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Poll: What features do you most want your music to have?


Features/Aspects of your music  

18 members have voted

  1. 1. What kind of features/aspects do you aspire to have in your music?

    • To modulate more frequently or to more distantly related keys to create special moments in my music.
    • To make ostinati in my music that lend themselves well towards creating intensity and/or motion/drive in my music.
    • To have dynamic melodic material in my music that can play multiple roles: theme, ostinato, bass line, pointillistic textures/figurations.
    • To germinate all my melodic material from a small fragment/seed like Beethovens' 5th.
    • To use a more adventurous harmonic language/tonality/polytonality/atonality.
    • To strike a balance between unity and variety or between novelty and conservatism in my music.
    • To use more free intermixing of orchestral colors instead of splitting the orchestra into its constituent sections: woodwinds, brass, percussion, strings. To use more unique instrumental combinations/colors.
    • To write for ensembles without copious amounts of doubling, giving each instrument a unique/functional part to play.
    • To write solos in my music for individual instruments to be given a spotlight.
    • To use interrelated themes/leitmotifs in my music.
    • To have plenty of counterpoint or canonical imitation or question/answer juxtaposition in my music.
    • To have interesting countermelodies interwoven into my music.
    • To use catchy rhythms/rhythmic motifs in my music including rhythmic devices such as hocket, syncopation or swing.
    • To be able to write a wide variety of different types of melodies: catchy tune-like melodies, lyrical song-like melodies, motivic melodies that lend themselves to contrapuntal treatment, improvisatory melodies etc.
    • To write more programmatic or incidental music: music that either tells a story, paints a picture, presents a series of events, or portrays a mood.
    • To write in sharply contrasting styles to avoid fatigue in one style or to write more pieces that are themselves poly-stylist or gather many eclectic influences into one presentation.
    • To include as many different textures in my music as possible: homophonic, heterophonic, polyphonic, monophonic.


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I can't quite articulate a couple of ideas I had but.... is it worth asking something about programme music (music attempting to tell a story, paint a picture (literally a sonic representation of something visual); present a series of events (as in Beethoven's Pastoral Symphony or Vaughan Williams Sinfonia Antartica) rather than a mood, as in impressionism/symbolism (as in Debussy's L'Apres-midi or Delius' Summer Garden / North Country Sketches)? Is there any difference between them?

Do you or might you compose in markedly different styles to avoid fatigue in one style? Light music v deeper work requiring more listening concentration?

Do you believe yourself to be eclectic in composition, mixing for example tonality with atonality, or just mixing different styles.

Do you consider yourself to be a postmodern composer (which I suppose is a variation of the question immediately above)?

However, this is gathering a large bunch of questions that'll need pruning to keep a poll manageable! 

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  • PeterthePapercomPoser changed the title to Poll: What features do you most want your music to have?

 

Thanks, PeterthePapercomPoser! 

There's still one that might be worthwhile: Do you write in the epic style? Edit: In terms of the title of the poll it might be "Do you want to create an epic effect with your music)

(Although it probably still enjoys popularity it seems to have fallen a little out of fashion. Maybe not worth bothering about. But it's a thought.)

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11 hours ago, Quinn said:

There's still one that might be worthwhile: Do you write in the epic style? Edit: In terms of the title of the poll it might be "Do you want to create an epic effect with your music)

The reason I don't think this should be included is because it then opens the door to all kinds of other possible styles or moods that people might want to write in.  I.e. "do you write in a tranquil style?" "do you write in an intense style?" "do you write in a facetious style?" etc. It's endless - although it might be a good idea for another separate poll if you care to create one.  Thanks for your suggestions!

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Interesting to see how this is developing. I re-phrased the question in my head to "What do I tend to value and appreciate in new music that I hear?", because my aspirations are more related to what I want my music to express and the effect I want it to have, not so much what techniques I want to use.

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Man, I really don't know. If I ask myself that question there's no sincere reply so I have put whatever I believe a third person would have thought of what my music aspires to be. I don't even know why I compose apart from the fact I like to do it. I just probably never thought about that. Perhaps this reply will change in a year or two.

Kind regards!!

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  • 2 weeks later...

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