A minor

Hello, I'm new here and starting out to learn piano and music theory.

I tried to use A minor cadence and scale. This is a work I consider low-key complete and listenable compared to my other works before.

Hello,

Looks like you are on the right track to composing music!

You didn't really ask for any specific feedback, so I will just throw some initial thoughts that come to mind.

The piece is sort of long enough (almost 2 mins) but doesn't really move too much from your chord progression. You mentioned something about "listenable". I mean, I only have 2 mins of material to work with. I hope that you aren't trying too hard to focus on playing it too safe. In my opinion, you really gotta take risks. I always remembered my second composition I ever did, I felt like it sounded weird and disliked it, but my brother really always encouraged me to go further with it, since he found it more "interesting" to listen to.

Somethings to consider - adding intro/outro.

Often times, adding some sort of development section really spices things up. It's no coincidence that most pop music these days might throw in a bridge right before the ending of the song. It's a tried and true formula.

So yeah, I would really look at the structure of your piece, that's the main thing that really stands out perhaps as being next steps for you... One of the core compositional techniques is to be able change things. Change the rhythm? Change the chord structure? Change key even perhaps? Then you get into more abstract ideas...change the atmosphere/change the where the listener is listening/change the genre??

I hope you keep writing, cheers!

23 hours ago, Grant Weep said:

Hello,

Looks like you are on the right track to composing music!

You didn't really ask for any specific feedback, so I will just throw some initial thoughts that come to mind.

The piece is sort of long enough (almost 2 mins) but doesn't really move too much from your chord progression. You mentioned something about "listenable". I mean, I only have 2 mins of material to work with. I hope that you aren't trying too hard to focus on playing it too safe. In my opinion, you really gotta take risks. I always remembered my second composition I ever did, I felt like it sounded weird and disliked it, but my brother really always encouraged me to go further with it, since he found it more "interesting" to listen to.

Somethings to consider - adding intro/outro.

Often times, adding some sort of development section really spices things up. It's no coincidence that most pop music these days might throw in a bridge right before the ending of the song. It's a tried and true formula.

So yeah, I would really look at the structure of your piece, that's the main thing that really stands out perhaps as being next steps for you... One of the core compositional techniques is to be able change things. Change the rhythm? Change the chord structure? Change key even perhaps? Then you get into more abstract ideas...change the atmosphere/change the where the listener is listening/change the genre??

I hope you keep writing, cheers!

Thanks, I'll try to utilize dynamic and add a better intro/outro with chord progressions on the next one. I do still have difficulty with left hand as it was not as agile as my right hand, and I kept play it safe by playing on a single chord with cadences. Changing tempo and key might still out of my ability to work with.

I was just playing around/jamming a bit to your tune and at 0:19 it seems possible to perhaps change the left hand into C major chord, though you may need to change a few right hand notes if you want to "fit" the new atmosphere. From there, you could do something like F major, followed by G major and back to C major. This would sort of fit the whole i IV V thing you got going in the A minor key.

If you want to get really fancy (keep in mind my music theory may be not the most accurate here)...I sometimes think of the ii chord (D minor of C major as a substitute for F major. So you could add that in, though I'm not sure if that works for your piece. Sometimes, making the F major (the IV) into a minor, so F minor sounds good. I tried jamming to your ideas a bit with the F minor and it sounds okay I think. Then you have to make a decision...to stay in C major or return to A minor. You could play G major if you want to stay in C major, or get the E major going, if you want to return to A minor.

Sometimes it's fun just to switch the key suddenly and without warning (my hero Schubert does it often), so you can just slightly randomly turn the A minor into A major if you wanted for fun. A more advanced idea would be to switch the key using one note that it's same (I didn't do this on the recording). So if you are playing like an A note over and over...A is also in F major and also in D major, so you could sort of just "slide" the music into those slightly more unrelated keys that way too.

Voila! You instantly have variety.

I recorded myself noodling around a bit so you can see. I'm just an amateur composer, and I'm sure that you can get much more "precise" and robust feedback from others on the forum.