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Hey everyone, Just wanted to share a piece that I recently finished. If you'd like some context and a musical breakdown, feel free to pop out the spoilers; if not, have a read/listen and let me know what you think. I'd like to get some feedback on this before I polish up the score!

Yeah! Right now I'm interested in folk music and general ethnomusicology in China, so I've been composing based on the style and folk themes of Chinese music. I'm also a big fan of the Dorian mode. Typically my music is very programmatic since my composition experiences have been with ballet. My most recent work would be Coral Astronauts, a string quartet + ballet that uses a blend of cotemporary and folk techniques -

Hi @jeteren and welcome to the forum! I love the soundscape - this piece brings to mind Eastern calligraphy/landscape brush paintings. It's of course also a great depiction of the eponymous peacocks. The pentatonic scales helped to bring your programmatic content across nicely. I just realized that it doesn't ever modulate and uses the same exact scale throughout the whole duration of the piece. But you do bring much musical interest through varying all the other elements of the music such as tempo, orchestration and voicings. I would be interested to hear what you can do with more than one scale - do you compose using other sonorities/modes as well? Thanks for sharing!

I enjoyed your thematic development and variations. The work is very cohesive as well as being quite lovely with a precise well balanced orchestration. 🥰 Mark

Hello, It is quite lush. I like that it is not overwritten. This looks like it would sound good with a real orchestra. My favorite parts were the times you went for a big contrast. There was one moment everything got loud, when the piccolo joined in, that was especially powerful. You do a good job changing up the aural environments you put this simple melody, which allows the work to convey some unique feelings. This is something I used to do in my works a lot, and I personally love using motifs to give certain sections of music a new meaning. - Evan

Based on the attached painting. This piece represents the stone through two different textural motifs. The first is the block chords, sparse yet rigid. Their fleeting nature resembles how the paintings appear on the rocky canvas, how they almost develop from the stone itself. As you glance over the wall, the art appears, and just as quickly disappears back into the rock. The second motif, the meandering fifths, represent the fluidity of the rock, the way the wind has shaped it into resembling something liquid, giving this solid structure movement. The two textures intertwine and interrupt each other, until they collapse into a wash of tumultuous arpeggios. Out of this tempest the final section emerges- while the texture resembles the first stony motif, the chords are stacked fifths, which calls to the second, fluid motif. Rather than interrupting and contrasting each other, they have learned to cooperate, and they slowly dissipate, together, into meditative silence. The two motifs are referenced through the impossible title: "Flowing Stone".

I actually didn’t know that! Thank you!!