Leaderboard

While searching for inspiration on how to write epic orchestral pieces, i came across this awesome website. It has a ton of pieces from a ton of genres. Down of the left side you can browse their selection by genre, mood, and even instrumentation. I figure this is a great resource for various reasons: you can use it to hear how/what instruments are used for certain moods/styles. You can search for songs featuring certain instruments so you can hear how specific instruments or groups of instruments are used. It has already helped me gain a better understanding of the capabilities of some instruments and opened up my mind to using instruments in ways i didn't think about. Also, to the right of each song is a description of what the song is like, and there is a little target icon that will show you multiple versions of the songs that may include/remove different instruments or have slightly different feels. It also tell you all the information like Key and, time sig, and tempo. You can't download any of it for free, but you can listen to everything as much as you want. Here is the link http://www.audionetworkplc.com/

I'm gonna start by saying there's nothing wrong with your writing from a technical standpoint, but if I knew the backstory and then heard that the first two measures were a timpani-cymbal "car crash" I might snicker a bit in the audience. I mean I feel like that's about the cheesiest way to memorialize that event. But maybe that's not what you were caring about in this piece, which is totally fine. Why do you have two players on the marimba? One person holding 4 mallets could easily play that part, not to mention two people rolling notes that close to each other would get pretty crowded. Speaking of percussion, and you've done a better job than most with it, but it's a nice courtesy to the players to label instrument changes on one staff - i.e. after a cymbal roll write "to snare" I agree with MichaelAlex that the full measure fermata should be a caesura

this is probably the nicest review i've seen tokke give in a while. (besides "adagio") feel honored!

Good job on this! Nice to see you writing original music. I'm gonna be detailed on this piece, so don't take it to heart! I liked the first too measures! Really made sense and grabs everyone's attention for the slow melodies! Okay, at "A" your chords aren't even chords. They are open, I don't know if that was your intention, but it really takes away from the harmonic interest. I would bring in the saxes with the rest of the reeds! They are in the same group, so they don't really add much texture! If that was a horn/trumpet/flute entrance, it would be different, if that makes sense. also the low C is a really bad note to bring them in as an entrance in that dynamic, not to mention that it require pushing down nearly all of the keys! So I would give this to the tenors! B. Doesn't really flow well from, A, very exposed and yeah, not much to say here. C. That suspension in the clarinets did not sound good. It would have been different if you kept the clash-resolution with the next measure, but it just sounds like a mistake the way it's written. D. Once again, it doesn't really flow well from the previous section, I like the dissonance in bar 55 and the rip in 56, really some nice elements to add. I DO NOT like the whole rest fermata! There's something call a caesura. Put it to good use. F. Well nothing much to say here. Other Notes: I think you need a third clarinet/trumpet part to fill in some harmony. because high F's in the trumpets are gonna be too much with 5-8 people playing. I think you switch keys like crazy. It looks like you went for the whole , "Oooh, let me see how many keys I can use in this piece" and none of them really made sense. I know I did this in the grand lullaby, but each key change made sense, and either brought in a new theme or brought freshness on an old one! Also, you need to work on your transitions! It basically sounded like too many of the same song in a different theme! You have great material, just fix it up! Good job.

Main theme = so Jurassic Park :santa: . I found this composition to be very simple, but effective in regards to its length. The last chord I find to be a bit problematic. The flute is in a very low register, and will not be heard. Ending on an octave I find to be overly aggressive for the expressiveness you were going for, I would either thin down the orchestration, or at least have a third added to the chord. Otherwise, it sounds great, well done. hones:

As far as I can hear, this beat is faultlessly done, pretty pro stuff in terms of quality :) But where is the rest :facepalm: ?? It seems as though the beat is all there is, and it doesn't really display compositional talent TBH. I'd love to hear a proper piece being made out of this though. On a side note, what did you use to compose this?? It sounds well enough made, but I don't know enough about sample libraries to make a educated guess.

Sounds a lot like band pieces of the slightly older years. John Barnes Chance's Dance from "Incantation and Dance" comes to mind. First off, the piece is WAY too short. Its underdeveloped, especially in the fast section. You could have really gone for some wacky and crazy awesomeness but didn't. It thus felt terribly unsatisfying to me. I also think your final coda sounded silly with it so fast. The sudden introduction of 16th notes was quite abrupt and unexpected. There were also some orchestration errors (bassoons can only go down to low Bb, not A). I thought there was a bit too much copy + paste. By the third time I heard those opening bars exactly like they were every time, I was tired of them. Vary it up a little. Notational problems: trombone and euph should NEVER share the same staff. Trumpets 2 and 3 should also be combined. The percussion parts aren't marked very well at all. Everything has to be very specific there. I think the best part was by far the middle fast section with the upper wind solos and alto sax solo. It was very effective with the driving rhythm beneath and a cool melody to sit on top of it. Do revise this and keep it up! :)

I never told you my horror story involving bunny rabbits being eaten! My stepfather used to travel to Indianapolis daily for his job. We lived in a small rural community north of Bloomington, Indiana. One night, he hit two rabbits. They didn't tell my brother and I at the time - we were 7 and 8 respectively. My mother skinned them and set them in saltwater in the fridge for two days. This was a few days before easter. We didn't realize, at the time, that they were rabbit and had assumed they were chicken. Well... Easter sunday came along AND my mother spent all day preparing the meal. Around noon we ate - as we always had. As we finished our plates... my stepfather and mother had these mischevious grins on their faces. My mother then announced that we ate the Easter bunny. We were devastated!

A Fanfare I Wrote for Strings and Percussion you can hear a bad live recording at http://www.bradenunruh.net/blog/2010/05/19/fanfare-for-strings-and-percussion-performed/ Fanfare for Strings and Percussion