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What can I say about love? It never turns out quite the way we expect. Then again neither does life. The years stack up, and the weight of all that time compacts our experiences, until we are forged into something new, like metamorphic rock. A good marriage has the same effect. As the years pile up, any cracks that once existed between us are compressed, our minds and outlooks are reformed, until after a while we have been reshaped, remade together. This music chases love, chases life. It races ahead, keeps the fire lit. It’s hunting, sniffing something out, hungrily searching through the night. The years fly by, but the fire stays lit. It’s a dance, a celebration, though a frenetic one. While you listen, stomp your foot! How about one loud clap! Why the hell not! I have a limited vocabulary for describing how it feels to experience love, real love, so I have to compose instead, to try and capture the uncapturable. This music gives just a taste of that. Love has many flavors, and this is one flavor I’ve tasted, and I want to share the feeling with the world. It may not always be pretty, but it tries hard to live passionately, to expresses itself freely, to communicate something meaningful. It doesn’t give up, even when challenges arise. It reaches out to feel a connection. It aches for it. I have experienced this love. In fact, I experienced it today, while watching my wife walk across the room. Sometimes my heart starts pounding for no reason, and this music appears inside my brain. Makes me want to spin around and around, until everything is blurry. The life we have built, the family we created, the years and shared experiences and adventures are all stacking up before me, until all I can do is marvel at the structure. Keep living! Keep love in your heart, and share it with someone whenever possible. Stomp and dance and spin. And also, lay silently on your bed in the afternoon with the person you love, and watch the sun’s rays poke through the blinds. Compare the sizes of your feet, tell a silly story, share what’s in your heart. Grow together, always growing.

Hello everyone. It's my first post here in youngcomposers forum. So, I decided to start composing! My goal now is to compose a short piece every week, with some kind of limitations, to keep my work organized, more interesting and asking some research. To get started my limitation now was simple - write melody first and then harmonize it. So it's my first tune for 'one tune in a week' challenge, and my first composition for strings! Sounds a little silly, but I had some fun while composing this, and that I think is very important! Critiques and feedback are more than welcome! 🙂

This has a nice flavor, and sets a pleasant scene. However I'd like to see the accompaniment do something with a bit more variation, more vitality. The boom-chuck-chuck is definitely a classic way to do accompaniment, but if that is the only rhythm you use for the entire piece, it does not sound "artfully" done. It causes the piece to drone on because the ear just becomes accustomed to a super consistent sound that never changes. You want to keep the ear interested, and variety is the spice of life. Look at how Mozart uses the Alberti bass style, for example. He puts it in, then takes it away, then brings it back. It is used at his discretion, but always selected for artistic value, not just because it is the simplest possible rhythm. Sometimes the accompaniment are single notes, sometimes chords, sometimes nothing at all and sometimes it mirrors the melody. This has the effect of keeping the music interesting, keeping your ear expecting more, waiting in excitement for the next rhythm to come. So I'd say keep your lovely flute melody as is, and work on having your piano part "say something". Cheers! Jonathan