Chills... (Is this any good?)

Hi to all musophiles!

Just wanted to share my latest piano work, which was improvised around three chords.

These were C major 7 sharp 11, E minor +6 +9, and B minor +9.

The first two are from Howard Shore's score for "Lord of the Rings", and the last one is Ravel's favourite chord.

I haven't put my phrasing slurs in yet; but it's otherwise maybe finished?

Not sure if it's any good; or if I should just bin it?

Have also included an earlier version (#34) that had an awkward passage one minute into the piece.

I liked this material; but couldn't find a way to integrate it into the piece. It sounded rhythmically weird, no matter how hard I tried to make it work.

Thanks for listening,

Alex

Chills #40.pdf Chills #34.pdf

Edited July 21Jul 21 by Alex Weidmann

Alex, I enjoyed the interesting harmonies; however, I felt the structure of the work to be a bit loose. I had difficulty following a coherent theme and I felt the work didn't have an arch to it to carry me through from the beginning to the end.

Mark

16 minutes ago, MJFOBOE said:

Alex, I enjoyed the interesting harmonies; however, I felt the structure of the work to be a bit loose. I had difficulty following a coherent theme and I felt the work didn't have an arch to it to carry me through from the beginning to the end.

Mark

That's fair.

Hello,

It sort of sounds like a mysterious ice/cave level from a video game. As a side note, do you need all these time signature changes? Maybe just lots of fermatas, I don't know. I guess you probably need at least some of them.

It feels like good background music.

The chords are very pretty sounding :)

The LH feels a bit clumsy sometimes...but not like in a bad way. I suppose it would be clumsy to get around in ice or a cave.

So yeah, those are my thoughts. Overall, enjoyed it.

Thanks Grant,

I think the icy quality and low dynamics make it sound a bit like Koechlin; though that wasn't deliberate.

The clumsy feel of the LH is probably down to the frequent fermatas, and time signature changes.

I seem to have a problem sticking to a regular beat in my compositions, and end up tying myself up in knots! Then having to make loads of adjustments to make the rhythms sound natural.

Maybe I should try to give the piece more structure; though I do already have a repetition of the opening theme in the middle, and near the end. So it's not completely without form.

Edited July 22Jul 22 by Alex Weidmann

I've made the time signatures a bit more sensible for this now, and tidied up the score generally.

Still not quite sure what to do with Bar 53, as I'd have to use 9/8 there, in order to get rid of my short fermata in the left hand. I don't know if I can justify changing to a compound time signature, just to make that dotted rhythm with one note?

N.B. The structure of the piece is:

Bar 1: Subject A

Bar 19: Subject B

Bar 38: Recapitulation (including a modified unfolding of Subject A)

Bar 63: extended coda

In Bar 19, I switched from rich chords with lots of complexity to simple triadic chords.

I was attempting to use changes in harmonic richness to delineate the structure.

My tutor said the Coda feels oddly unbalanced, and should be cut down to half its length or less.

Personally I rather like it the way it is!

Chills #47.pdf

Edited 19 minutes ago19 min by Alex Weidmann