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my submission for the christmas music event

Wow, thanks for the feedback and compliments to my software. I will try to cover as many things as I can: 1. It's a domain specific language. If you compare syntax in Unison and LilyPond, you will notice that in Unison I tried to avoid all cryptic characters, symbols and terms that potentially can be misunderstood. All the keys words in Unison are accepted musical terms. The idea was that if you get the text written in Unison DSL, then just by looking at it, you can easily reproduce the music score with pen and paper (or digitally). 2. So, there are indeed two types of music score editors: WYSIWYG(What You See is What You Get) and WYSIWYM(What You See is What You Mean). If you prefer first type, it's okay. In ideal world they should work perfectly, but let's be honest - most (maybe even all) of them have problems with UX. It's not like end of the world, but sometimes it's just super annoying. Maybe you know such YouTube channel, where author describes such problems in many such softwares. We can argue all day long, but I can just say from my experience it's much easier to use WYSIWYM type of editors, and more importantly it's much easier to develop them. Mostly because you don't need to worry about how to make everything as consistent as possible (for spacing between different elements, etc.) Of course you need to learn commands, but it's not that difficult, and in a long term you can create scores even faster than using mouse. And it's not only about speed and efficiency. For me, when I type the structure of my music gives me so much more pleasure, because it gives me feeling that I am writing music. 4. More precisely than any software to be honest. I can give you some examples that I've never seen: Here you can see that stave lines don't intersect sixteenth beams, which allows to increase readability. Or here, we optimize vertical spacing of dots for chords with whole tones. Stave lines don't intersect text labels, which improves readability In any other software, such ties for chords with whole tones would look ugly, but here we connect such chords quite nicely And there are many such examples. 5. By "Using human language is the best way to do it", I meant that if we are going to use text to engrave music, then it's better to use plain language and avoid special characters. 6. "knowing English which is NOT an universal language; being optimistic, roughly 1/4 of the world population speaks it." I am aware that there are many other popular languages. But first of all, I am not trying to reach billions of users, for me it's important to create high quality product which is profitable enough to motivate me. This is my ambition. And second of all, I can adapt Unison for other languages as well, but it requires a lot of time as you can imagine. I understand that music score as itself is a language, but it does not mean that we cannot use the language that we speak and write to digitalize it. We don't have music symbols on the keyboard, maybe someone in the future will invent it, but now we are limited in that sense. 7. I am planning to add MusicXML export/import, it of course will increase number of scores in Unison, and will increase speed of creating scores. Collaborations for teams of musicians is an interesting idea, that can be implemented in the future. In general, I would say that Unison is more finished product than you may think, just check it out 🙂

Dear all, here's my latest attempt. Some time ago I think it was Peter who suggested practicing with a theme and variation. Usually I struggle with last movements, so I thought I'd give it a try. It is difficult! and hard! hopefully it taught me something, and I know there are a few things that need correcting (I hope it's only a few, actually). Anyhow, I had fun writing this and as usual I'm hoping to get honest and useful feedback! Thank you all for this great forum!

Thanks so much for taking part - I thought there would be nothing more to say about White Christmas but you've surprised me! I disagree with what Chopin said, I think the surprising harmonic moments some of the best bits. I think the very last chord could be a little bit longer to make the dissonance seem less 'accidental'. My favourite bit in the whole piece though? That little countermelody at 0.53 *Christmas chef's kiss* Great arrangement, well done!

Love your singing, and cool piece, but did you consider there's too much fire in this to be a white christmas?

I like your own personal touches you put into this. The sudden cut off and accented "Christ-MAS" sounds really dramatic and almost operatic. Your voice sounds like a young Ebenezer Scrooge LoL. I don't have any qualms about the tonality. The chord at 15 is a nice modal exchange that leads nicely into the next major chord. The last chord is cool too - a maj7 #11 chord if I'm not mistaken which is like your token favorite chord. Great to hear this Christmas classic set in this unique way!

Uploaded corrections and changes. Considered Gmm's comments, and speed up main theme/a section to 115 bpm. 120 seemed just too rushed. On the other hand, I slowed the intro from 108 bpm to 100. Between the two, the dramatic shift is clearer and the a section "pops" more. This may also help with the sense of running on/variety. That section is now barely a minute. Made some note corrections, improved the transition to the recap., and thickened the texture of the recapitulation a bit. It sounds the same but somehow different now---a little more depth. A few voice leading issues improved. In all, an improvement. Thank you Gmm!

Very well done. Interesting and beautiful harmony, and a really cool idea to layer your voice. There are two points I am not sure about: 15 seconds in, you have an odd key which seems out of place given how beautiful and tonal this choral is. And the final point is the cadence toward the end which concludes in dissonance. Again, about 95% of this song is tonal, so in my opinion, you should keep the entire piece tonal. But aside from the above points, this is very beautiful tonal harmony, and you have some great vocals! What was your process that you used to record and layer your vocals? As far as the audio goes... You know what I will say about your mic quality. If you are going to start recording vocals, you need an xlr condenser mic (no usb please!), and you will need to speak directly into the mic for best quality. Then you will have killer vocals that are crisp! Of course, xlr mics are a bit more on the expensive side, but its well worth it for the higher quality audio output.