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My main suggesting would be to vary the harmonic rhythm in this piece a little more, that is to say, don't make every chord 4 beats. I know there are places where your chord length changes, but it could happen a bit more, especially since this ebbs and flows a lot. There It has a nice feel in terms of timbre but gets stale a bit. There was one place where your chord progression went from C minor to A minor and it was kind of awkward... took me out of the mood a bit.

Nice so far. You'll want to snap quantize the rhythm eventually when processing the music. Sometimes your second intervals (appoggiaturas, mostly) seemed a little out place. This can be fixed by having the melody move away from the interval or being selective using them on chords where being stable is more common (i.e. I chords). The motion-motive in this one is really good, but it gets to be a little bit repetitive when the pattern is consistent. Good luck finishing!

"Blind of the fact this topic is concerning CPE theory...." When I begin a work, trivial or serious, I first start with a series of pitches (with or without rhythm) -usually between 2 to 5 pitches for a motif. I expand the motif by adding another 2 or 3 pitches at a time (sub-motifs). Depending on the idiom (serial or non), I may use a matrix to help organize my material OR just begin writing. The idea here is to provide focus on brevity. People love things they can remember -and they especially love things they can easily pick up on. Keeping your material small allows for you to optimize and maximize this. I hope that makes sense. After I build the motivic units together to create a musically logical (or illogical, lol) sentence. I look at the potential areas that I can take this. Do I want to develop the material further? Does the idea scream for a short work that leaves the listener curious? How do I want the idea to evolve and flow? Once I have an idea where I want to take the material, I begin to select the proper form for it. Forms, as I mentioned in another post, are another aspect of theory that are extremely important. The form allows you to state your ideas, develop them, and allows the listener the opportunity to follow your ideas through the process itself. Notice I've not talked about harmony? Despite my education and attendance in music harmony courses... I would argue that harmony is an item of music that is the byproduct of these other processes. Obviously, in developing the motivic units and the overall sentence of my ideas... the harmonic language (and subsequent rules associated with the language) should follow suit. But these rules and language -in my personal opinion- aren't meant to be followed to the fullest. After all, what if the idea behind my motif was to cause my listeners to question their own socio-cultural understanding of music??? At any rate, harmony to me isn't as important an element as the construction of your ideas or the form in which you plan to develop those ideas with. So, to summarize, the list of things to be aware of when embarking on composition are the following: 1. Motif and submotivic units 2. Form 3. Your musical language. I hope this helps!

Oops... sometimes my ratio leaves me alone. I will change it, thanks!

"When the answer is no, you do not have to answer with no in this poll." what's the point of the no vote then? (P.S. I voted yes, just caught my attention)

When I knew nothing about composition in the beginning, I had to do it with the Wikipedia sources on the internet and my own experiences, which I actually did not have. . . These Wiki pages are so confusing and contain many faults that I became desperate. I want to prevent that this happens to other people by giving them the information I could not find. Moreover, I did not know of the existence of Young Composers, which is a gem of information for me. My fast development, according to the composition teacher atthe conservatory, is of course helped by my own persistence, but without this fantastic forum, I would not have developed myself to the place where I stand now.

Thank you all for your help. (Gaining knowledge, is the first step to wisdom, SHARING it, is the first step to humanity...) Unknown.

This is so charming! :) Couple things I hear: 1. The rhythmic integrity of the main motive is a little spotty at times... especially when doubled. Having better support for it might be better. 2. The triplet section in the middle could definitely use the support of the third guitar a lot more even for grounding, rather than counterpoint (multiple melodies at the same time). It just sounds so relatively empty. 3. The ending I found a little weird, since it cuts the normal period length by half and ends on a kind of awkward tonic stepwise motion that I never really liked as a technique, but can see the purpose of it. 4. The opening is a little strange too because it uses the tonic note sparingly, so audiences will think of it in either D minor or F major because it lines up. Maybe have the Bb played just a little bit earlier...? It's really good. Good performance too!

Greetings YC Family! It's been a long time since I made a post and visited the forum. For those of you who may recognize me, you know that I was once an administrator on this site. My years on here have aided me in my ventures within the past decade. One of these ventures was the setup and creation of an online radio station devoted solely to promoting the works of new and emerging composers. This post, thus, serves two purposes: 1. To promote Et Lux Radio and encourage each and everyone of you to listen to the music of your peers as it is broadcast 24/7. and... 2. Make a formal call for live, or rendered, recordings of your works along with a signed affidavit giving Et Lux Radio permission to include the works within its broadcast. Submitted recordings need to be downloadable and in .mp3 format. They can be for any instrumentation and must be under 25 mins in length. Please include in your submission a brief biography and any related program notes for your works. Submissions can be emailed to jaowoodr@gmail.com! Thanks and I look forward to hearing your works!

Melody Unity and balance Unity and balance often make it easier to recognize musical themes. It is therefore important to create these two principles. This can be done by motives and the repetition of these. Let us take the opening theme of Schubert's Symphony No.9 in C major ''The Great'' played by solely horns in C: If you analyse this melody regarding rhythm you can find two evident rhythms, namely: *Maat (Dutch) = measure. By using evident rhythmic elemnts, the melody becomes a more dense whole. We call rhythmic and melodic elements, which are very characteristic, motives. One single theme often contains one or more motives. Furtermore, you can develop these motives to avoid boringness, but still keeping the unity, because you use material that is recognized by the audience's ears. In general, it is easier for beginners to compose melodies an even amount of measures than to compose a melody in an uneven amount of measures. Thus, 4; 8; 10; 12 is considered easier than 3; 5; 7; etc.