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Showing content with the highest reputation on 01/09/2019 in all areas

  1. Hi guys, Here's a little screencast of a little swing piece
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  2. This is a very good start, as you are new to composition. One of the things that I look for in a piece is direction, and your music always seems to be going somewhere. However, I think there could be more flow. Some harmonic changes are quite abrupt. As a flute player, I can say that some of these notes are very low, and some may be impossible but I cannot tell just from listening. This is very nice - well done!
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  3. The thing that stands out the most to me is that the strong syllables of the text don't always line up with the strong beats in the music. That's a very easy thing to adjust by paying attention to how long you make the last note of the preceding phrase. For example, at measure 11, "The CROWS above the forest call; ToMORrow they may form and go." If you speak that line of the poem out loud, the biggest stresses are on "crows" and the "mor" of "tomorrow." There are smaller stresses on the "for" of "forest," "call," "form," and "go." Notice that the two lines have exactly the same syllabic stress pattern. (Well done Mr. Frost). So you probably want your biggest stressed syllables ("crows" and the "mor" of "tomorrow") on beat one, and the minor stressed syllables on beats one or three, if it's a 4/4 section. 4 ......1.......2...3......4....1....2.....3....4....1......2.....3.....4......1.........2....3 The crows a-bove the for-est call; To-mor-row they may form and go. Just shift the phrase so that "the" becomes a pick-up and it feels much more rhythmic. If you want to intentionally break this rule to help illustrate a text about disorder or jaggedness or chaos, doing it in a piece with accompaniment works well. Then the accompaniment can preserve the structure of the meter and be stressed accordingly, and the vocal lines can have stresses on the off-beat that really stand out in contrast. Or for an a cappella piece, you can have one voice part stick to the stresses implied by the meter and another voice part pull against that with stressed syllables on the off-beats. That feels more intentional that what you have here currently, which could be heard as sloppy rhythm by an audience who doesn't have the score in front of them. Adding more accents is another way to have stressed text syllables on off-beats and have it feel intentional. Your lines are very intuitively singable and the piece has a nice feel to it. Robert Frost's work is always nice to put to music. Are you familiar with Randall Thompson's 'Frostiana?' That might be a good place to look for inspiration for future vocal music. Nice job!
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