Azalea Flower

Hi! New here, just trying this out. This is a composition on piano I made like a year ago just as a sort of writing practice thing to see what I could do without using the tonic A Minor chord. Hope you enjoy! (Also prob not gonna share the sheet music here since i didn't have the playability in mind and the notation is god awful and this is one of the first times I used a DAW to produce the music lmfao)

I thought that was lovely!

This captures a pop/rock vibe that gives the piano a lot of drive and motion. The mysterious chords at the start do an excellent job of setting up the dramatic section (starting at 37 secs). You nailed it with that powerful section, and the music really gave me nostalgia for the video game Donkey Kong Country 2, which contains some of the best music ever composed for a Nintendo game (composer: David Wise), so in my book you’re doing great!

I think this music could shine even brighter with the layering in of other instruments, especially bass and percussion. A simple beat with bass layered over this could take the whole thing to another level, and it may even open you up to adding more layers. As an example, check out this song from Donkey Kong Country 2, and notice the difference between the beginning (which has no percussion) and the section where percussion comes in (1:09). Both sections are great, but the introduction of the percussion really juices up the vibe. And your music reminds me of this song, a song I’ve always cherished. Would love to hear more from you.

Cheers!

Hello,

If this is something you wrote a year ago, I'd be interested in hearing how your more recent compositions!

The intro was pretty cool, the use of effects there was great. I tried to follow on my keyboard, since there was no sheet music. I think I got the main musical ideas. The cool thing about using the D major and occasional D minor chords is that it gives a bit of an epic feel to the piece. As you mentioned, not using the tonic always makes me feel like the music gets this short of push to it. Like, on the move. To me, it gives this sort of subjective quality like a journey. So that's pretty cool!

From a structural point of view, I am hearing A/B/A/B/A. Kinda like verse/chorus/verse/chorus/verse.

I mean your piece is pretty nice already. The type of structure that you have is great. Sometimes, experimenting with the structure can really make a piece of music sound special. Like any pop song, you could try adding an intro (which you kind of have, but you used effects so I have mentioned it). You could try adding a bridge. You could try adding an outro. Once again, these are all matters of subjective taste. Many great pieces written A/B/A/B/A structure, the length of your piece is also not too long, so it works.

But yeah, I like how you are doing this little variations to make things interesting...alternating between the A - E - A -E, and then going E-A-E-A. I think while the overall musicality is fairly simple, you are doing some nice things with it.

I find that music can be very dialectical, depending on how you look at it. Like, truly good music is slightly surprising and also comforting. You want to try to be innovative and find your own sound, but also not write something so innovative that nobody can understand. You'll want to take risk and be safe, but perhaps sometimes taking a risk is the safe thing to do, and perhaps keeping it safe is taking a risk?

Anyways, just some ramblings from an old guy, welcome and hope to see you around more often.

Is there an option to reply to specific people on here or does it just reply to the whole thread?

Anyhow, thank you for the feedback (both of you)!

I do plan to maybe share a little more here, so that would be cool! A little problem with that might be the fact that I'm currently on a streak of having a bunch of these great ideas but not finishing them out because I'm very busy with other things. Currently trying to submit for the National youth Composition Challenge though and these are some unfinished/unpolished excerpts from the score

You can reply to individuals by using @ followed by their user name, like this @Lucky

5 hours ago, Lucky said:

Is there an option to reply to specific people on here or does it just reply to the whole thread?

And you can also highlight text in a reply and usually, a "Quote Selection" button will pop up (sometimes you have to highlight the text a second time if the first time it doesn't work).