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here is a song I wrote about leaning peaks.

Not a bad miniature. I love seeing people move out of the box and try something new. That said, this style -as you can probably attest- isn't easy to compose in. The removal of a tonal anchor removes formulaic structuring of musical material. We are accustomed to hearing music in terms of t-d relationships, harmony that assumes a purely functional role, and melodic contours that fit interchangeably within the aforementioned musical roles. In writing music like this, there's a few things that I've discovered in my own musical pursuits: 1. It's important to give the listener something to latch onto. Your opening 3 measures lay out 3 distinct motivic units coupled together into a short melodic snippet. This snippet is memorable and definitely something one can look for within your textures. When I compose in this style, I've learned to take these snippets and develop them within the texture. This also allows you to venture further into more eclectic arenas by being able to incorporate diverse styles -almost similar to how composers treated the Theme and Variations form. 2. Some techniques are cliche. I hate using the term cliche when it comes to this aesthetic of music. However, I found that rhythm is one of the easiest facets of music to play around with. You can literally make anything sound amazing with the right rhythmic undertones. Oftentimes, many who write this style of music will over rely on rhythm to compensate for other musical deficiencies. As I mentioned above, you have to keep the listener engaged -and when the other musical facets are difficult to maintain... rhythm is an easy go to. That said, I like the rhythmic punctuation in mm. 23 - 34. I also like that it seemed to play with the descendingmaterial from mm. 10-11. However, it didn't seem to congeal with the remainder of the miniature. It certainly isn't a driving force behind it. Perhaps you can transition into this material or overshadow it in the Lento section? 3. Color, Color, Color! Moving away from tonality removes mostly predetermined colorations to the material. We know that the further away from a tonal center, the more tense the music will get. Adding chromaticism also increases the tension in often colorful ways. In this type of music, 'texture' and 'form' become the tools that you'll want to use to bring life and color to your work. It shouldn't just be dissonant for dissonance's sake (though, believe me, I do write works that have that sole purpose). What I mean is that dissonance is just like any other tool. It's something there to add coloration to your material. The bass line beginning at measure 7 is what brings this point up. The motion here seems to move from an ethereal to plodding manner -that doesn't seem to accentuate the right hand. I'd look at perhaps playing with the right hand material in the left hand. Offsetting rhythms, perhaps gentle punctuations of the offbeat chord, or even just suspended contrapuntal material here would bring out that retrograded material in the right hand. Goal is here to add color to your material that fits the material. I hope these points help. I'd love to see you do more of these and try to push your envelope further in this aesthetic. Nice foray!

Hi, nice piece. For me the form is clear: ABA. The contrasting part at 3:08 is good. Also, I find it tonal... Good work.

Nice romantic opening! Later it becomes a struggle and resolved beautifully! Definitely nice harmony and colour! Nice balance of the parts too!

Awesome harmonies, love the mix too. You have a flair for color, and this is drenched in it. So this is part of a suite, right? Multi-movement so I get to hear more of this type of stuff from you?

I'm a bit late to the party, but I can never resist this conversation. I'll preface my opinions by saying that I have pop music on in the background as I'm writing this. I would choose to listen to classical music over pop music 99% of the time. This is for a number of reasons, some of which have already been said. I think that the melodies in tonal classical music are far more interesting than those in pop music. They are more creatively written, scaffolded by what I find to be far superior harmony and counterpoint. Listen to any Rachmaninoff piano prelude (23/4 and 23/10 are gems among gems for counterpoint) or just any short classical piece and it's plain that classical music accomplishes more in the same amount of time as a pop song's length. On the other end of length, when I've had this conversation (classical v. pop) with my friends, one of their biggest gripes is how long-winded classical music is. That a symphony can be longer than an hour long seems to be an utterly foreign idea--"Surely you get bored listening to anything for that long!" Actually, not really. I find that the tendency of classical music to be longer than pop music allows for so much more possibility and variety that a skilled composer can manipulate so well that I listen engaged for the entire hour-long symphony. Thematic development, something pop music lacks the time to execute thoroughly, is necessary to a good piece. But even where pop music could have some degree of thematic development, we still get to hear the same identical chorus three times. I recently discovered Liszt's Harmonies poetiques et religieuses. What he does with the melodic material of the Benediction de Dieu dans la solitude for 18 minutes is amazing. Each time the A theme returns, it's different. This is rarely the case in pop music. I think the harmonies in classical music are more engaging than those in pop music. To say nothing of the typical four-chord progression, I find the other harmonic elements to be very boring. Someone said something about how a good songwriter must have a skilled grasp of voice-leading. While one would assume that to be the case, I find that in practice, there is little proper voice-leading in pop music. The harmony, it seems, nearly always consists of a whole bunch of parallel fifths. Disregarding voice-leading errors, this means that harmonic devices as simple as chord inversions are few and far between. Even Classical period harmony is more interesting than that. Classical music is more performance-focused. This is kind of out there, but I wanted to give more reasoning than just pure musical content since that's what's been happening elsewhere in the thread. Have you ever listened to a good pop song and then googled it to find that the singer isn't a performer? Maybe that's something that just drives me crazy? Or if there is a performance, it seems that it's always performed in a key in a more comfortable range. I'm not talking about all of the pop musicians who tour and give live performances and want to make that clear. It seems that there are more and more pop musicians who only make studio recordings and rely on autotune and editing magic to make a good song. Can you imagine if Lugansky or Argerich or some orchestra used editing to fix the wrong notes in their recordings? Scandal would ensue. In the classical world, it's always been perform first, and then record second [if you are famous enough that people will actually listen to your recording, haha], and I think that standard helps ensure quality. In the pop world, it's the other way around and so anyone who wants to can make a simple pop record. I for one vastly prefer a live concert, whether classical or pop, to a recording. I'll refrain from commenting more on this. I tried to avoid the elusive conclusion that pop or classical is better than the other and just discuss why I prefer classical music. Hopefully I was marginally successful. Lastly, yes--I think it is ridiculous that people are criticizing that author for his passion for classical music. Besides acknowledging that people are entitled to their own opinions and that there is nothing remotely harmful about shouting from the rooftops about how much one likes classical music, it all just comes down to personal taste. I've been glorifying classical music, but I like pop and rock and all of the others too (just not as much, haha).

I think this is a very cleverly constructed piece. You paint a vivid picture with your tone colours. Reminds me more of Scriabin I think, rather than Debussy, due to the dissonance. Is this you playing? It sounds like a recording rather than a midi rendition.