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Ho ho ho! Well, it's the 1st of November and you know what that means... It's that time of the year where we think about a holiday music challenge! Inspired by the (highly succesful!) challenges below: If you want to participate, please drop a comment below! The Rules There are no rules! (cheesy I know...) Any pieces of music with a festive twist will be welcomed - if you don't celebrate Christmas then you might want to choose a different December religious festival or write a 'wintry' piece. Also, no restrictions on style, this event should be relaxed and just a way for composers to have some fun around Christmas. You could choose to arrange a traditional carol or write a new one, create the next Christmas No. 1 featuring an major 7th chords and an obnoxious amount of sleigh bells, or even a hardcore metal masterpiece about how you can't wait for the season to be over 😉 As I said above, please reply if you're interested. If this is wildly popular, I'll open a separate submissions thread to gather them all together into one place. I'm not going to put a time limit, knowing that us musicians are only getting busier at this time of year, but obviously try to get it finished and submitted by the height of the holiday season. Best of luck and Merry November! Looking forward to seeing what you talented members come up with (I'll try to get a piece done too)! aMusicComposer

Thank you so much for the precious advise regarding this pastiche. I just corrected the key to A-Flat Minor as the title was suggesting ;o) (See updated score). However, Since I am extremely lazy, I kept the 6/8 note value. However, you made me noticed that the quantization in the Score view in Logic was set wrongly to 16. By changing the quantization to 32 some notes are shown as heard. I am not a real musician neither am I a real pianist, I thus rely on others jugement on the playability of the revised score. Thank for commenting so constructively. Cheers,

That's a nice melancholi piece. I love the swinging siciliano rhythm. Minor point: Sometimea I find it confusing to have the right hand up an octave while the middle accompaniment does not, for example bar 10-12. That seems a little bit confusing to me. I agree with @aMusicComposer and his suggestion. Even though it's a short piece, some contrast can be added, particularly the texture and rhythm. I love your modulation, but sometime it is not enough to provide contrast with mere harmonic/key change. You are making progress in your composing skills! Nice job and keep on composing!

Sam - Very beautiful, some masterful melodic writing here. The sense of an unbroken line is wonderful and well crafted. That said, there's three things I want to raise - not necessarily criticisms, just points that you might want to consider. First, I wonder if it's a bit 'samey' all the way through. As I said, the continued line is beautiful, but I wondered if you might want to shake it up a little bit? To me, the modulation is the perfect point to introduce a different texture. If you would want to keep the melody as it is, which I imagine you do, this change could be something as simple as putting the piano part up like 2 octaves for this section - letting the cello hold the bottom of the music with the piano glittering on top. That leads me onto the second thing: be careful with the registers you're using. Most of the time, the piano is sitting in its middle bottom register, coinciding with the cello and that tends to reduce the clarity of both parts. I think in a live setting (because you really should get someone to play this!) the extra resonance from a real piano would completely overshadow the cello. Just something to watch. Lastly, a very minor thing, I think the trills/mordents /gracenotes could just be just be written out in full, standard notation. To me, they hold melodic value and aren't just 'throwaway' notes. Of course, you might think differently - and of course, it's your piece! I'd be interested to hear your thoughts on that. Well done on a beautiful composition!

Thank you so much for the kind feedback! 😊