All Activity

WOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOWWWWWWWWWWWWWWW What a piece. I've listened to it many times now. Movement 1 Part 1: I love all the pentatonic themes, they're extremely beautiful, especially the one at m. 35 derived from your clarinet quintet, I just wish the audio was a little clearer and brought them out over the texture better. The texture itself is great too. However, the idea that appears first at m. 19 I think is too textural for my taste, almost as if there should be something more melodious overtop of it. The sequencing at m. 111-114, I would include tenuto marks along with the slur which is the more standard way to notate it, and it's clearer to performers what to do. For example, we know with Beethoven's Grosse Fuga, some performers play the slurred quarter notes as half notes, and others play them as quarter notes in one bowing. you do similar things throughout the piece. Some more positive thoughts I had, at rehearsal mark F, it sounds like a call to action! And all the modulating and texture at the end of this first part makes me think of a violent river 🌊 Movement 1 Part 2: I think my favorite part of the movement. Provides a good contrast, but still sounds oriental, so it doesn't feel out of place to the soundscape you've thus far presented. The contrapuntally dense section immediately following the fugato is so powerful!! 🤯 The next part is almost too sparse after that, and not a whole lot really happens for me. My first listen I remember being tempted to skip ahead because I was kind of getting bored 😕 I'm glad for the lighter, simpler mood, and I think it's well earned, just maybe a little too sparse for my taste. The transition back to the beginning atmosphere is epic though 😎 Movement 1 Part 3: Similar thoughts to part 1. Great melodies that are hidden by the texture, not by your fault, but just the audio. The ending is satisfying enough to close the movement but still leaves enough for me to want to listen more. ~~~ Movement 2 Part 1: The sheer pain I hear in the first sections of this part. I think it's too raw for it to warrant or need any criticism. I once again wish the audio could bring out the melody clearer, but it's better here than in the last movement I suppose. I will say about notation this is not how you should notate this. 8th notes already have one tail, so it only needs 2 tremolo lines. Likewise, a 16th would only need 1 tremolo line, etc. The section starting at m. 92 makes me emotional. Well done. The following section is a good break, and was perfectly timed. Had the first section gone on any longer, I would have felt maybe that it was too long, but here it's the perfect length. m.179-182 is oddly very beautiful to me. Almost a taste of what the idea from m.92 would be in a better light. And immediately following, back to tragedy, AGH 😫 Movement 2 Part 2: THE 6 VOICE FUGUE 😮 I don't feel qualified to properly go over your counterpoint and I understand it's not supposed to be the strictest fugue. It sounds correct to me, and it certainly does a good job at expressing what it's meant to, which is the MOST important thing of course. Now, you're going to hate me for this, but I think the cellos being so close so often is really really muddy and creates extremely unpleasant overtones. It might be better with real cellos, probably not though, I wouldn't ride on it. Again, the counterpoint is really great to me, the modulations are smooth and so dramatic, and I love it. I don't want to hate on it, it's just really muddy 🙈 you fix the muddiness later in the fugue which is nice. Movement 2 Part 3: Final part!! The start really makes you feel like it's preparing for something. It makes me excited for the end every time!! As someone trained in singing gregorian chant, I think the chant section is VERY effective, and I love the beautiful passionate chords between 🥹 The turning point and the build to the original Tao material is wonderful too and definitely well-earned after all that! The themes are beautiful like before, and they feel freer almost. It's like a fireworks celebration!! A very good and satisfying and Chinesy ending xP Overall, I think it's definitely a masterpiece and deserves all the praise it's getting and more, (except maybe the deification of you from Fugax Contrapunctus xD). However, I'm sorry but I think I'm partial to your clarinet quintet because I still enjoy that more, or maybe I just like sad music 😛 Anyways thanks for sharing your wonderful music.

Hi @Elad_Hevron! Great job on this quartet! I would also like to see a score. I especially love the canonic imitation in the last movement. The last movement actually reminds me a bit of Bach's Concerto for 2 Harpsichords BWV 1060. The 3rd movement of that work is really reminiscent of the style and first few notes of your 3rd movement of this quartet. I don't know if you're familiar with that work but I highly recommend the 1st and 3rd movements! Thanks for sharing!

Most pleasant! Is there a score we could see too?

Thank you so much for your writeup and listen! I hope you never have to feel the world crumble around you, especially alone. I don’t know your life, but I can relay that the removal of autonomy of your body really can make perception itself seem like it is melting. yes, annoying high winds are annoying. Perhaps childish of me. Luckily for you, I only like to toy with sounds instead of overly lean into them. So, done and away as quick as it came! I think it creates a cool juxtaposition, though, which is why I wrote high winds in the 3 sections I did. What do you want to steal? By all means, take it! I am especially proud of the celli melody split by quarter tones. And any quarter tone chords in the leadup to the end. Honestly the chords in this piece are just so hecking rad. Never heard anything like it.

Hello Evan, After reading through your post and listening to the music, I can feel a lot of struggle and suffering, as well as descent into madness(portrayed quite vividly in that last chord). Especially living alone, My biggest fear has always been to wake up one day and realize I am trapped inside my body. I have to agree with Peter's last post that this has a unique sound-world, but it is also a haunting one. Although a few sections are a little too gritty to my ear(high-pitched winds), you've incorporated so many novel techniques worth exploring, and perhaps I'll incorporate those into my pieces too if you don't mind. Really hope you get better soon.

Thanks @Luis Hernández- appreciate that. I didn't know Athenaton but am listening to it now - really nice, though I don't see so much similarity... Glad you introduced me to it though. (Ah, I've just come to Akhnaten and Nefertiti, and I do fort of see how you might connect them) Yes, I think you're right about the piano having a more background role. There is a score video - it's pretty basic though using the Cubase score. I'm only just starting to learn to score and it's coming very slowly (I only started composing last summer and have no musical training or theory, so I don't really even read music at this point....). It's near the bottom of this page - Track 13 - Prayer To The Eternal (February 2025) -

JEALOUSY : is when you want someone to STOP what their doing ENVY : is when you want to DO what their doing "Criticism is the construction of a judgement about the negative or positive qualities of someone or something."

I tend to try writing very small works when I find myself beset with writer's block, so it is perhaps a bit telling that this is probably the shortest piece I've written to date, and the least like the style I usually compose in. The piece is mainly based off the melody of Brahms' 'Wiegenlied'; that is, if you look at it through a wacky Scriabinesque kaleidoscope infused with altered dominant chords transposing by major/minor thirds or tritones. More broadly, what do you think of it? Was I somewhat successful at reproducing Scriabin's aesthetic (his languid side, at least)? I'm open to other feedback too 🙂

DISCO-music , does not sound like COUNTRY-music ROCK-music , does not sound like CLASSICAL-music TRADITIONAL FOLK-music , does not sound like HIP-HOP-music ------------------------ Therefore the Statement: "The Reason Today's Music All Sounds The Same" .........is in fact Totally Flawed........With ......Zero-Credibility.........because The GENRE of the music .........is what dictates its Identity.

Sounds great. The voices, their melodies, harmonies and solemnity remind me of a fantastic opera by Philip Glass (Akhenaton), but not the kind of accompaniment. The role of the piano is very “passive”, although it serves as a support for the voices, I think it could take in specific moments a more active role. I think that the final high note in one of the voices is a bit out of a normal tessitura for what is being developed during the piece. What I'm not so sure about is the violin, especially when it doubles a voice. It would be nice to see the score at the same time. Thanks for sharing. Regards.

It sounds fantastic! I really like the organ and its ability to color with the cantidd of timbres available, when used well. As it happens here. I think the original composition is well suited to the instrument, or the other way around, by virtue, of course of a good arrangement. Just an observation about the “agitato” passage from measure 34. I think the chords in the middle part sound too “abrupt”. I don't know, maybe it's the intention, but what strikes me most is the transition to the next part in measures 41-42, which does sound sudden. Thanks for sharing. Regards.

Thx for reminding me as well as yourself! Let's improve together ✌️

Please stay on Topic.... Your deviating from the original thread..

lol ofc I'm not qualified to give medical advice in mental health. I am not even giving advice lol. Who said you have mental health disease?

Your not qualified to give medical advise in mental health.

I'm sure you live in your "interior" fantasy world, or correctly speaking, internal fantasy world, lol.

Those 2 concepts you stated , are meticulously developed and used by Mainstream-commercial producers & composers. Amateurs & Professionals sometimes think in 2 opposing ways.............INTERIOR vs EXTERIOR.........MINIMIZER vs MAXIMIZER Their Interior-Fantasy-World , doesnt always relate to the ............Exterior-Reality-World............which usually results in Rejection of scripts.

I personally can't imagine writing by hand (after all, this is why I am investing time into a new music notation software 😄), however I understand your reasoning. Writing by hand is much more deliberate, and requires a more concerted effort not to just throw things at the wall as you say. I think at the end of the day, it comes down to discipline. If composing on the computer takes away that discipline for you, stick to paper and pencil. Maybe you can train yourself someday to compose directly on the computer, but only if you can maintain that certain level of discipline. As for me, I force myself not to move onto the next section until I am happy with the current section I am working on. And this approach seems to work well for me, whether by hand, or by 1s and 0s!

Short piece I wrote for quartet

I had another thought that I want to share. I have a mental health diagnosis, and my ability to write music quickly and into the sequencer/DAW went away at around the same time that I was diagnosed. Back when I used to write that way, I remember that my process of writing music was very sporadic and consisted of basically trying to throw $hit at a wall to see what would stick. There was no deliberation and contemplation between my musical decisions and I produced a lot of material that I never developed into finished pieces of music. I remember that, at that time, I was very bipolar about my creation process and I believed the romantic myth about creators getting a "stroke of inspiration" or being "inspired by their muse" or something. So most of the time I ended up feeling uninspired and didn't like the ideas that I'd come up with and hence never continued them to see where they would lead. When I did get good ideas I would spend long periods of time at the computer to get as much out of a good streak of luck at composing as I could and often stayed up all night. In that sense it was like gambling at a casino or something. While being hospitalized at the mental hospital, I had to learn to write music on paper and inadvertently discovered a different, more measured way to compose music. The benefits of composing on paper were not all apparent to me all at once. But besides forcing me to imagine a composition without hearing it and the many advantages of doing so that I've already espoused above, the other big advantage of writing on paper was that it forced me to slow down the process to where my brain could cope with the creative process and the craft and actually contemplate my own ideas at a manageable pace. I think, in comparison to how I used to compose, I was composing in a much calmer, and controlled way. I never realized how emotionally exhausting and anxiety inducing my previous way of composing was until I got my mental illness, and it's possible that I got my mental illness in part because I was "the creative type" and that I forced myself through drastic emotional upheavals in order to create. The truth is, I can no longer cope with trying to write music the old way. But I do believe that writing music on paper is the right way for me to compose for who I've become and who I am today. And that must naturally include all my strengths and weaknesses as a human being and composer. Once again, thanks for reading.

Here you go. I have some Easter eggs in the arrangement of the piece. See if you guys can find them.

EDIT: SORRY I MADE A TRANSCRIPTION ERROR LET ME FIX IT EDIT2: pdf file is fixed but the audio I need to fix it later as well EDIT3: audio revamped MM2HN soundmix.mp3 The original work by Henry Since Henry insisted I post this as my own work, here it is. Bear in mind I have only played the organ for less than once per week for a few months, please comment any improvements that could be made. I tried to give different stop voices in the system but the sounds don't go very balanced and apparently the vibratos are pre-recorded and can't be removed, but it kind of gives the right impression I suppose. If I ever get competent enough I might try recording it for real

Here's an updated score ... changes in percussion, better transitions, dynamics etc ... Look forward to comments. Mark Please excuse double measure lines in score ... have to figure out how get rid of them.

Hi @Mooravioli! I especially like the crazed capybara piece! It is so quirky and reminds me of Debussy's Children's Corner - Golliwog's Cakewalk! I think with the complex harmonies and key signatures and meter changes, this is far from a beginner piece. Perhaps it might not seem that hard to play in terms of the technique etc. But to learn the right notes and rhythms conceptually for a child would be quite a challenge I think! At measure 57 you have the tempo marked as quarter = 120? Are you sure that's correct? That part seems to be quite slow. I have to say that my favorite parts are ones marked quarter = 165. The figurations there make me think of a flurry of capybara activity! LoL Thanks for sharing these pieces! I think the last one especially is quite unique and individual to you!