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Yes, mixing the study of an instrument with composition is not as easy is I though mostly because, at least in my case, if I do not focus full time to the learning of the instrument I feel like I do not progress at all. It is like if I learn only 30 minutes a day I cannot improve my piano skills and need to spend at least 1~2 hours on it everyday for seeing results. I also though about arranging other pieces for practicing, and it is a really good idea but, to be honest, I feel like arranging my own pieces give me that motivational boost that I need for taking real effort on studying orchestration. But I guess I should start considering arranging existing pieces even if it is just for practicing different orchestral techniques in a more mechanical way. I listened to the 'long artic midnight suite' and I really liked it! Specially the first movement. Even though the time signatures were unusual the whole movement felt so smooth! And the orchestration was great too. I did not expect the Spitfire instruments to blend so nicely with the MuseSound ones! Really nice piece! If I have to nitpick the couple of piano parts that started a couple of sections were a little bit to "new age" for my taste, but that is just a matter of taste, and it is not like they were not enjoyable. Thanks for sharing the piece! I agree. I actually bought in the past a few Berlin instruments for Musescore. And at first I thought "these sound amazing!" but as soon as I started composing with dynamics and expression markings they became quite unusable. Even the piano, where the change from mp to mf is like the change from p to ff in a normal piano. So, in the end, I ended up using only the MusesSounds. As you say, some brass are bad. I only like the Saxophones, that is why I used Saxophones for that Soli of the Jazz piece that I am still working on. I think it is not a bad idea mixing some instruments from Labs with the MusesSound! I think LABS work with subscription plan, right? I might consider trying it out in the future. Thanks for the explanation, @UncleRed99!

Little bittersweet song in E major (I'm not exaggerating) (text in French subtitled)

(To PeterthePaperComPoser, et al), I appreciate your efforts in assistance. Frankly, after my school's Librarian (or, one of them) has exhausted all his methods of finding this d*mn sheet music, we have come to the conclusion that... it might not actually exist; at least not in modern sheet music. The few performances of it? They could have been read from the original manuscript. We could not find it as a standalone aria nor in a collection of any sort. So, I suppose my next step is to contact the performers (or their agency) and ask them directly how they became acquainted with the music; and what manuscript they were performing from.

I have small hands compared to other cello players. so if it works for me, it works for most other cellists. Just keep in mind that sometimes 8v double stops with one open string are harder to do if all the other double stops around it don't need open string. Jumps in octaves are also harder, but a good cellist should be able to pull it off. (studies in octaves in scale patterns or arpeggios are usually a staple for any good cellist) (Currently trying to compose pieces for college admissions. My cello experience consists having three teachers with years of time between first and second teacher and the last teacher is a violinist)

I suppose I'm not yet sure how to use this website to the benefits of my search. It seems to list the details of what the piece is, without providing the sheet music for it. Also, The SheetMusicPlus link provided leads me to its homepage with search. When I searched this piece there, it was nowhere to be found. Thanks again for your help. Greatly appreciated.

The first version is definitely my favorite just due to it's clarity. The echo effect also makes this piece sound like it has a swing to it even though I don't think you are swinging playback. The beat is really nice, and consistent, despite the unusual time signatures you are using. At around 40 seconds in, I like how you completely change the mood by breaking up the rhythm here. The arpeggios at this point are haunting, and gives me anxiety. It's starting to sound like the use of microtones are really starting to shape (or warp) how the music as we know sounds. It feels like we are entering a second dimension of music, something not possible to create with the equal temperament tuning system. I think you are starting to get the hang of this type of composition. Congrats for creating a piece that will freak us all out, and it's not even Halloween yet!

How about this website: https://musicalics.com/en/composer/Claude-Debussy/Mélodies-—-Flots-palmes-et-sables

Final Version + Animation of this piece:

If you're on the YCF Spot discord you probably saw my message about my troubles with the piano pedal in some of my recent works rendered in Musescore Studio. The first file exemplifies the audio with pedal errors towards the end of the piece where chords bleed into each other as if the pedal was down even though it's not. The second file fixes this issue by using the Musesounds Piano sample but because of that sacrifices the clarity of the melodic line which I brought out with higher velocity values in the first. This Microtonal Miniature is meant to use microtones to enhance the creepy/horror atmosphere. Also, this time I used the Sub-diminished chord/scale which has 10 tones and the Super-augmented chord/scale which has 8. I created the sub-diminished one by stacking sub-minor 3rds on top of each other until I reached the original tone (Bb) and the super-augmented by stacking super major 3rds. I hope you enjoy and I would appreciate any comments, suggestions, critiques or observations you may have! Thanks for listening.

Hello, ChemathMusician0510, I realized just now that you were replying to my inquiry. Thanks so much for your insightful advice. I've actually since removed the double-stop, as I found simpler single-stop "Bach-like"-mimics and methods that did the job nearly identically well. But, for my future reference, I'm glad to know that 8v-double-stops like this work. On the other hand, it is located on the lower range of the Cello. From my understanding, this would mean that the hand will have to be stretched. My guess is that some people would say that this is not viable at all. Is this true of the range that I wrote? Or, are you sticking to what you said: that it should be fine? Also, I came across a low stringist who too advised me against the A-flat double-unison. And, so, it too was removed. Cheers, ARCMusicPublishings p. s. The dream school which the final draft of this piece has been submitted to? It has earned me my admission there, which I was greatly excited about. 😃

Hello, YCF community, I came across a slight issue when... there is a Piano Vocal piece by Debussy (very beautiful!!) which search for sheet music is driving me nuts!! In all seriousness, I am trying to help a fellow collegiate associate by locating this piece. It is "Flots, Palmes, Sables" by Debussy. Does any one know where I can possibly obtain a copy? If not, can more experienced transcribers describe the meter and any "a piacere"/"liberamente" markings that may appear in a piece like this, so that I can transcribe it myself? How would Debussy have transcribed it? The problem is that, with my limited acquaintance with Debussy's music, I would have made more than several inaccurate notations. So, if there is someone who is more seasoned in transcribing Debussy, I would greatly appreciate the assistance!! Again, this is if no one can locate this mysterious sheet music!! My major goal is to have this transcribed within a week and a half of today: 2/19/25; again, if no existing sheet music of it could be found. Thanks greatly to all who are able to help us in this project! Cheers, ARCMusicPublishings

Hi all, This is a fugue i have written some years ago with midi orchestrator +. It is not finished, it needs some tuning and corrections. After that i imported the midi file to musescore. The notation is for this reason quite bad. Duration 1:54

Hi! I just finished another choral piece, based on Dylan Thomas' famous poem "Do not go gentle into good night"... According to Wikipedia (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Do_not_go_gentle_into_that_good_night), this poem was written for his dying father before Christmas, and below is a brief summary... In the first stanza, the speaker encourages his father not to "go gentle into that good night" but rather to "rage, rage against the dying of the light." Then, in the subsequent stanzas, he proceeds to list all manner of men, using terms such as "wise", "good", "wild", and "grave" as descriptors, who, in their own respective ways, embody the refrains of the poem. In the final stanza, the speaker implores his father, whom he observes upon a "sad height", begging him to "Curse, bless, me now with your fierce tears", and reiterates the refrains once more. Do not go gentle into that good night Dylan Thomas (1914 - 1953) Do not go gentle into that good night, Old age should burn and rave at close of day; Rage, rage against the dying of the light. Though wise men at their end know dark is right, Because their words had forked no lightning they Do not go gentle into that good night. Good men, the last wave by, crying how bright Their frail deeds might have danced in a green bay, Rage, rage against the dying of the light. Wild men who caught and sang the sun in flight, And learn, too late, they grieved it on its way, Do not go gentle into that good night. Grave men, near death, who see with blinding sight Blind eyes could blaze like meteors and be gay, Rage, rage against the dying of the light. And you, my father, there on the sad height, Curse, bless, me now with your fierce tears, I pray. Do not go gentle into that good night. Rage, rage against the dying of the light. Any comments or suggestions will be appreciated 🙂 Once ready, I'd also like to work on some notations, piano reductions, etc... Have a nice day!

I can understand the stressful nature of your dilemma with having to practice piano skills on top of doing arrangements and composition. Personally, before I began to orchestrate full compositions, started with using MuseScore user's compositions and arranging ones that I felt were done poorly or could use improvement or that I noticed places where this or that would've been a better choice to happen in a given section. This jump started a lot of lost knowledge from the time I studied music theory and got the ball rolling for me to actually compose something (whch I'd never done before. This was the results of that (My Musescore Profile. See the Spotlights) - Especially the long arctic midnight. It's a bit long but it's the first full symphony orchestral piece I created. 2 movements in 11/8 time, modulating between 6/8, 12/8 and 4/4 as well. Took me 6 months to do that one. And as far as the use of Spitfire, you can use them in MuseScore's mixer. Musescore will automatically detect usable VST plugins on your device. Nothing to do further at all. And via MuseHub, you can install MuseFX which comes with a good range of audio effects plugins that are integral to the program itself. Just don't waste your money on the MuseHub sound packages.. they're mediocre at best in my opinion. MuseSounds out-performs them in terms of their interactions with the sheet music during playback. The sounds themselves are A+. Their ability to react to dynamics and stay in tune however, not even close to an F rating in my opinion... Trumpet sounds are pitchy, and other brass sounds don't follow dynamics like they're supposed to. Strings are also pitchy and cannot perform any sound flags like they're supposed to, the rhythms aren't ever played back correctly etc.... way too many bugs imo. Spitfire, some of their sounds are better than others. Especially if you're using LABS free edition. I pay for LABS+ and I gotta say, it's an improvement. However, some of the MuseSounds are still top tier compared to anything from LABS. So I just use them in tandem for anything I create now. Mostly I use LABS+ for the Piano playback sounds they offer. Much more realistic sounding. Their Choir sounds are awesome as well, and their Intimate Brass is useful for Trombone and French Horn playback which MuseSounds lack quality in those areas. There isn't much in the way of woodwinds, and the ones they do have don't sound nearly as polished as Muse does, so I don't even bother with them. Basically, nowadays and VST3 playback options out there are currently lacking in their ability to interact well with notation software, on the general level. I don't use DAWs so I can't really say much to their quality in that aspect, however, I have seen some works out there using LogicPRO, FLStudio, and other DAWs using these VSTs and they come out absolutely awesome. I'm just not privy to that software. I'm much more accustomed to reading and notating sheet music since it's something I've known from a time before I knew anything about DAWs or even Notation software.

Thank you so much for the encouragement, @UncleRed99, I really appreciate it! In my case I always wanted to compose orchestral music and that is still one of the goals in the long term. My problem is always time. Mostly because of my piano skills. Practicing piano takes 70% of my time, which is only a couple hours a day, and I still do not learn as fast as I wanted to. But I invest on it because I feel it will help me compose much faster in the future. I did try orchestrating before. I have several orchestral books but I have no time to study them in an orderly fashion so basically I decided I wanted to orchestrate some of my pieces and read enough of those books for applying it to my pieces. 6 months ago I did my favorite one but it is actually more of a piano concerto than a symphonic orchestra. You can see it here from when I posted it in the forum! My problem is also that I do not compose that often. And I need pieces for trying to orchestrate them but I ran out of pieces hahaha. I pretty much posted here 90% of what I composed so I do not have many stuff and I rarely throw any ideas. Normally if I start something I finish composing something with it and post it. So for being able to orchestrate again I will need to compose some new things 😥. Now I actually have a piece I want to orchestrate, the "Bagatelle No.2" but I really like that piece so I put it aside to do it in the future when I have better skills. I heard nice things about the Spitfire LABS VST before! Do you use them in a DAW or it can be integrated with musescore and you use both sounds (Spitfire and MuseSounds) at the same time? Also, what audio plugins you use in musescore? What I do is using the reverb for all instruments as a group (instead of one reverb for each instrument) and also the ProEQ plugin, basically just setting each instrument to its family (for example, I set all strings instruments to "strings" option in the ProEQ). I feel the ProEQ plugin really make things sound so much more real. Thank you for the advice about labeling the piano grandstaff! I heard that is the best way to practice at first. Just composing at the piano and thinking about the sounds you want to writing it down roughly by main instruments and family, without going straight to notating everything in the orchestral score. Actually, recently I found a transcription of the whole "Lord of the Rings" OST that a fan made, exactly like that, with the piano and the outlines of the instruments and families and I am using it for listening to the score and seeing if I slowly learn something. I will need to try to compose for orchestra in that way myself too!

I wrote this to put into music my feelings from the past month, since that day. It’s mostly fairly bleak, with a sliver of hopefulness near the end.

Wow... this is so refined and smooth. I love your style. Your phrasing is admirable, and nothing seems out of place. You're quite the composer!

Here's what I came up with. I've no idea where it will go next! Maybe a return to the opening theme; or perhaps just more development?

I found an example in Film Music of a slow, half tone string glissando which spends a considerable amount of time in quarter-tone territory: Snape to Malfoy Manor from Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows:

Composing my own palliative version of the main themes in one of the very last passages of the Sextet makes me think of the song.... A wonderful piece from a wonderful film from a wonderful and the only one.... Akira Kurosawa...

@JorgeDavid, Don't sell yourself short! You won't know til' ya try! Practice makes perfect. I wasn't ever really privy to writing symphony orchestral music at all, until recently, having been a lowly trumpeter during my music career. I do it for fun now, and I don't play anything, except the Piano, and albeit not very well, well enough to use for composing. It's all about knowing what instrument does what best. Then taking advantage of it. I'm not a master composer by any stretch of the imagination. I sort of just put lipstick on my pigs with Spitfire LABS VST3 playback and Musesounds playback, with some panning, gain +/-, and audio effects plugins with MuseScore 4. Makes the music sound better than it looks, I suppose 🤣 I'm willing to bet you won't disappoint yourself if you were to take a crack at it. It may be daunting, but I'll tell you what I do to start with a piece; Write an outline using only the piano grand staff. Make labels for the instruments that should voice the notes in your outline. Take advantage of the "Voices" function in MS4 to write more than 1 part in a measure

Thanks for listening and commenting @UncleRed99! Yes, since the piece happened to stay exclusively in the tonic key at least I tried to add some varied voicings to add some spice 😆 After all of you commented about the piece I listened to it carefully and that last section really made the piece drag a lot and made it feel even longer than it was. So I deleted that last section, made a new coda, and modified a few things here and there to try to make the piece a little bit less "bass heavy". It still drags.... but less haha. I still would like to add the initial section at the end but, for now, I deleted it and added a coda (I still do not like the last cadence of section B so I might have to modify that too to make the ending before the coda more conclusive). I might still consider adding a bridge in the future if I find some solution! I listened to the piece and it was really god! You are so good with the orchestral instruments too! It would still be quite hard for me to compose something like that but I guess everything times makes perfect! Thanks for sharing! Thank you!

Thanks for commenting @PeterthePapercomPoser! I did not know the prelude by Chopin. I think it is famous as somehow I think I heard it before, but I was not aware of its existence (really nice prelude, though!). The model was a really really simple Czerny beginner piano piece, a waltz, really simple. I used it as a model for the harmony and chords inversions of the first section, and that is the end of the commonalities. I guess my mistake was using as model for a slow piece a fast piece, since slow pieces need to be treated much different to a fast one. After composing it a similar piece came to my mind: Bach Adagio for Piano BW974. It is actually a Alessandro Marcello that Bach transcribed for the piano. Incredibly beautiful. The whole piece, with the exception of the coda and a single bar, has a constant accompaniment. However, there the accompaniment is less heavy since most chords are quite high (on the contrary to my piece or Chopin's prelude). For now, I deleted the repetition of the A section after B section since I felt that was the weakest part of the piece and also created a new Coda for relaxing the ear after such a constant stream of chordal accompaniment. I also tried to fix volume issues (with this accompaniment, making the volume correct between melody and accompaniment is so important) and modified the B part so it gets less "bass heavy" at times. No substantial change but I am happy it improved a little bit at least. Thank you so much for listening and commenting!!

Thank you so much Luis! I agree with you and everyone seems to be commenting the same. This is a strange composition for me because while I love the melodic contour that I composed I somehow did not manage to vary the harmonic content as much as I normally like to. I am trying to reharmonize some sections but it is not being easy. I changed few things here and there in the B section but I did not manage to make any substantial change yet :S. Thanks for listening and commenting!