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I have to post this now because I need time to collect submissions, then create the video. The rules for this challenge are VERY simple: This is not a "Music Jotter" challenge. Use your usual software. Any instrumentation. Length of piece doesn't matter. Just keep in mind for those who write long pieces, I can't audition the entire 20 minute piece 😅 Create something that reminds us of Halloween. This goes up on YouTube! I might rank the pieces from least scary to most scary, or least Halloween-like to most Halloween-like. Or, I might just talk about what elements make up this type of atmosphere. It depends on the types of submissions I get! Due Date: October 1, 2024

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!

Bécquer refers to the genius mind as a dusty harp in a dark room waiting to be played.

Thanks for your comments @PeterthePapercomPoser! Yeah, bringing audio up to the right volume seems to be a persistent issue with me, especially with tracks and YouTube videos. I usually err on the quieter side in case I blow somebody's eardrums, so hopefully I've corrected the MP3 to be more audible this time around. I'm also glad that the ending and my predilection for ii-V's stood out to you. I indeed tried to make the first and second themes avoid the tonic for as long as possible, mainly to douse the music in some forward momentum and partially because it sounds good. The fact that the second theme modulates from its tonic I to a cadence pointing towards the supertonic was entirely by accident when I was writing it, so when it came to the coda I needed to find a quick fix to move everything back into F major. Naturally, D7 → Gm7 ↔ C9 came easily enough; however, I did want the last two chords to almost blend together into a harmonic cloud of smoke so that quick ii-V alternation melts away. Once I get around to recording it I'll be sure to post a reply to this post!

Hi @Jqh73o! Thank you but if you have some extra observations about the music, they're very very welcome! Agree! But indeed, it's to make sure that Noteperformer plays the way I want. Human performers would need a fraction of those markings. About the double markings for the two hands, that's my issue with Sibelius, often times if I try to use one marking in the middle, it only affects one stave, or if I try to change the dynamics of one stave, it changes both. So I end up overnotatting both staves. Word. I need to add those! Yes, that is a great suggestion. When I have some time I'll do it with older scores and with this one when it's closer to definitive... which might be a while! Thank you very much for taking the time to listen and comment, Manuel!

Thanks for the suggestions @Henry Ng Tsz Kiu. The episode was indeed strangely composed (it was more like a sketch, in some ways). I used the same melodic ideas but changed the whole episode so now the counterpoint is much better and fuller. Thank you! I agree but also disagree. I agree that experimenting with well established forms or techniques while claiming that your experimentation is automatically, just by experimentation, as artistic and tasteful as the canon is a mistake. However, I believe everyone can experiment with anything as long as their experimentation is non-serious and not claiming to be establishing a new artistic accomplishment. I agree that for being artistically experimental (in other words, for doing experimental art) one needs to learn the techniques properly, and to properly distance themselves from the mainstream of those techniques in artistic and tasteful ways. But I do think that anyone can (and at times they probably should) play around with well-established techniques (regardless of how many years old they are) even before they excel at those techniques, just for the sake of playing and investigation. Of course, only doing that while never studying the techniques properly is where the problem lies. The problem is caused when someone never learns the techniques of the past properly and are always composing in superficial ways based on those techniques while claiming that what they do is incredibly artistic and valuable. Thanks for your comment since it gave me motivation! I wanted to learn fugue properly from long time ago but, since I know fugues are really complex both to compose and to play, I was delaying that as I did not feel my piano skills were good enough to studying and playing fugues at the piano. Thanks to your comment I was inspired to start that long journey. So I started learning my first prelude and fugue from the Well-tempered clavier and studying counterpoint in a systematic way, so in many months (or years) from now maybe I can write a nice piano fugue that I can even play myself! Thanks, @Luis Hernández!

I think the tritone leap can work if the other voices can work around it, and I think the first answer was harmonised well Actually the first answer is easy to change into a tonal answer, just use CDCBbA instead of DEbDCBb, the rest of the answer can stay the same and I think @chopin might still actually be interested in this if you are to submit it, but it's up to him

Those kind of doublestops can start to sound better at at least mp dynamic imo though still technically quite difficult (edit: and personally only I don’t feel like it’s worth the trouble but I’m not authoritative in this regard by any means) its just in your last version I saw them in pp lol

I need to find some pieces where I can hear various winds glissando-ing. This is one, but the glissando is only at the very end. https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=H32bC-bKx6A&pp=ygUYVGlzY2hlbmtvIHRvIG15IGJyb3RoZXIg

Well, there's the "problem". All of us, or very many of us, have had this happen to us. You can't do something "experimental" on a basis that is 600 years old or something else. It's going to sound bad, for sure. To be experimental, you have to distance yourself from the mainstream.

40 british pounds a week? God that's kind of expensive, no wonder you're a STARVING MUSICIAN, HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA.