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I understand where you're coming from, but I think my argument has been misinterpreted. In no point of my answer was I implying that a piece I made would not win or be hampered due to bias, I stated clearly I am not trying to downplay orchestral works, or trying to blame external factors for faults that I've made in my composing. My intention of typing out such a lengthy post was to ask for a traditional judging component as I felt that it would minimise at least some bias as aforementioned. I am not trying to abolish such a system, or deny its benefits as stated very clearly in the last paragraph of my post. I am still for the popular vote, and as I already said that it is a good way to judge how the general public perceives a piece. As you said, "people like what they like". As I stated in the last line of my previous post, all I'm arguing for is to have traditional judging to be instated along with popular vote and for both to be considered as a form of evaluation, not merely 1 form of judging. Both traditional judging and popular voting have their pros and cons, I simply believe having both instead of just popular voting will be more fair and be a more impartial way of evaluation, similar to how a democracy where for example in the US, there are many different levels of courts from the District Courts all the way to the Supreme Court, where decisions can be made through different courts and different people, ensuring a more impartial vote. Overall, I just hope my lengthy post can give at least some feedback for this current competition and future competitions, because my friend, @zhenkang, also feels the same. P.S: Just another thing: the decision to remove traditional judging was actually made only a short period of time before the deadline, by then most of those who have submitted should have started and completed a bulk of their pieces at that point. However, I understand your point of view that I should have recognised that the popular vote was always going to be flawed and I apologise for that. I do not wish for a lengthy dispute for the matter, I apologise for this post for being rather lengthy as I wanted to make my points clear. Hopefully we can reach a mutual understanding with each other, and if anyone wants to weigh in on this, feel free to 🙂

I'm just starting on this forum and just wanted to share a piece i made recently.

Thanks a lot! I will try to remake this invention with the ideas you provided me!

Agreed 100%. This was something I was trying to say, but didn't know how to put it. You sumarized it really well : )

I like this one too! This time you included a dominant-level statement of the motif in the exposition. Your episodes venture into F major and A minor territory and you build some nice sequences and canonic imitation between the two voices. I also agree with @Jean Szulc that your material sometimes seems accompanimental because it's so triadic and just outlining chords. To counteract this kind of impression in a melody you could try including some passing tones or neighbor tones or appoggiaturas or escape tones in between the chord tones of your main motif. For the counterpoint to the main motif you should also come up with something with a unique rhythmic and intervallic identity rather than just repeating one note, to help your voices be more independent for a polyphonic texture. Although I'd personally be wary of doing too much model-writing (meaning using Baroque examples as the basis for your composition) because it might keep you from writing original melodies or making unique musical decisions. This invention is clearly your own despite it's weaknesses and I'd love to hear more of that! Thanks for sharing.

Hello there! This does not remind me a lot of Bach, to be honest. He had a particularly intricate style of writing, much denser than other composers from his period. Because you quoted him and his style as your goal, I'll taylor my feedback in a particular way. What I say isn't necessarily a problem, but I think it strays your furder from your goal. First, I'd say that this composition stays in the middle of beign polyphonic and homophonic, as in many passages the voices serve as a simple accompaniment. You can see this happening in the baroque period, for sure. Listen to this passage by Telemann, for instance: It is a fugatto passage in the central section of his ouverture. The counterpoint is very simple, and there are parts in which the music simply becomes homophonic. That being said, even in the sections in which the "secondary" voices are playing accompanimental stacatto notes, you can see they have a particular shape to what they are playing. This makes so that a very simple counterpoint tighter and "better-built". You cold also opt for a less contrapunctal texture, and dive into a more homophonic texture anyways. I'm definitely not saying it is easy by any means, but I think this is something to work on. I believe the small section that starts on M.15 demonstrates a good way on how to do this. It has harmonic cohesion, none of the voices feel left out, and sounds really nice. Also, a quick tip when it comes to doing this kind of exercises, is extracting a theme/motif/section from a piece of music from the period you want to write in, instead of writing it yourself. This guarantees that you have good material from the start. Once you get more comfortable in the style, then you can try and write your own ideas. Well, I hope this wasn't too pedantic, and I hope it actually helped you in any way. All the best!

I understand, and it's fine. I probably shouldn't have brought this up at that time, I apologise and will take note of that in the future. Thanks for your understanding!

absolutely. I was reacting to your post but looking back at it, I was a little mad at it. I understand where you're coming from I just think it wasn't the time to say it. But yes now that I see it wasn't a self serving action I can see I overreacted, my apologies.

Yes but this competition isn't an aristocracy it's a democracy. People like what they like, and we all knew it was a popular vote, shouldn't you have realized this before you made a piece you thought wouldn't win due to bias? just saying.

Your tenor parts are pretty low so although I'm usually a baritone I could totally sing your tenor and bass parts if you want, however you need to set up some practice tracks of JUST the sections you want recorded. Also for the solos I suggest adding a piano reduction (if you're on finale this is easy because it's an option in the tools section I believe, you just highlight the sections you want in the piano reductions and boom you're done besides some formatting) so the soloist can know what they're supposed to be hearing underneath otherwise its hard to tell if you're singing the right notes without playing along. I think your cantata sounds very nice. I'll do it some time in the next couple weeks, but I'm telling you that if you want other people to actually do this and sound good, make it easier by creating practice tracks that start where you want them to sing I don't want to figure out where the basses start singing or recount 20 measures. You're asking for more than 10 minuets of singing which takes a lot of effort to set-up and do.

Thanks for the observation I forgot to correct that Eb. About the breathing, I know is hard that's why I played it at 100 BPM, because the original 120 are almost imposible for me.

The piece sounds wonderful. The melodies are catchy.

Shouldn't the Eb in meas. 47 be a D#? Great job! Although I think there are many extended barrages of 16th notes without really a place to breathe. You must have circular breathing abilities to have played through this... Well done!