Leaderboard

Hey guys, been a minute, haven't really been composing. I broke out of my slump tonight after watching a good action film and drinking copious amounts of coffee. Hope you're all doing well. Any critiques are much appreciated, although not having a score kind of limits that in a lot of ways. Maybe there's a lesson in that.. I'll think about it. In the meantime, hope you enjoy my latest work.

Hi all, Here's a work originally composed for piano and re orchestrated for a quartet Flute, Viola, Cello. and Bass. Comments appreciated. If you like I'll post the piano version too for comparison. Mark Danse Argentine Flute-Cello-2-25-22.pdf

I really enjoyed the warmth of this work. It reminds me of works by Vaughan Williams i.e., A Lark Ascending.

Good piece - difficult to relate it to the title. Music to calm the savage beast or breast or whatever it is. Calm, pastoral, to me in the vein of modern traditionalists. It flows nicely and with good orchestral balance. Nice touches as with for example the harp glissando. It has scope for development but you chose to leave it as it is which is about right for the duration. Only two things raised exclamation marks. 1) It was suffused with reverb that blurred clarity - very filmy - but leaving me to guess how you scored the accompaniment. It sounded like soft brass in many phrases; and 2) the closing IV-I cadence which came across rather cheesy, IV major 3rd dropping to the minor third before the tonic. The reverb works fine for this tempo and style, anything faster risks blurring the harmony. Altogether a pleasant listen. Great. .

Title says it all. You can rank these by whats most important to you when you receive a review of your music or come up with your own: Gives good advice Knowledgeable and able to provide examples from existing repertoire to compare your music to Gives good reasons why they like or dislike parts of your music Gives supporting evidence for their opinion from music theory/history Attention to detail and points out errors or improvements to the score Has a good ear for catching errors while listening Imagines their own programmatic content for your music Meticulous about playability of your music by human beings Knowledge about instrumentation/orchestration and how you can improve it And anything else you can think of!

My own feelings are that many in their early stages could do better just with their renderings: pay attention to dynamics, to an appropriate duration of notes, not to try to bluff themselves at the mixer to try to make good deficiencies in their attempts at scoring. Some cheaper notation software makes a pathetic attempt at balance. To me, so much comes down to balance. So the original score with its official dynamics needs copying for presentation with the dynamics exaggerated to get a decent audio balance. I'm disinclined to respond to a wannabe who says "I threw this together this afternoon. What d'you think?" Maybe I'm being unfair because such a person might come up with a beautiful melody or something else interesting. I'd be ready to comment if they said what they were aiming for and to have their own honest feelings about it. I'd also be happier if they'd allowed a little time for reflection - so often even a week gives a composer time to stand back and view it through fresh ears. However, we also need awareness that we aren't the composer and/or hearing the same as the composer. All is subjective (with certain exceptions) and our comments are based on our views. Plus, the media through which we listen won't be the same as the composer's. We try to make allowances. My tendency is not to review a genre in which I'm not versed although listening is always a good idea to expand a reviewer's auditory horizons. And it doesn't need reviewers to say that all artists should aim to be self-critical. Being honest (about one's own work) isn't always easy but trying is necessary so when they present work for review it's as close to what they think they want - won't be perfect, there are always limitations - but at least as good as their current experience allows.

Nice work dude, good to see you still going at it.