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Parking lot, parking lot, You are what all I've got Please give me a shot And don't act like an AI bot!

This is my first attempt (excluding some best-forgotten teenage stuff) at writing a concerto. The style is my own blend of Classical and some early Romanticism and perhaps a dash of Baroque, but I wrote for the modern valve trumpet. Admittedly, the tessitura may be a bit high, frequently going up to the 8th and occasionally the 9th harmonic. Any comments or feedback would be most appreciated!

Fantastic. You took the exercise to the extreme without compromise. Everything is vertical structures. But the sound is very consistent throughout and captures the interest. By the way, that book by Persichetti is wonderful.

It's good to see how others organise themselves. The idea of working on the sketch in three staves or more, depending on the volume, is great. Perhaps in a future project I will try to do the sketch for solo piano, as the intention is not so much to imagine orchestral colours as to establish the structure, parts, climax, harmony and rhythm.

Hi @Aiwendil! I will review your Concerto a movement a time. This one is for sure very high spirited Classical Concerto reminds me of Mozart and early Beethoven. The energy and motion is very driving throughout the whole movement, motives very coherently used and the opposition between C major and minor is well noted, and the double exposition structure for a classical Concerto is well manage. The modulations within the development add much variety to the harmonic colour, and the interplay between other instruments is lovely. The modulation to F# minor in b.236 is a pleasant surprise to me!, it’s a great way to create crisis before resolving it in the cadenza. Just one question, will you add a concluding trill to signal the end of the cadenza? Thx for sharing! I will review the remaining movements. Henry

With the accelerando it sounds like Mario music, but later on it sounds like Prokofiev with those dissonances!

I knew that didn't look right...really, after 38 years, writing an impossible violin chord! I can forgive myself for an unplayable guitar chord once in a while...

Thank you!

The chord would have to be played by splitting and with your inversion, only A5 and D6 with be played as the final chord and leave a barer sound. With F#5 and D6 it definitely sounds fuller!

Why not write with A4, F#5 and D6?

I have heard that JW does use 8 staves, too @PeterthePapercomPoser. Writing out a sketch would help me. I am slowly learning orchestration (Adler's Tome is a lot to take in). My recommendation would be: master piano writing! 🙂

I've now moved on to Chapter 4 of Persichetti's "20th Century Harmony" which is about quartal chords. The prompt for this one was "10. Extend the following string-quartet opening. Feature pentatonic melodic and quartal harmonic writing." Thanks for listening and I'd appreciate any comments, suggestions, critiques or just observations!

Hi @Luis Hernández! I personally use different numbers of staves to sketch things out for orchestra depending on how far I am in refining my material, what my needs are or how big the orchestral forces I'm sketching out are going to be. If I'm sketching out for a string orchestra I usually don't need more than 3 staves (treble clef, alto clef and bass clef). If I'm expanding the string orchestra sketch for a bigger orchestra I use 6 - 8 staves: 3 staves for the strings, 2 for winds, 2 for brass, and 1 for percussion. Finally, if the score is really complex I will write things out for a full orchestra partiture upwards of 16 staves. But I rarely use just a 2 stave piano score for an orchestra - for me it's too small. I've heard that John Williams uses 8 staves when he sketches out his film scores. Great topic!

I've written yet another piece prompted by an exercise from Persichetti's "20th Century Harmony"! This one is for 2 Clarinets and 2 Bassoons. The prompt is: "Extend the following passage for two clarinets and two bassoons." I tried to make an actual piece of music out of it instead of just a harmonic exercise, but let me know what you think! Thanks for listening and I'd appreciate any comments, suggestions, critiques or just observations!