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https://musescore.com/user/30353801/scores/6027312 Feedback welcome!

@Guillem82 1- I doubled the basses to give the singers an option because I personally can sing the upper split, but I like the sound of the lower split, which I can't sing, but maybe another bassist can sing a low E. 2- I wanted it to be a simple Hymn my church can sing. low skill choir requires low skill music. 3- maybe something to work on 4- In real life they would pause because of the phrasing, I should've added a breath or pause symbol. I didn't really pay attention to direct octaves, I was mostly concerned with hiding direct 5ths with passing tones and not having parallel 5ths and octaves(between the other voices). Thanks for your suggestions and comments. I will be trying to do more modulations in my music.

A nice piece. Some interesting harmonic progressions/changes. Well done. I personally wouldn't bother to write in the pedal changes if you expect a professional to play it unless for a glissando where you aren't showing all the notes. I'm unsure what Monarcheon said - I'll be asking next post. As I understand, the harp is tuned to C flat with no pedal pressed. The 7 pedals each raise a string a semitone then a tone throughout all the octaves for that note. "Optimising" harp music so to minimise pedal changing means the music can appear pretty weird but harpists are used to that! Very nice.

Orchestral music really doesn't work for these kinds of scenes and aesthetics, generally. Especially not this more, pad-like style (you compare it to Inception) which is really quite slow and static. It's not really that the cue itself is "bad" or anything, rather — it just feels contextually "wrong". Your cue essentially kills the vibe of the scene and makes it feel more like that D-Day scene or whatever in Saving Private Ryan rather than a Cyberpunk shootout. There are three main reasons for this: 1. There is no strong "touch & go" aspect to the whole thing like in the original soundtrack with the edit of Propellerheads' Spybreak during the shootout. Case in point would be the 2:37 mark. 2. There is no real rhythm or groove and thus: No real energy to the music. As such, it kills the energy of the scene itself. 3. The buildup to the shootout itself is just too weak. Don Davis' drums in the original and their building intensity was perfect. I hope some of that helps. Re-scoring something like this scene is pretty difficult because it demands a very-particular sort of style (as the Matrix has a very particular sort of style), which is pretty removed from "conventional" film scores.

"Originality" is not actually an inherent virtue; what most people actually mean when they say "originality" is a "my signature style". Well, everyone has that provided you're not specifically trying to sound like another composer. Not that I am accusing OP of this — I have not heard his music — but it's my experience that a lot of the time, people try to use the fact that they're "original" and "different" to make up for the fact that they're not actually very good. Because then, you can make the argument that everyone who doesn't like it, simply "doesn't get it" or whatever. You see this a lot in "art music". Schoenberg and his underlings were pretty original, what with the serialism and all. What do they have to show for it? A large body of work that is mostly ignored by the world and even fans of the technique admit can be "difficult to listen to". A friend once told me about this conductor who told him what I think is probably one of the truest things I've ever heard about music: "The further that your music is from folk music, the less listenable, popular, and likeable it will be." The reason that hits so hard in regards to this topic is that inevitably, truly "original" pieces must eschew the aesthetics and techniques that — over many centuries — have come to be the norm because they are what most people find to be desirable qualities in music. Like it or not: The list is finite. You will notice that the most-enduring classical pieces are either highly-similar to folk music of the day (Bartok literally made arrangements of them) and 20th Century pop music. Throughout the 20th Century, basically everyone was granted access to art music via recordings and post-war economic booms and guess what? Almost all of that deeply-original "art music" that was written over the least few hundred years went the way of the dodo. Why? Mostly, because most people didn't like it. Why? Because — and I know this will make a lot of people made, but it's the truth — most of it was never actually very good to start with. So If people like what you're doing, you like what you're doing — then there is no need to be worried about how "original" you are. But if you're getting bored with the classical style, just try doing another for a while. I've done everything from Metal to Pop, to Folk, to Romantic pieces to sad piano pieces. It's only music — no need to make this $H!t stressful and complicated.

Hi Dan, I perfectly undestand you thoughts, because I'm a predominant classical composer and I have the same perception that many people see classical style as unoriginal. Of course I did some tries to compose in different styles, but with baroque and classical era is where I feel more confortable and natural. Now I'm learning more counterpoint and the structure of the schemas of classical composing, because I have still a lot to learn in that style. I think one can be original writing in a 300 years old style, because your works will be your own interpretation of the style. So my tip is that you follow your own instinct and do the music you like and feel.

This. Really, I'm in the same situation as you (although I am a Romanticist rather than a Classicist). The thing is that the vast majority of musicians I've spoken to prefer to go to a concert and listen to Mozart or Rachmaninoff than to go to see a world premiere of a new piece. Why else do orchestras continue to perform the old masterworks? I still can't bring myself to write anything particularly contemporary, despite repeated exposure and professional composers introducing me to it. Aaaaaaaaaaaargh you mentioned originality! The one word that compositional society imposes on us! Let me get this straight: the Oxford dictionary defines 'originality' as "the quality of being new and interesting in a way that is different from anything that has existed before." Are you directly plagiarising? No? It's original then. That's my view on people who call us Classicists/Romanticists unoriginal. The problem does not lie in our music - it lies in society and the general oppression of our music by those who write "music for the modern world." Keep writing Classically, unless of course you decide to change your style. But remember, no one else can make that decision for you.