Descending Chromatic Fantasy and Nocturne

Here is a link to an mp3 of my third movement of Opus 1. I apologize for my limited piano abilities, but I hope it gets the idea across.

The piece is composed of two parts, the Fantasy followed by a Nocturne piece, in G minor. The pice is a lot easier to play than it sounds.

I am transcribing the hand written score and with my limited time it will be available some time this spring either here or at pianosociety.com.

At any rate, here is the link to the recording (I did the best I could with my recording gear):

http://www.mektek.net/projects/mp3/etc/music/descending_chromatic_fantasy_and_nocturne.mp3

-Garrett

Sounded good. I liked the descending nature of it. The piece is so free spirited I wouldn't be able to pick out anything wrong. Good job and I hope to hear more pieces by you in the future.

I like this very much! Sounds like your approach to composition (or at least this one) relies on your personal impressions of certain chords and note combinations, rather than following what you might be told in a book or at music school (if that makes sense...) - very intuitive approach.

I don't think your pianistic skills are very limiting - BUT perhaps you can use more gradations of volume and contrasts in touch and pedaling. I think doing that might bring out even more your intentions with the compositions. Of course that is just my speculation.

And on another note - its a bit reminiscent of Prokofiev's 2nd concerto cadenza, first movmt. Not implying you are copying him, or that it takes anything away from your piece, just something I like to point out for any piece I hear. :toothygrin:

Post the rest when it's done.

Well, I appreciate your constructive comments!

Ike, I was a bit apprehesive about posting this stuff. I expected a bad review, behing how unconventional my music tends to be at times. To me, comparisons are irrelevent, but it is nice to be compared to the masters. To me, that is a complement. But, I do not strive for that.

Too many new composers get too wrapped up in trying to duplicate the styles of others. We all learn how this and that composer did that and the other,and it is all good, but, to be somebody, you have to come up with something new. I apologize to music experts, but let it go. It is 2007, lets try to stop recreating the past, lets create a new rennasaince that folks 100 years from now will look back on, like we do now. While, in my opinion, it is important to study the works of the masters, you must be strive to forge new ground. Every composer needs to do this, especially now.

Every modern composer needs to start looking into their souls to find something new. And find something good. If we all don't take this bull by the horns nw we will be overrun by popular crap. I say, do something new! Don't try to recreate Mozart, Bach, but learn from them, but forge ahead! It's may be difficult at first, but listen to this piece and figure it out. Loop it and tell me which order is better :D

This particular work is a recording of ideas I scetched out but is not complete. The Nocturne part of the score will be available this week. The final version of the Fantasy will be twice as long and is still a work-in-progress, but I wanted to give my fan(s) a taste lol.

FWIW, this piece was erroneously labeled as being in Gm. The correct key is G Dorian (G,A,Bb,C,D,E,F).

Any rate, I am glad you took the time to listen to the whole piece. I appreciate it.

I apologize for all the verbage and I apologize to all I offended.

-Garrett

I really loved this piece, I thought it was very different like you intended it to be but it was still musical and beautiful unlike a lot other stuff you find on the internet nowadays.

I agree, there is no point in imitating "the masters", nor is it even possible. However, we can't always escape our influences in our own works. Either way, I listen to a piece with respect to itself alone, and do the same with composition, trying to ignore what others have done, and find what is musically true to me.

Having the piece in the dorian mode shouldn't change that it's in the key of G. I think it would be misleading to have one flat in the key signature, because even though that fits G dorian, it would imply you're in the key of F maj or D min. I've seen this type of mode mixup in a piece before and found it very confusing. I think it's better to keep it notated as if it's in G minor and just make the appearances of the note E natural.

I'm listening to this now, and I must say that I think this piece is beautiful. It's very difficult for me to quantify exactly quite why, but strangely I think the only weak moments are where you settle for clear harmonies and hammer out broken chords of the triad (the pop-song like moments bugged me slightly, but there were only a couple of them). The chromatic sections are really artfully deployed, and the whole thing has a wonderfully organic feel reminiscent of an improvisation.

The harmony is vaguely similar to that of Satie, but to be honest I would be unable to label it anything more specific than 'neo-impressionism.' It seems to be something of your own invention, and it works superbly. Some more variation however would not go amiss. I suggest you consider the following things when writing your next piano work:

1) Try to employ a memorable motive strategically - there's a nice little motive that you use in this piece, but in my opinion it's not long enough to really glue the whole thing together, or provide any subconscious jolt.

2) Your harmonies are lovely, and I loved the 'raindrop' effect you had to lay them down. Next time, why not vary the way in which you deploy your harmonies? Maybe a chordal section with chromatic melody in the uppermost part, or harmony in right, tune in left? I don't know; you'll probably come up with much better ideas, but you get the picture.

3) I loved the evolutionary feel, but I think that some more abrupt changes would help lend some support to future pieces, and provide some contrast to the tumbly, breathlessness that the last piece evoked (which I liked). Maybe you could look into modal cadences to create breaks in the music, or vary the texture. Textural variation I reckon would be good.

4) Maybe spread the distance between the hands a bit more - most of the piece was very tightly knit, and whilst this was good, I think it'd be good to use the full range of the instrument a bit more, in additioning to gliding up and down it. I think you had one bass octave at the same time as the R.H was playing quite high. That was spine-tingling.

That's about it. Just make sure you write another one!

P.S Ike said that one flat to show the dorian mode was confusing. I don't think it is - it's the accepted method by which the Dorian mode is notated. G dorian's key signature is enharmonically identical to f-major. I was however unconvinced that your piece *was* in the Dorian mode. Even if its diatonic notes were dorian, the overall feel of the piece was not modal. It was chromatic. I say you should use either the normal minor/major sig. as you wish, or leave it out altogether and just use Cmaj.

P.P.S I disagree that there's 'no point imitating the masters.' This is exactly what the vast majority of the composers I admire have done, including Mozart, Beethoven and Rachmaninoff. It's through imitation that we learn, and I think you need either to be incredibly gifted (or, more probably, just very lucky) to discover your own, fully-fledged style without (at least subconsciously) pastiching the works of others first.

Working on the score for this.

Here is a prelinary score ( no dynamics markings yet) for pianists of the Nocturn part.

http://www.mektek.net/projects/mp3/etc/music/01_03_Chromatic_Nocturne.pdf

Sorry about the delay but this is WIP.

I was however unconvinced that your piece *was* in the Dorian mode. Even if its diatonic notes were dorian, the overall feel of the piece was not modal.

But it is. The E-natural is poignant throught the piece, especially in the cadenza (which I will post soon). Look at the score I posted. Eb is an accidental. The E-natural is responsible for the entire flavor of the music.

At any rate, I will take your point into consideration when I finalize the score.

Dorian=American Blues which this definetaly is :thumbsup:

the pop-song like moments bugged me slightly, but there were only a couple of them

Heh. Style.

I'm listening to this now

You need to listen to it over and over again. And once you get the final score you will "get it". I am grateful that you are looking at this pic in the detail you are. I am an old man, and it is my gift to all of you.

I'm listening to this now

You need to listen to it over and over again. And once you get the final score you will "get it". I am grateful that you are looking at this pic in the detail you are. I am an old man, and it is my gift to all of you.

it

I really liked this! Wonderfull

I would love to get loose from my (limited) knowledge, but for some reason I just can't. I assume you have quite a lot of musical knowledge? How do you let it go?

Very atonal, it's definitionaly not the style of composing I want to have myself, but it seems to be good when someone has it, it's like sharing of the personality. ^_^

bump because link has changed