terms so I could not have seen this. I do see it now, how the different sections of this piece are perhaps too many and too different for the time it lasts.

Thank you for your feedback, it is always fulfilling to read criticism that makes me analyse my own pieces or look at them by a different perspective. 

Kind regards,

Daniel–Ømicrón. 

Hi, nice work. This is a never boring piece with some good contrasts, I particularly enjoy the way some energetic parts lead to other iconic sections.

Buen trabajo, también me parece muy idiomático para el piano.

Saludos.

10 hours ago, Luis Hernández said:

Hi, nice work. This is a never boring piece with some good contrasts, I particularly enjoy the way some energetic parts lead to other iconic sections.

Buen trabajo, también me parece muy idiomático para el piano.

Saludos

Thank you man ^^, ¡saludos a ti también!

Great work here! Lots of fantastic energy and exciting ideas. I really like the one at the C section, as well as the theme at 5:00 right before the C theme again. As I said in my comment for one of your other pieces, I really enjoy your ideas and style. You have a lot of originality, and you didn't disappoint once again.

Maybe I missed the mark, but one thing you could perhaps improve on for the future is development. I felt like more ideas could have stemmed from previously introduced themes. You have no shortage of material, but it felt like you had enough material to write 2 or 3 different pieces. Just a thought though; a lot of metal music is written with a barrage of ideas without tons of development, so it can work. 

Another example would be bringing back the long V chord idea at the end of the intro. Or even that rhythm you have in the left hand at 5:58 for your coda. It would have been cool to keep that going as a final hoorah. 

Overall though, well written piece as usual! Great ideas and I loved the exciting energy of this piece. Thanks for sharing!

15 hours ago, Thatguy v2.0 said:

Another example would be bringing back the long V chord idea at the end of the intro. Or even that rhythm you have in the left hand at 5:58 for your coda. It would have been cool to keep that going as a final hoorah. 

I often think on my past pieces in terms of "what if I had done X". I then discard editing those pieces significantly. This is subjective of course, but for all my pieces I kind of follow a rule that says "If you wanna do something you didn't do there, start another piece" or something like that. It is true now that I listen to it that the final could have been developed a bit more and that I used lots of ideas which is not always what I want. Nowadays I believe I am starting to control this and focusing in not putting a lot of meat in the oven but in cooking it properly in some works at least.

That said, thank you for the detailed feedback, I am really glad you enjoy my pieces!

Kind regards,

Daniel–Ømicrón.

 

Hey Daniel @Omicronrg9,

I'm starting my digging of old posts no.3 here....

This piece, like Vince said, is full of energy. Again it appears to me very chic and fashionable. Your music for me is always like some monks living in the forest for decades and then laughing at us the foolish. So playful yet wise. I agree with Peter with the appreggiation issue, but for me that appreggiation is one of the factor making the music chic. playful and fashionable. I don't get bored by it given how well you twist your ideas and sometimes add voices for counterpoint and thicker texture. Lemme have some thoughts on each section:

A: My favourite C# minor! It's great with all those introduction before getting into the main theme, making me to anticipate the coming of the real tonic.

B: The opening triplet gesture with both hands in octaves reminds me of Chopin's Polonaise, like the beginning of the F# minor one or the middle section of the Ab major one. I feel like here it's the waltz proper with that LH waltz rhythm finally staying firm.

C: I freakingly love modulation to A minor here, very cool, and the character is so playful here with the chromatic motive (and that surprising modulation). This is first of the DANIEL moment of the piece for me, even more so than the previous sections. And that modulation back, wow. You get from C major-F minor-V/Db and then back to F# minor.

B': I like the rhythmic change here.

AND when I reach A' section, WTF???? So beautiful here with that tempo transformation and added texture! The counterpoint is beautiful here. So pianistic here as well.

C' section is a good ending to the piece, but for me it's more conventional here and less Daniel Omicron here than the previous sections, I don't know why. Nonetheless it's still beautiful here.

Just like what Peter and Daniel said, you could have write music with more economical use of materials. But maybe that's a Germanic thought and maybe not fitting for your grand Spanish style? Idk. But for me the music is enjoyable to the point that I forget about the intellectuality of the cohesion of music here, so maybe that's an issue for your future music, but definitely not here.

Thx for sharing this enjoyable music! Looks like my digging is ending here lol....

Henry

Than you for sharing. I enjoyed listening to it.