Leaderboard

The first piece from my set of Grand Dances. written for two pianos. sorry for the sloppiness of the score. i dont own any fancy notation programs and because of the complexity of the writing, I had to settle with my hands Trance Macabre

:lol: http://www.youngcomposers.com/profile/music/Peter_W./composition?entry=64108 Welcome to YC! I have to say: I think the ending stinks. So I'ma ignore it. Nice piece! Very relaxing, I really like it. :) And the oboe thing actually became endearing. It was on the edge of annoying but you made it work well. Thanks for sharing! :phones: -Peter

yes, it gives me really the sensation of quiet moments of satisfaction.... but the end makes me come back to reality :lol: good work !

As has already been mentioned, Schoenberg's books are worth looking at. They teach the art of composition rather than any music theory or orchestration but reading them completely changed my outlook on composing and I'm much better for it. For orchestration I would recommend Rimsky-Korsakov's book although some prior knowledge is necessary to really understand the book. It's always a book that I revisit though to check up on certain things while composing. Also, if you are interested in learning the basic rules of counterpoint, check out Joseph Fux's Graddus ad Parnassum. If you do all the exercises like I did myself, you won't ever have to worry about looking for parallel or hidden fifths or octaves, they will just jump out of the page at you but after going through the book, it's unlikely that you would unintentionally write any parallels anyway because you would just know how to avoid them.

Ok, the link I gave above has an even further advanced piano VST now. Since your midi was set at a constant 180 BPM, I was able to use it (I can't figure out how to make my DAW move the tempo along with the midi's original format :( But you're in luck! :D) Here's some further thoughts from me now that I've become more familiar with the work (I must have listened to it about 10 times now :musicwhistle:) -- The idea at page 5 with the descending 16th notes (with the "poco dim" symbol) was a good choice there. -- The build-up to 1:30 (The "gloriously" section) was fantastic, to me. My favorite part of the whole piece, in fact. The furious dissonance just before really leads in well to this section, (it's not just a noisy section and a suddenly tonal section afterwards) which I find rather beautiful and haunting. A little after this section comes a really spicy, dance-like melody -- I think it begins here at page 17. A criticism I have here is that this is a simply wonderful motif which is brought back immediately after and referenced in an all treble section a few minutes later ... but never again. I think it's a really beautiful theme that could be used a lot more before the piece's end. And you may even want to make this theme the actual ending to either this piece or your next piece in this set of grand dances for two pianos. Maybe you just don't want your audience to get too comfortable. But I doubt that your audience will be getting comfortable with this piece as a whole :thumbsup: :lol: --On page 32, you have a chromatic glissando with the palms of the hand in both pianos. Now, on midi, this creates a really powerful effect that almost tears my brain in two :mellow: It's the musical equivalent of that trick where someone puts both their fingers in front of your eyes, close together, and tells you to follow them both wherever they go. And then BAM! They separate suddenly and without warning, and your eyes/brain go into shock a little bit. However, I'm skeptical that the effect would be as powerful in a live playback. Pianos are rather difficult to work with chromatically, unfortunately. Even white key glissandos tend to be very quiet. Check out renowned virtuosa Valentina Lisitsa's playing of Liszt's Totentanz sometime (if you haven't already). Her fingers are supernaturally strong, yet her gliss in the right hand are only just powerful enough to be heard. Maybe it's possible (Marc Andre Hamelin sure could rock even octave glissandos!!!) though, but I just have to express some doubt here. In conclusion, you have a really meaty, powerful, and evocative piece here. It's really quite fascinating to me :phones: Thanks for sharing!

I'd be happy to, just tell me how lolz

Yes, in the 1970's, American Copyright Law made it illegal to create derivative works of existing, copyright-protected original works with some exceptions. It is not fair use to take a full fledged theme and create variations of it. This would be classified as a derivative work and derivative works require permission from the holder of the original copyright. I don't agree with the limitations this imposes on creativity, especially since any collection of notes on a page should have no such expectation to "not" be used as a source of inspiration for additional creation. This is how creativity works in the first place, because we simply do not create anything from nothing at all.

"Tempo Obsessivo" Freakin' brilliant, man. I get the image of some dark factory making evil zombified bloodthirsty voodoo dolls or something. This is great. When it goes from the dark, pounding parts, to the lighter, dancing parts, it's almost as if someone's laughing haughtily at you because they know you're going to be crushed into an unrecognizable bloody pulp that's going to be devoured by giant hell spawn or something. Also, don't worry about not owning a "fancy notation program." If you can write this well without one, you obviously don't need one. It would be a shame to keep us from seeing more of your work. -MF

A song that I wrote for my Fiancee. SATB a Capella, Poem - There Will Be Rest by Sara TeasdaleThere Will Be Rest