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It's that time again! Time for another Young Composer's Musical Composition Competition and thanks to @TristanTheTristan who has instigated this poll! There are a few things we'd like the members to help us determine (and to help gauge the level of interest in another competition): 1) What should the competition be about? To write background music for one of @chopin 's Retry Bro's YouTube videos. Explanation: @chopin has a new YouTube channel! It's called Retry Bros. and consists of him playing Super Mario Maker levels and coming up with entertaining narration from Mario, Luigi, Princess Peach, Bowser, and other assorted characters. There's also a musical element. So far, Mike has come up with some clever lyrics and used AI to make realistic sounding songs that go along with the video. Now, where you would come in is that you'd be writing background music for one of @chopin 's new videos! To write some kind of autobiographical piece with a paragraph describing how the music portrays the autobiographical material. This one is @UncleRed99 's suggestion. The idea is to "write a piece that simply tells a story about your life, and something meaningful within it. Utilize complex elements to express emotion, tension, or any other desired emotional or mentally relatable expression. Provide a brief summary describing the root of the story being told." @Thatguy v2.0's proposal is for everyone to write a piece about their home landscape. This theme could be called "Landscapes - Soundscapes." @Henry Ng Tsz Kiu bestowed his theme proposal to me so I decided to include another theme in the options: "Sound Mimesis - Acoustic Anatomy". The idea is to use the instruments at your disposal to mimic sounds in your natural environment (although the sounds don't technically have to be created by nature - they could definitely be artificial sounds, but should be mimicked by acoustic instruments). My own idea is for the members to write M&M&M's - Mock-ups, Mash-ups and Medleys. The idea is for the members to take 2 or more preexisting themes from different genres of music and to make mash-ups and Medleys with them. 2) What kind of ensemble should the competitors be free to choose to write for? Solo piano/keyboard or solo polyphonic instrument (such as guitar or harp) One monophonic instrument accompanied by one polyphonic instrument Choice of mixed trio/quartet/quintet of individual instruments Chamber orchestra (string orchestra) Full orchestra 3) How many months should the competition span? (1 month, 2 months or 3 months) The duration of each piece should once again be between 3 - 7 minutes. Reviewing the entries will once again be spearheaded by the members/competitors at large. You are free to use the Official Competition Reviewing Template or you can review the entries in any way you see fit or create a template of your own making! There will be tiered "Ardent Reviewer" badges given out for this event: Featherweight Reviewer - for reviewing 33% of the entries submitted to the event Welterweight Reviewer - for reviewing 66% of the entries submitted to the event Heavyweight Reviewer - for reviewing 100% of the entries submitted to the event We are instituting a policy of not allowing any AI generated works in the competition. Because of this you will be required to detail how you created your piece and submit a PDF score or midi file for the perusal of the staff and members at large.

Hello @Marek , I see, that you have joined the forum recently and now at the first topic you have the fortune – or even the evil – that you’ve received a very detailed review which is not only intended as suggestion on the improvement of your particular piece but useful to all other members in this forum. So I could imagine, that there will be many replies on this topic in the future – perhaps a discussion or even a little dispute about the issues MK_Piano pointed out, especially on engraving. So there is my advice, take that serious, but not personal. I remember on a topic by Frederic Gill where some members had (their own) conversation about details he surely had not in mind and finally was a bit overwhelmed and „overteached“, so that I was a bit afraid he would be too disappointed and would leave the forum at all. Therefore, I now come first to your music, where I only speak from my listening impression: I can really imagine a shore in the morning where the fog is slowly lifting and the sun comes on shining through the clouds. It’s a very calm and serene moment, in which the perception of time seems to be gone away. After you’ve walked an endlessly seeming time at the shore, you turn your head and look back – now discovering the great lighthouse you hadn’t seen before, since it was hidden by the cliffs above, you now have passed. I tell that story to express the sole criticism which I have, and that is the length of the piece in comparison with the things that happen. And in this I can only agree with MK_Piano’s comments on his final pages of the annotated score. Now to the comments concerning engraving: Hello @MK_Piano, thank you for your effort you have put into annotating the score. I think this is helpful not only for Marek, but also to me and many other forum members. There are a few general rules you pointed out which one should follow to achieve a clear score presentation, for example • No dynamics on rests. • Not to prolong notes using ties whenever it is possible to notate otherwise, for example with dotted notes. • No separated rests whenever it is possible to combine them into a larger rest. • No diminuendo to „nothing“ (e.g. unplayable dynamic marks like „pianississimo“). • Some aesthetics (clashing dynamics symbols). And in the examples in that particular score, it is „obvious“ to follow that rules would be a huge improvement. However, as I remember at some of my piano preludes and fugues, there are some situations where I intentionally violated that rules in situations where I find that the score becomes more readable when using tied notes instead of dotted ones or when separating longer rests and put the shorter against the notes of the same length in another voice – to mention some examples. I don’t want to go into detail with this at Marek’s thread here, so I would ask you whether I could discuss that topic with you in the future, for example when I’m about to present that respective pieces here on the forum. One advice I can really emphasize, is to maintain two different scores. One as the „printing“ score to be used for playing from, and one solely for the purpose of recording in your software. I do so with all of my pieces, and the „recording“ score is full of exaggerated articulations, dynamic marks and even micro tempo changes to achieve a satisfying, more realistic recording result wherein I can express my ideas about the interpretation.

This score was conceived on the idea of building a chord using an interval pattern built as: Root (Any note) > Perfect 5th > Perfect 5th (from the prev. note) > # Semi Tone > Perfect 5th. I found that this gives you (X)min9 every time, regardless of what note you start it on. But built with intervals like this gives it a very wide, open, airy, ethereal sound that I just couldn't get enough of. Additionally, there is some personalized nuance included in the direction and theming of this piece, that is intended to depict a feeling of melancholy, mixed with a sense of hopefulness; It tells a story of losing one's purpose within their life, and struggling to find their way back to a specific goal again. I am having a difficult time sticking myself to a certain structure/form, and struggling to find more direction as to where this piece could go... Any suggestions or comments are highly appreciated :) 32468483.mp3 Aurora.pdf

This original piano piece has very simple chords and melody, with the goal to create a soft, intimate and peaceful mood. Yet also with some underlying uplifting feeling and emotion. Simple, with 'stirring' quality if you know what I mean. Hope I achieved that. Let me know. 2019: This is an improvisation I made in 2019, recording live into my DAW without following the DAW metronome. So I had it in midi but measures do not follow a metronome beat. I couldn't record to a metronome anyway because there is much intentional rubato in this piece. 2026: Now I wanted to use a better piano sound and that was easy- just play the midi file with a good piano vst. The piano you hear is the UVI Model D Piano vst playing the original midi file I improvised in 2019 (with some minor note improvements) However what was not easy is creating the score! Which requires quantized notes. So I had a lot of work remaking every measure to have midi notes quantized, not for playing, but for the score. So the score does not play the piano but does show the accurate notes of the midi file that is playing the piano. Comments and suggestions welcome! score available for purchase at: https://www.sheetmusicdirect.com/se/ID_No/1956655/Product.aspx Follow score pdf:

Your charisma is noteworthy 😀 Also... I got a WWE Intercontinental championship belt from the last competition. Winner gets it... but ask Peter, he has it.

I am shocked that you said you are not an orchestration expert! You definitely are an expert for me with your ochestral works posted here! Henry

I am not an orchestration expert, so everything looks very fine to me and is well orchestrated. For the cymbals parts it’s best not to choose a decrescendo on an attack since the decay is already a naturally happening phenomenon. Other than that, I like how the brasses used throughout what you have provided.

liebestraume-no-3 un orchestra.pdfUploading Attachment... I know it's been done before, but I really wanted to try making an orchestral cover for this btw I'm aware that player and tempo markings are a lil weird here, mainly the lack of div. unsi. and player marks for the winds and brass at times, I just didn't bother writing that, as this isn't going to be preformed. feedback would be appreciated :P (unless you're gonna tell me the climax comes too soon, I KNOW) liebestraume-no-3 audio.mp3

I'm creating an absurdist world, where the series link together...so it might be weird if you aren't into that kind of humor lol. But I rely on music to help with storytelling. Here's an example of a musical, but I also started doing mini episodes.

Hello everyone! I‘m very excited looking forward to the next competition I would like to participate. The suggestions concerning the the topic in combination with the instrumentation are very interesting, but also challenging. After a quick look, I’m not really sure yet which topic/instrumentation I would prefer, and which musical idea would best fit for any of them, so I need to take some time thinking about, how to vote in the poll. (Hopefully, I won‘t miss the deadline ...)

That sounds really interesting. Is there a video of @chopin doing something like this that I can watch? I like this idea, as well as the landscape one and the mashup. As for the overall theme, I don’t know—it should be open-ended, right? And as for the duration of the competition, maybe two months at most, so it doesn’t spill over into the next season.

Wonderful suggestions! I am eager to see what this one turns out to be. In my opinion, I wish I voted for two genres as both landscapes or autobiographical writing seems very interesting to me. I do like writing for large orchestra, but for things like this, I find the intimate nature of a chamber group or solo instrument befitting for a few minutes depicting spring. Two months seem very appropriate to start a brand new work and finish it.

On my birthday, I will be in Poland, (again), so I decided to post this impro earlier! Allegro, Rondo. Adagio. Scherzo. Finale. 4 movements on Happy Birthday.mp3

Thank you! I'm glad I was able to capture the intended mood of the overall work. Found the pattern while messing around on my MIDI keyboard the other day, playing with spitfire LABS VST3 piano sounds. Also, if you've seen any of my other works, you'll notice I tend to have a bit of favoritism for open-spelling chords & triplets / tuplets in general. 😅 I like the suggestions for the form, here. I sort of just allowed my ear to guide it up to the point seen in the post. If you have the time, I have an entirely different conceptualized structure written out in a separate score file, that was inspired by some creative liberty granted to @MK_Piano while in a discord call the other day. I will share this new info right here: Aurora-UpdatedVersion.pdf Aurora-UpdatedVersion.mp3

Hello @MichaelJohn A beautiful piece with a calm, serene mood which I very enjoyed to listen! I must say that I did not spend many attention – when reading the score – to the harmonic structure of the piece (as Peter did), because I was really captivated and fascinated about the detailed performance concerning articulation, dynamics and tempo! I would love if every piano piece presented here at the forum had that quality. I especially like the accentuation of the melody which is interwoven in the triplets, so that even if the score looks „simple“, I had the impression that were more voices involved as one could think from a short look at the score. I just did not understand completely your comments how you created the score and recording: The recording is a live recording resulting into a midi file which you have now reproduced with a better piano sound. That’s great, so we know that you are not only able to compose or improvise that piece but also to play it in that intense and expressive quality. But what about the „quantized notes“? I can’t imagine what a software would produce for a „score“ from a live recording with such an amount of rubato, fermatas and accentuation … I’m asking such silly questions since my approach to compose is quite opposite. I first write the notes down (even not as a „paper composer“) but using notation software and produce my score and midi files from that input. And, yes, I’ve always the intention in mind how I would interpret it on the piano. Therefore I always maintain two scores, one to print out and one for the recording with a huge amount of additional articulation, dynamics and time changes to achieve a satisfying recording result. And I must admit, it would a hard work to encode that amount of interpretation you gave your piece!

Hey @Alex Weidmann ! I love this orchestration - you've included lots of clever voice exchanges between the flute, oboe and clarinet that really create a kind of klangfarbenmelodie out of Mendelssohn's original piece. So great job there! I personally like your choices of pitched percussion in this piece - in my opinion the xylophone has too sharp of an attack and brings to mind Saint-Seans' usage in the Danse Macabre where it very effectively symbolizes the dancing of the skeletons and percussive effect of bones hitting the instrument instead of mallets. Vibraphone and glockenspiel are much more mellow and sparkly (respectively speaking) which I think is appropriate for this piece! Thanks for sharing!

In what? We haven't decided what competition we're going to hold yet! LoL

I'm in.

@MK_Piano I am a pianist, I've played the intro for this piece, but I haven't gotten around to play the full thing, as I've only been playing for around a year, so it was a bit much for me.

Excellent Rendition............Just like the Real Thing.

Yes, but not yet as I intended. To clarify my ideas, I have attached a version of your latest score with some annotations. I see that you have marked the notes where the other hand takes over. But the markings (m.g. and m.d.) aren’t very helpful for sight-readers, since the note is still written in the “wrong” staff. Sight-reading is about reading chords and intervals—not individual notes. Whenever a note of a chord or interval is written in the “wrong” staff, the recognition pattern that a sight-reader normally uses to identify a chord or interval is inherently lost, forcing the player to identify a single note and add it to the chord/interval being played, which slows down the process. Consequently, such situations require practice and/or memorization, which contradicts the approach of sight-reading and playing the piece “without practice.” Therefore, I very appreciate scores where the chords/intervals are notated as a complete pattern in that staff where it is to be played by the respective hand. I must admit, that such a score looks sometimes a bit „cluttered“ because of the „kneed beams“ and sometimes cross-staff note stems (producing sometimes problems for the collision resolving with dynamics, slurs etc), but if the player finally makes the respective annotations by hand in its score, the readability is reduced, too. Please do not take my comments as personal criticism of your score; rather, they are intended as general advice or as basis for discussion, since I often come across scores here in the forum—even from very experienced composers—that, while well-suited for analyzing voice leading, leave me with the uncomfortable feeling: “Has the composer ever played this piece himself, and did he pay sufficient attention to its playability?” AnnotatedScore.pdf

It saves on every keystroke while you compose, it's like Google Docs; you can just download your midi file. But if basic composition isn't working for you, it could be a browser bug, so if this is the case, I would need more information about your browser. I've tested Music Jotter with Firefox and Chrome, and it should also work with Safari. Here's another trick...as long as your composition plays back, you know it has been saved, because saving your midi file happens before the playback compiles (behind the scenes).

As smooth as the rolling seas with the fog. -fruit hunter approves! I’m a serious note even with MuseScore basic sounds this sounds amazing. This is definitely a good ballad to program into a concert orchestra and we need more music like this although that I may say that the orchestra is kind of a dying art in itself hopefully in the future change will be made that academic full orchestra’s can be existing and play music by composers and just not arrangers This would sound incredibly beautiful with real instruments or even just muse sounds

Imagine being in St. Olaf Choir, a pretty decent college choir, and having to sing THAT for anyone's birthday...☹️ The St. Olaf Choir - "Ehre sei Gott in der Höhe"

Well, Beethoven practically loved "God Save the King." Best national anthems I am familiar with are the Russian and Canadian. Oh yes; Haydn's Austrian/Nazi/German anthem. Gott erhalte Franz den Kaiser [Imperial anthem][+English translation]

It becomes catchy quickly. I can't sleep after listening to it 15 hours ago.

Absolutely! Form is where the depth of a composition lives! It's really simple. I always put form on graphing paper. Then the fun part in that is when you absolutely commit to form. It's not something you could half bake in music. Form, could exist as smaller compositions within the whole. Don't be afraid to be too violent with transitions. I think the difficult part comes when you try to make things too coherent, which is a viable solution too. But! Form is lost in that lucid 'elision' of notes where they become jumbled together, like melted cheese. On graphing paper, I create arcs of music on a concrete line and divide it mathematically. This also makes it easy to include advanced techniques in beauty such as: phi and the golden section. Try making a musical joke to in the form of ABACADABA. You'll have fun!

Hey guys! So over the weekend I composed the first movement of my composition “Philly”. This first movement takes place is the serene and turbid wold of north western Philadelphia. I remember as a young child living there and walking in the cloud scaped hills, as well as getting lots of donuts and pickles during the weekend. I hope you’ll look into my composition and give me feedback. I’ve already submitted it to a few ensembles which I doubt will perform it but eventually I’d love to get it performed by an ensemble in Philadelphia. Take a listen and a look! Audio: https://drive.google.com/file/d/15NoNQ7O-ghsDeWHVtaEqCI8skRZ8HZYA/view?usp=drivesdk Score: https://drive.google.com/file/d/1ri86LSqV7lzbPePIhvZUfSWYBEHnRsw6/view?usp=drivesdk

Hey @nathanstravinsky! I just finished my annotations and I am here to share! The attached PDF are my comments on your work. You will find a written out summary at the end. To add, I am attaching this 5-minute long YouTube video covering the Harp. I felt it important to make a dedicated video as some moments for the harp in your work were not practical for the instrument. For anyone else viewing this comment, it is a basic introduction to the harp for composers. Find both resources here: https://youtu.be/_Stiy-uh12k?si=luX9YTfy-8DASSxx N. Janco - Philly (ANNOTATED).pdf

Wow yes, absolutely! I have done some shorter text-based scores before, often with a lot of improvisation and have often had these sort of textures in mind, one way or another... But here's a question: How do you approach form or the overall arc of the piece in this process? Asking because it is something I often struggle with myself. -P

I very agree with your approach to create a new piece having a musical idea in mind, if not yet a melody or motif to be used as the main subject, but a rather „technically“ one – here your choice of the interval pattern you described. Even if you did not invent a new chord or a new scale, this is a unique, this interval pattern is a „unique selling point“ of the piece and creates the mood of the piece which is indeed „ethereal“. And with your realization and recording so far, you have really caught this melancholic feeling with the warm timbre of the cello and the soft piano. I especially liked the small details such as the grace notes, the arpeggiated two-note-“chords“ and the triplets. Now, to get the piece continued and finished, I think it’s time to think about the form. Since it is already lengthy and although it has just separate sections, the listener is somewhat lost not exactly recognizing the structure and find out where the climax is. And in that sense it becomes a bit repetitive because there is a lack of contrast to the overall calm and „airy“ mood. Therefore, I would suggest to consider to put the piece, for example, in Rondo form where you could use the existing material for the different A (or A’) sections and there were room to introduce sections with a contrasting mood (in the B and C sections). For such a contrast I could imagine passages with a more dramatic expression or a final, triumphant resolution. Another possibility would be to have a section with a more distinctive and memorable melody (e.g. a „real theme“).

Ya! Sure, thing! It's a very long process to create this music. I love the experience of rasterization, the beginning song sounds NOTHING like the end product. It begins, simply: pen and paper. First, compose the song. Envision it as best as know how. Then becomes the fun part. So, I use Finale to create the sound and score file including Garritan instruments. Once I have the midi, I convert the midi file to a CSound score. From CSound, I also create the instruments, usually heavily inspired by, Kim Cascone! He's wonderful! That's all it is! But, fair warning: the process takes weeks. lol

Hello everyone, I'm back, this is my new piece, hope you like it! Op.9 Nr.2 Spring Symphony.mp3

Thanks Peter. I've been told the harmonies in the bass clarinet with two bassoons sound rather heavy: so I'm going to modify those when I can get round to it. Will try Henry's suggestion of putting the melody in the violins too, for more timbral variety.

Hi and thanks for nice review. I've found that recording to midi while playing an expressive piano piece without following the metronome creates the best result - a live and expressive piano performance. Because if I perform to a metronome the live feel is lost and sounds digital/computer like. But I WANT what I perform/improvise capture to midi anyway so that I have the performance captured as notes. I usually do not create a score with my piano works because of the work involved quantizing by hand every single measure! The printed score needs to be quantized to look correct, and be playable. This piece took hours of manually quantizing every measure to create a correct score. With my pop/electronic/etc music I do create notes in the piano roll to beats like you do. That type music I want played quantized anyway. But not an expressive piano solo piece that is not to played by a metronome. I should be that indication on the score!

I'll try to listen to more of your improvisation, but to hear that gawdawful tune for thirty minutes...

Yes, now it looks fine! The chords and intervals in each hand can be clearly recognized. I would also decide to have the beam nearer to the majority of the notes and adjusting the length of the stems is obviously driven by the means to avoid collisions with the dynamic marks – what you’ve well done in the example. I have also not read „Behind Bars“ and other standard literature concerning engraving. I usually try to follow my aesthetic feeling which has been taught by the good old hand-engraved editions, for example the Mugellini edition of the Welltempered Clavier (Breitkopf & Härtel) which I use to play from. For my note engraving I do not use MuseScore (or other software with a graphical user interface) but lilypond (which has a different approach, you’re typing the score in a sort of „software“ source code in a simple text file and lilypond „compiles“ it to a .pdf and .midi file). However, that might not be everyone’s preference how to work when composing, there is an interesting „essay“ from the lilypond creators concerning what make it so difficult to let scores produced by computer programs look as satisfying as the hand-engraved ones.

Love that!!!

To Beautiful not be scored to Film.

I get it! It's a choral arrangement, similar to the setting my college choir used! No need to worry about hand size. I just put it in piano score because I did it in two minutes.

Thanks! (P. S. On the first beat, second bar, it should be tonic mode on the bass, and also, are you rachmaninoff?)

How very magnificent! It’s quite humble in its build, yet is grand and marvelous! I would just consider opening up your instrumentation, it would be great in a big orchestra.

Hey everyone! I am decided to go ahead and publish my finished works on the forum. I may re-upload some existing works to match this shift, however, let this score mark the second part of this series! No.2 - Ballade for the Dead A Ballade for the Dead was composed for a larger chamber orchestra in 2025 during their call for scores, and unfortunately, did not pass on to the final round of judging. A little defeated, I thought about what to do with the score, and thankfully found inspiration to use it as the first movement of a 3-part suite titled describing the afterlife. It is not yet finished as I am working on the subsequent movements, but am eager to share the start of the project. The pronunciation for the work is meant to be pronounced as the other version "Ballad" instead of "Ballade". I just liked the E better for the spelling 😅. To add, I have found inspiration for a possible choir version depicting the battle between God, Satan and a lonely Priest. Many possibilities to be had! Feel free to leave any comments about the work and I hope to see you all in the next one! (P.S. In my opinion, this work is complete and as of this post, I have no plans to update the score) _______________ PROGRAM NOTE: A Ballade for the Dead is a several-minute long work for chamber orchestra detailing the concept of Death. The piece does not follow a specific storyline, instead, it paints a dramatic and abstract journey through the afterlife. Join the orchestra as they paint the agony, dread, and quiet beauty that might be experienced by a soul as they cross over; whether wandering through Purgatory, facing judgment, or simply drifting beyond, they follow this Ballade of Death. no.7_A Ballade for the Dead.mp3 no.7_A Ballade for the Dead.pdf

Hey @MichaelJohn ! What a harmonically rich, bittersweet piece! It's full of longing and emotion and full of tons of creative harmonic choices. The harmonic identity also seems kind of ambiguous to me. The piece clearly starts in D minor and that's corroborated by the key signature, but you end in F major which is a nice hopeful ending! But I actually feel that most of the piece is in G Dorian. Very interesting - and you use plenty of F add4 chords which I really love the flavor of as a kind of backdoor cadence into G minor. Thanks for sharing this gem and I am grateful that you managed to create a good looking score as I really was able to appreciate the piece much more and deeply with the score. Thanks again!

Hey @MK_Piano ! This is a nice macabre movement. I find that you have a tendency (2:59) to imitate Beethoven's Moonlight Sonata accompaniment - I think you also did this in your Halloween piece. I also recognize the melody that's playing there - I could swear that it's a quote from another Beethoven work - possibly Symphony No.6? I don't know if that was intentional. My overall impression of the piece is that there's definitely identifiable main themes in it - some of them aren't original, and there's also lots of repetition by changing the instrumentation/orchestration of the occurrence of the themes. But I did enjoy listening to this grotesque and dark piece about death! Thanks for sharing!

Happy Birthday Free Sheet Music by Anon for Piano/Keyboard | Noteflight Your piece sounds interesting from a preliminary perusal...one would need a gun to make me write variations on Happy Birthday!🤣

Thanks for the tip!.

Thanks! It was definitely fun to do. I actually been meaning to update this post. After some chat with @UncleRed99 about Cello playability, I simplified the cello part in the third movement for ease. Overall, a good result for at the time was a silly little project. 🙂

No.2 - Ballade for the Dead 1: Oh My God....... This Composition actually has a " MELODY " I thought Melody's were Banned on this Forum. This Melody is DISTINCT , as opposed to OBSCURE, its instantly Recognized when it presents itself. So that is a Major Plus +++++ 2: This Score has a , Beginning-Middle-End that's also very Evident, as opposed to ........ " Where am i in this Composition ? " 3: Overall Feeling & Sound of this Performance is : Main-Stream-Commercial Movie-Score.

Thanks Henry. Mendelssohn is a composer I've neglected until now; although he was apparently a greater child genius than Mozart! I accidentally wrote a few hand clashes in the harp (e.g. Bar 45 on Middle C). Hadn't thought of using xylophone, but will give it a try. I would like to add more for the violins and celli to do: so I think your suggestion is a great idea.