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The staff here at Young Composers Forum thought that it was time to lay down some somewhat general guidelines about how members here might qualify to become reviewers and/or judge Young Composers competitions. Here they are: The most obvious thing you can do is to consistently on at least a weekly or bi-monthly basis, impartially and informatively review others works here on the forum! Share your experience about what works musically, your personal musical tastes pertaining to others compositions and any technical features and helpful observations you have! Be able to musically appreciate a diverse set of different musical styles. This does not mean that you subscribe to any particular style in your own compositions, but that you are able to accept each composition on its own merits and according to the composers intent. Being able to appreciate diverse musical styles does not mean that you can't have a certain specialty or niche in which you have gained bonus knowledge and experience. We hope that you'll share those things with the rest of the judging panel as well as your fellow young composers on the forum! That is also the reason why a bigger judging panel will benefit the competition entrants - because they will offer a more diverse set of sometimes convergent and sometimes divergent musical opinions on the submitted music. Be ready to use the following judging criteria to make your reviews more objective: Melodies/ Themes/ Motives Harmony/ Chords/ Textures Form/ Development/ Structure/Time Originality/ Creativity Score/ Presentation Instrumentation/ Orchestration/ Playability Execution of Given Challenge Taste The reason for guidelines 1 and 2 above should be obvious. The staff and your fellow Young Composers need to know how you judge and review other members works and whether you can be relied upon to judge impartially. The guidelines for becoming a reviewer transfer also to becoming a judge for the competitions. Competition judges need to have staff privileges in order to be able to view the (hidden until the competition deadline passes) musical entries to each competition. As Young Composers Forum builds a bigger active staff, some reviewers might not need to judge every competition if they don't have time to review or if they'd rather participate in the competition themselves. (Edit) P.S.: The reviewers and staff are also expected to keep a clear line of communication with each other and daily check their messages both on Young Composers Forum as well as the dedicated staff discord server. Without the ability to communicate promptly with the reviewers of the competition, the staffs confidence that the respective reviewer will properly fulfill their obligations towards the competition is diminished. Young Composers Forum Staff

Thanks everyone for your submissions! The competition is now CLOSED to further entries! Check out the results and awards here: Please check out our "From Bits to Bangers" Competition Satisfaction Survey: Please check out the entries in the submissions thread: To vote for your favorite submissions go to the popular voting polls thread: Starting January, 28th, 2023 and running until March, 26th, 2023 (EDIT: the competition has been extended until April 2nd, 2023) Young Composers Forum invites you to participate in another new and unique music composition competition hosted by @Tónskáld, @PeterthePapercomPoser, @Thatguy v2.0, @Omicronrg9, @Henry Ng Tsz Kiu, and @chopin, all of whom will also judge the competition. In this competition you are given a choice of orchestrating, arranging, re-harmonizing, quoting or writing variations on one of 5 given 8-bit music tracks from old video games which you must listen to in order to extract the musical material relevant to you. The entries will be judged on a scale of 0 - 8 in 8 relevant categories: Pick your favorite 8-bit track and transform it in as many ways as you see fit! Make it into a fully fledged composition according to your skills and strengths! Please note that the judges will give you more points the more elements of your composition are original and not simply copied from the relevant 8-bit track. However, the judges should be able to recognize at some point that your composition is derived in some way from the relevant 8-bit track. Feel free to highlight for the listener where in your score you used the relevant 8-bit tracks' theme by showing them in the pdf, mentioning measure numbers, or giving them timestamps from your mp3. Because there were only 9 submissions, the patrons of the competition have decided to give out a $100 1st place prize only. In order to compete: Your composition must not exceed 10 minutes of music Your composition must include an element of the one relevant 8-bit track of your choosing Any instrumentation or choice of ensemble is allowed No age limit One submission per participant Mp3 submission and score/sheet music pdf required $100 1st prize only Deadline: March 26th, 2023 (extended to April 2nd, 2023) Submissions are to be sent to @PeterthePapercomPoser through direct message with the title of the composition as the subject line. He will post the submissions anonymously in a special contest thread for everyone to listen to and consider. Besides attaching a pdf score (without your name in it) and mp3 rendition of your music consider also including a description of your piece for the judges, fellow competitors and young composers at large to better understand your music. Which 8-bit track did you choose to transform "From Bits to Bangers"? Current Entrants: (reply to this thread in order to enter) @sswave @Left Unexplained @WowBroThatWasReallyEdgy @Ferrum @Setthavat @Nico Fantasy @ComposaBoi @Grey Ross @skvlkin @AlexeySavelyev @DanielCComposer @EthaTrue @MrMule96 @Eickso @bkho @luderart @QRose @telliur Choose which of these tracks you would like to transform "From Bits to Bangers" using any means available at your disposal: (for best results please listen on your computer rather than a phone) If the mp3 player below doesn't work for some reason you can find the 5 8-bit tracks here: https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/1eVpdbmW5CXAJ73XRO9IugDFY5oJYGhDn?usp=sharing

Hey all, I have recently wrote a piece for my first girlfriend, whom is a pianist. Luckily she likes it lol. The motivation of writing a duet is that I am practising a list of duets with her, and I really look forward to make more duet for ourselves in the future. Writing tonal melody for solo violin has been hard for me as highly efficient harmonic and melodic structure is expected, but a duet has eased the task a bit haha. Hope you enjoy it. HoYin

Not much to say about it really. One of a few instrumental solos I've worked on. This was written late last year and set aside to allow time before making final revisions. Listening would be appreciated and comment received gratefully with thanks. https://soundcloud.com/acitore/soliloquy-for-clarinet

Hi Apart from the sound, which is not the best, what I find good here is there's plenty of material, perhaps too many ideas for this piece. So, I think spending little time on organizing the piece would improve the result. It's not easy, many times we want to be quick...

This is great and could be used (not mandatory) of course for regular comments on compositions. Outside of the contests, it can even be evaluated qualitatively such as "what I like the most", "I like the least", etc...

This sounds fun! And I immediately was inspired by one of the tracks when I checked them out, so I'm in for sure!

The organ piece is nice. But you have these very short motivic ideas/cells that make it hard to build anything substantial out of. With the kind of motives you use you'd be better off trying to write little inventions with them. That would entail using the motives more contrapuntally and getting rid of all the block chords. And the block chords in this organ piece also have scarcely any musical meaning in your piece. They don't build tension or serve any kind of formal purpose to lead into the next section or anything. If it were my piece I would take the following ideas: and and develop them contrapuntally in a more Baroque style. The rest of the material seems like it's just filler. The movements in your symphony are all really short. The first movement is dying for some kind of secondary dominant, augumented 6th chord, or modal exchange to spice up the completely Bb major material. The third movement is perhaps my favorite here. In measure 51 you have a cross-relation between the Flutes C# and the French Horns concert C natural. Also, in measure 54 beat 3 - those chromatic notes don't really make any melodic or harmonic sense to me. They might have made sense if leading to a D (as part of a A7 chord - a secondary dominant of V) but that's not what happens. The last movement is a bombastic fanfare-like finale that overbearingly emphasizes the Bb - F alternating 4th. Usually 4ths can be used quite copiously in classical symphony finales. But here you use that 4th exclusively as the main motivic idea of the whole movement which is kinda monotonous. Hopefully this isn't too harsh - I like that you're trying to put out more substantial works by grouping movements together though. Thanks for sharing.

In my opinion, the arrangement of string is faulty and I definitely won’t keep it for the full orchestration, but I appreciate that you love it. I might remove the intro section or rewrite it entirely. The only reason I included it was for symmetry. Ooo, that’s a very nice idea. Thanks for the suggestion. I think that a real performance would balance this better, but I’ll make dynamics more precise just in case. I’ve already said this in another reply, but it was supposed to be abrupt, but I will try to prepare it better. Also, thanks for the tempo note. No need to apologise! It’s very true. I think varying the orchestration and accompaniment would fix it. Thanks for the compliments of the programmatic writing. This (2nd mov) is one of the better movements in my opinion. At the time I was scared to write something contrapuntal for too long because I didn’t think myself competent, but I will definitely extend it now that I am more confident in myself. That’s a fun coincidence lol. Thank you. I’m very excited to orchestrate this part! I appreciate it and I agree that this is one of the better movements. Ok. I will see what I can do. The biblical story doesn’t really specify if anything else happened during the 3 days. Also, I think I should also make more clear what the 3 marches are. The first march starts at m. 47 the second at m. 122 and the third at m. 211. Ok. I’ll prepare it better. I honestly didn’t even realise it was abrupt. Thank you! I think it does too. Yeah. I think I should do it more often. I wrote that first for piano. I think I was 13 at the time, but I’m very happy with the melody. I think that making the repeats vary more will definitely help, thanks for your suggestions. Thanks. I’m very happy with the programmatic writing of this movement (5). I will be sure to transition those prts better. Thanks. To me, I think the counterpoint is not great, hence me calling it mediocre. I really appreciate that you thought the end hymn beautiful. I’m emotional when I listen to it myself and it makes me very proud of myself. And I agree, the transition to it is poorly done. I think I could do better now though. I’m glad that you think the themes are memorable! Just a careless mistake. Thanks for catching that. I agree. I think the briefness is refreshing. I’m pretty happy with the effect the timpani gave. Ok, I’ll fill those out more. Thanks for the suggestion. I’m glad you noticed the motif and that you enjoyed it. That is the greatest compliment I have ever received, and from the bottom of my heart I thank you. My wish as a composer is that someone in the world would enjoy my music the same way I enjoy the music I listen to. Also, I agree about the slurs. Thanks for the suggestion. Thank you so much for taking the time to review my music! I mean, you spent about 7 days doing that and I really appreciate it. 😊

I think this is the crucial thing! Basically we should be appreciative to all the posts here. But by reviewing I hope I can bring some reflections to the conposer whether the level of the reply is high or low. I would like to quote a Chinese proverb: Better to teach someone to fish than to give him a fish. Of course it would be great to have a self-reflective member here, but I hope that I can give my fellow members something to think of, like different approaches, angles etc. If I totally love a work I can vow out my love as well as I say what do I find great in this piece. I think that's the responsibility of the judged, but as the judging person we can try our best to review first. Whether the judged agree, disagree, reflect or not, that's his or her concern. Even parents cannot control what their children think, and art is really about taste, so it can be difficult. Art, as Kant noted, is subjective but human beings want to claim objective. We all have our unique taste and I think to speak out with your own unique voice and review under your own unqiue approach can benefit the composer and the forum as well. After all more different types of approaches, even if they are contradicting with each other, will be much better than none. It's their own job to utilize this great forum. If thet cannot use this forum well it will be their loss. For me everytime I review I learn something from othrers and stimulate my thinking. I always love your reviews, since yours are always reasonable, honest and supportive. Every members like you will be treasured! Henry

Hi @hw1234, I am so happy you try to develop your materials! For me b.1-58 is formally a successful exposition of a sonata form! You build up the first subject in G minor and successfully modulate to Bb major in b.19. You achieve a perfect cadence in b.56-58 to end the exposition successfully! You have at least recycled your material, instead of having them appeared to be disappeared, e.g. the triplet figure in b.23 appears in b.49, repeated notes in b.5 appears in b.31. You can try to do that more! This will make the music even more coherent! Of course there are many details that can be added, but I am really happy that you try to extend and develop your music!! Bar 59-70 for me is a minuet movement, while b.71 to the end should be the finale. You can consider working on all those elements to work on a multi-movement symphony! Thanks for sharing! Henry

The figured bass is there since this is Baroque-tragedy piece; sort of like Bach's BWV 4: Christ Lag in Todesbanden Sinfonia. As for the last two measures, I just forgot to write in the figures, lol. Also, this piece has dynamic markings because I also forgot to hide them in Musescore before uploading the video, haha