Leaderboard

Made this today in about an hour. School is cancelled for my state until the end of March, so I have some unexpected free time on my hands and figured I'd give a shot at recording my guitar and amp. I don't have the best equipment, but I try to make the best of what I have. Anyone know how to get rid of the microphone hissing at the beginning other than turning the amp volume up? Thanks!!

‘’Kyrie’’ is a composition for string quartet that is inspired by late medieval and early renaissance compositions, especially vocal repertoire such as motets and madrigals. Isorhythm plays an important role in the music, like it does in that of Machaut, De Vitry and Ockeghem, and the form is like many Kyries of this period a triptych: A-B-A or Kyrie eleison, Christe eleison, Kyrie eleison. Let me know what you think! Cheers, Maarten Bauer

Lots of good ideas in this, and clearly you have a definite vision of what you want. I will add some observations that may provide a little help. I’m only metioning things that jumped out at me the most, up to bar 52. 1) Your orchestra is so big. I wonder if it is really warranted for this piece. I know that using lots of instruments is fun, but you could also strive for an economy of means with a regular size orchestra to hone your craft. 2) One overriding goal of notation is to minimize clutter while still conveying your musical intention. It’s a constant challenge to balance what is enough and what is too much. An imbalance in either direction is detrimental. Either your intentions will seem vague, or else you’re overnotating the part, in which case each symbol means less to the musician. With that in mind: You have an abundance of articulation marks and hairpins. You might want to be more judicious about that. When you reach a saturation point, symbols and signs start to mean less to the musicians. Micromanaging every performance nuance is an easy thing to fall into, and all composers struggle with it unless they're lazy. You’re notating stems in opposite directions quite a bit when it’s unnecessary. If all the voices have the same rhythm, dynamic, articulation, effect, and there is no voice crossing, just use one stem for all the notes; In several places you put “1 only” where just “1.” will suffice. You have some entrances here and there that do not have a dynamic. Upper strings, bar 14, the subito effect will come off better if you do not tie into it from bar 13. And the dotted quarter in bar 14 should be a quarter tied to an 8th, with a terminal dynamic on the 8th. Bar 16 in the upper strings, the rhythmic notation needs to be fixed. Tam-tam, bars 20 – 22, the player might be confused as to whether you wanted a roll or a hit. Plus which you have a dangling tie, which I think you meant to be an open tie. If you want a hit in 20, you can just notate a quarter and attach an open tie. And it’d be better to let the percussionist choose the mallet here, it being an abrupt forte hit, and a tam-tam is somewhat resistant to this. In bar 22, you have floating dynamic markings, i.e., not clearly associated with any metric unit. The bassoon notation in 23 is confusing. It looks like you could just get rid of “1 only” and allow bassoon 2 hold onto that G, unless I’m misunderstanding your intention. Bar 24, Notation: those phrase marks on the cellos col legno should be deleted. And instead of the molto marcato symbols, you could have the resting divisi play just those notes that you now have marked as accented, but… Bar 24, Orchestration: I don’t know why you want only half on the col legno anyway, as it is such a slight effect in any case. The timp part is going to obscure it, plus which, the timp and harp part here is contradictory to the col legno. You’d be better off having all the cellos play the col legno,and have the timp play with wood mallets. The harp at the very low range has a very long decay, so it’d be better to mark the harp notes staccato and include the technique text “dampen.” Again, otherwise you’ll have an ill-defined texture between that and the other stuff you’ve got going on down there. When an instrument is not playing for an entire bar, you don’t need to provide rests if another instrument assigned to the same stave (e.g., Bns., bars 25–28) Any non ordinary manner of playing that is only indicated by technique text should be repeated on each new stave in parentheses (e.g., pizz., col legno, sord., etc.) Harp, bar 28, the Gb pedal indication needs to be vertically aligned with the note to which it applies. Bass Drum, bar 47, secco is contradictary to tieing the note into the following downbeat. Violins, bar 48, the phrase marks are way too long. At most you’d only put eigtht of those notes under one bow, but four would would be better. Timps, bars 51 & 52, the dynamic markings are an example of notation that is way too fussy, plus which the two seccos. You can mark the timps staccato for that.

There is no ''wikihow'' answer to this question... It is a quest that composers are following their whole life. For structure, there are so many parameters that it could help you to organise/list them and analyse pieces that you like for their form. Perhaps the most difficult issue about form is that it can be perceived differently according to the person listening.

Nice set. Colorful parts with pizzicato and counterpoint are more interesting: the magician, the emperor . Other parts are more contemplative.