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https://soundcloud.com/vincent-pichal/vincent-pichal-homeward-bound I wrote this piece a couple of years ago. It has a great emphasis on brass and especially on the French horn. My uncle, who died a couple of years ago, was a professional horn player and I wanted to write him a tribute...

Interesting, and beautiful too. i don't think minimalism is the opposite to polyphony. However, in this piece I would say the texture is heterophonic: simultaneous variation of a single melodic line.

Hi, i agree with @Monarcheon . It is exactly what you say "free and expressive for background music". 🙂

It was cool to hear how you transformed the D to so many tonal/diatonic areas including the parallel related keys; my favorite was the E7. However, it's kind of a limiting way to write the piece, and as background music the ebbs and flows are nice but lack the kind of movement that makes the scene pop. The middle section of more intensity was a nice departure but it returned to the old style without changing much, when that would be the perfect time to do it. Nice work.

2nd inversion chord at :36 was a bit strange. Your piano soundfont follows the electric one which makes things sound like unresolved suspensions or retardations. It ends on a v chord which is a bit strange, especially since it doesn't have the effect of a turnaround loop. It also doesn't really need to be this short I think. Especially with the electronic element, you could have a section with just a chill drum groove in the back of similar musical material and use this time to modulate and go to lots of fancy places. It's just a very safe piece right now.

The whole first section to 21 I get is supposed to feel like a build to a huge I chord, but it's currently not backed by anything; I don't feel the growth that should be happening. The move to the new chord was a great idea, but orchestrationally, you're missing out on percussion, new moving lines, and just generally the effect of more spaced out velocity, rather than having it concentrated and specific like it is here. The chord at 21 is also strange because the high string parts are split at an octave which makes it sound a lot less cohesive as a single harmonic unit. 23, by the way, starts off sounding a lot like Zelda's theme. Speaking of 23 on, the rhythms need to be fixed to fit into the 4/4 scheme. Two dotted eighths and an eighth won't cut it, because you're not defining where the beat is that way. You should tie the second dotted eighth to an eighth to show that beat 4 still exists. 27's rhythm, while interesting, needs to be totally rewritten to follow that rule. Why does the 27 theme last so short in its introduction? It's a cool, related change, and when 31 comes in it's totally out of left field; it feels like 27's theme has been cheated in favor of something distinctly unrelated except by parallel harmony. 37, you need to rework how you're working with your percussion. Use accents are something, not dynamics. Again at 49, it's completely unrelated, and the idea from 37 isn't built up to anything, though it is quite well developed. It just sounds like it's been cutoff. What's weirder is that 37 comes back at 57 but sounding completely out of place again. It would be really cool if it was transitioned into better. Using a whole note without any crescendo or orchestrational power is very jumpy sounding. Overall, you have a lot of good ideas, but it feels like a puzzle rather than a river's flow, or like a series of jump cuts rather than things that lead into others. Focusing on your orchestraion around these point can make a big difference and common tone modulations will help you in not having to jump around so much.

I think at about the 1 min mark I would do a cymbal roll instead of crash. Again this is your piece so don't think you have to change it just because I said something.