Ballad Of A Broken Man

I made this song this morning, I just challenged myself to write something. It started out as just piano but then I added some strings. The instrument sound is a little fake because I made this one in noteflight. 
Here's the sheet music link:
https://www.noteflight.com/scores/view/59000adda1627076d3029f12e56fdf3a6c220874

The song repeats itself because I put a repeat sign at the end of it, that translated into the mp3 download as well

Hey there

Nice piece, here's a few notes:

-Your piece is in D minor, so it'd be better to notate the A#'s as Bb (scale is D E F G A Bb C D). If you use the key signature, your score will be easier to read and won't have as many accidentals. 

-for readability in your score, I would put the bass below the cello at the bottom.

-You have lots of room for expanding harmony with this. For future pieces, check out what other chords you could use to keep it fresh. For instance, the melody frequently holds the Bb over the dim ii chord (E G Bb), but that note is also in the iv chord (G Bb D) and the VI (Bb D F).

-watch for clashes in your harmony too (bar 29)

-with multiple instruments, also think about limiting doubling. It's fine occasionally, but your music will be more interesting when you compliment your melody with a harmonizing line. 

-I liked the grace note textures in the piano right hand starting at bar 41, would've been cool for you to expand that or make it more prominent 

Overall, this is a great start! Do you have plans to continue this one or do you consider it finished? Thanks for sharing!

18 hours ago, Thatguy v2.0 said:

Hey there

Nice piece, here's a few notes:

-Your piece is in D minor, so it'd be better to notate the A#'s as Bb (scale is D E F G A Bb C D). If you use the key signature, your score will be easier to read and won't have as many accidentals. 

-for readability in your score, I would put the bass below the cello at the bottom.

-You have lots of room for expanding harmony with this. For future pieces, check out what other chords you could use to keep it fresh. For instance, the melody frequently holds the Bb over the dim ii chord (E G Bb), but that note is also in the iv chord (G Bb D) and the VI (Bb D F).

-watch for clashes in your harmony too (bar 29)

-with multiple instruments, also think about limiting doubling. It's fine occasionally, but your music will be more interesting when you compliment your melody with a harmonizing line. 

-I liked the grace note textures in the piano right hand starting at bar 41, would've been cool for you to expand that or make it more prominent 

Overall, this is a great start! Do you have plans to continue this one or do you consider it finished? Thanks for sharing!

 

Thank you for your advice!

I'm still in high school and haven't really learned minor scales yet, but those accidentals seemed like a lot to me. I am in a piano class right now and haven't gotten into writing flats yet, so I made everything in the piece sharp. I touched the key signature up a bit this morning.

Repetitiveness is a big issue of mine because I never know what to do next with a song. That's why the violin just repeats the piano part.  I also changed that. I also did a few other things.

Here's a link to the new and improved version:
https://www.noteflight.com/scores/view/59000adda1627076d3029f12e56fdf3a6c220874

Anyways, thank you for liking it and once again thanks for the feedback!