Spring Overture

Happy Easter everyone!

This piece is called "Spring Overture", as some of it was inspired by the relief of the arrival of spring and the melting of snow in New England, and I couldn't think of a better name;) . I started writing it about 2 weeks ago. I made the song with MIDI, using Acid Music Studio and EastWest Symphonic Orchestra. Symphonic Orchestra was new to me, so I had to overcome some technical obstacles the first week or so in trying to figure things out.

The piece itself isn't totally "orchestral" in the traditional sense. I meant for it to use the whole orchestra most of the time, but several sections ended up requiring only a few instruments. I'm fairly new to this game as well; I started composing less than a year ago (even though I've been a musician for over 7 years), and up until now my music was mostly rock-oriented or piano solos. After participating in the New England Music Festival though, I felt inspired to write something more classical.

Sorry I don't have a score (I know that someone is bound to ask:P ). I don't know much about scoring yet, as I'm fairly new to composing, and I have Finale Notepad, which only gives me 8 staffs. Any advice on free programs that give me more options here?

Here's the link to listen to it.

Happy Easter everyone!

This piece is called "Spring Overture", as some of it was inspired by the relief of the arrival of spring and the melting of snow in New England, and I couldn't think of a better name;) . I started writing it about 2 weeks ago. I made the song with MIDI, using Acid Music Studio and EastWest Symphonic Orchestra. Symphonic Orchestra was new to me, so I had to overcome some technical obstacles the first week or so in trying to figure things out.

The piece itself isn't totally "orchestral" in the traditional sense. I meant for it to use the whole orchestra most of the time, but several sections ended up requiring only a few instruments. I'm fairly new to this game as well; I started composing less than a year ago (even though I've been a musician for over 7 years), and up until now my music was mostly rock-oriented or piano solos. After participating in the New England Music Festival though, I felt inspired to write something more classical.

Sorry I don't have a score (I know that someone is bound to ask:P ). I don't know much about scoring yet, as I'm fairly new to composing, and I have Finale Notepad, which only gives me 8 staffs. Any advice on free programs that give me more options here?

Here's the link to listen to it:

http://www.esnips.com/doc/6b8da339-a880-4c3e-b631-e9784a100a4b/Spring-Overture

Just one thing: one of our proeminent members, Daniel, already composed a piece called Spring Overture.

I'm getting a "bad link" error from esnips when I click, could you repost?

I'm getting a "bad link" error from esnips when I click, could you repost?

I would have to agree.

Ok, the link should be working now. Tell me if it isn't.

Sorry, I didn't know there was already a piece called Spring Overture. I guess we could call this one "Spring Overture, Opus 1" to avoid confusion, n'est-ce pas?:thumbsup: I'll have to check out Daniel's Spring Overture.

Sorry still doesn't like it :thumbsup:

Oops, apparently I didn't upload it to a public folder. Thanks for being patient. Just give me a second here... I hope it's worth the wait...:thumbsup:

Edit: Hopefully it works now.

Works now...

I'm not sure how I feel about this piece. Some of the ideas you've got are pretty good but alot of it sounds like Dance music with orchestral instruments. It's very convoluted and I seemed to be waiting for it to "get going" from start to finish. It also didn't feel particularly..."thank goodness its Spring."

Other than practice I'm not sure what to recommend...you have some good ideas but I think you need to focus more on one idea rather than trying to include too many if that makes sense. This piece tends to shift from style to style and theres no memorable melody - I think if you focused on one style and put more of a melody to your pieces you could come out with some pretty good stuff.

Look forward to hearing more.

Thanks for the input. Yeah, I didn't really get the "thank goodness it's spring" feeling either, but when I start writing something I rarely know where it's going to end up. It probably would have felt more that way if I hadn't written it in a minor key.

I'm not quite sure what you mean by dance music: could you give me an example? Are you referring to the part that starts out with the woodwind rhythm-oriented melody?

In retrospect I think I agree with you that the style shifts too often. I had all these ideas, and I didn't really know how to make them fit, so I kind of made one into its own section of the song. I know that a few of the transitions are awkward or even disappointing, such as about a minute and a half from the end when the pretty string quartet part ends abruptly and goes into something totally different. Well anyway, now I'm just rambling, so I'll just say that everything you said made at least some sense- advice well taken.

Interesting piece, I never got the idea of spring though. However, it does have some good ideas, I think maybe you could expand upon one or two of those ideas and put them into a song, but the way you have it is like listening to a medley. I did like parts of it, but I was disappointed when it ended abrubtly and then moved on to a totally different section. Work on transitions and expanding upon the themes. I would have to agree with Fox it does sound like dance music in places, maybe you should write a dance? Keep up the work though.

Part of my problem, I think, was my over-zealousness that resulted when I had just barely gotten EastWest Symphonic Orchestra. As you can tell, it gives the rare gift of a decent midi sound, so I kind of felt compelled to do everything at once. Now that I have that out of my system, hopefully I can go back to writing normally.:P Good learning experience I guess.

But yeah, I guess I was kind of thinking of a medley type of thing, but those usually work best when the listener is already familiar with some of the tunes involved. I'll try to work on my transitions too. Writing a dance isn't a bad idea actually. I'm thinking of putting off the full orchestra for a while until I get more experienced though. Right now I'm starting to flesh out what I think will be a piano quintet.