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This is my second piece from the Spring Trilogy, April. It is the most easy-going of the cycle. It begins as a gentle waltz but it gets more energetic and drammatic. After a short recapitulation the piece ends surprisingly in dark contrast between bright pizzicatos and low, murky tremolos of the cello.

Hell yeah brother

How about we just ban AI and trust that people are honest, and if people find out that it's AI, they get temporarily banned. This way, people will be afraid to post AI content and not post any.

I don't think we should be Draconian about policing this. I think the policy should be no posting music composed by AI, but I really think it would be a mistake to start policing and interrogating every post and assuming it's AI until proven otherwise. If there are indications that a piece might be AI (e.g. no score provided, telltale signs of Sonus, posted by someone with no prior history on the forum, etc.), then it makes sense to inquire further into it. But demanding proof of authorship from every composition would be a drastic overreaction to an issue that has, as far as I'm aware, only actually cropped up once here so far. I'm against AI compositions on the forum, but I'd rather waste my time once or twice giving useless feedback on an AI composition than chase real people who are posting real compositions off the site.

As far as the 3rd part of this poll, If we decide to regulate, I think requiring / encouraging the composer to give some insight about how they composed the piece, and their motivations of the composition should be enough.

As someone involved in education, AI has been a hot topic. I have a pragmatic view that AI, for good or bad, is ubiquitous in our society so it is better to control how it is expressed in the forums where you can set explicit guidelines and consequences for abuse rather than ban it entirely and have it go underground. I would advocate creating a dedicated subforum for AI music and be clear that AI music must be declared as such can only be submitted/discussed there and a clear policy that violating these guidelines can lead to suspension or banning from the site. Also in the end, if someone wants to pass of AI music (or any other creative endeavor as their own), it's really hurting them more so than others. They are not improving their creative process so any praise/feedback is hollow and meaningless. At least it's not stealing someone else's work and passing it off as your own (which has happened to me). I am of the mind that AI generated art in all forms will always be inferior to human efforts so in the end who really cares?. If AI every got to the point there were really think it is on par or superior to human effort, well, then great since a masterpiece is a masterpiece (I am just doubtful that AI will ever be able to achieve this).

Just make some things. The making will lead to questions, and the combination of the questions, and the practice making will make you better over time. Don't be afraid to get started. Don't expect to be any good. You WILL be bad at this, because you have never done it before, so go ahead and start and just have fun! We call it "playing" music, so play! 🙂

Did you ever have any music theory lessons? How old are you? I started by improvising on the piano and then writing down these improvisations. During my intermediate school studies I was intensely studying harmony and counterpoint from 16th to 19th century theory. I learned the use of instruments by arranging numerous popular pieces - I had a band with a flute, clarinet, violin, trumpet and trombone players. They were not advanced players but sufficient enough to learn how to late compose for these instruments. If I were young today, I would recommend anybody to start with arrangements and harmonizations of folk pieces or children pieces. Initially to use basic functions of tonality (tonic, subdominant, dominant, followed by supportive functions of IInd, IIIrd and VIth chord of the key, and then beginning to venture outside the single key).

Just begin composing. Don't wait to "feel ready" 🙂 You can start for free using Musescore and read scores (highly recomended) on imslp a long with youtube for audio. Start learning how to read scores with some basic music theory. find a teacher or teach your self. Then post the scores here on the forum for feedback. That a lone can take you far with some patience. Just focus on small improvements constantly every day! Good luck! 🙂

This is my "Three Sententiae for Glissotar, Op. 386", a piece I composed last year. The glissotar is a newly invented instrument that is a version of the Hungarian woodwind instrument "tarogato" but with the distinction that the notes are not determined by holes as in most woodwind instruments but, as in string instruments, by pressing the fingers anywhere in the range; and glissandos are possible. I had to create a new soundfont for it in order to be able to make this mp3 version. I have provided a description of 'sententia' as well as of 'glissotar' on the title page of the score.

Hello everyone, I am new to this website. I am an amateur composer and would like to share a piece with you that I composed last year. Any feedback is appreciated. MK

I've moved on to Chapter 6 of Persichetti's "20th Century Harmony" which is about secundal chords and clusters. The prompt was "1. Harmonize the following melody for string trio using chords by seconds." Thanks for listening and I'd appreciate any of your comments!

This would be a very Haydnesque effect! I can never forget how he delibrately asked the strings to mistune their strings while sustaining a chord: (Begins at 23:17) Also the ending of the Farewell leaves me like WTF lol

@Henry Ng Tsz Kiu Thank you so much for your thoughtful reviews of each movement! I'm glad you mentioned the timpani solo - I thought it would be amusing if, when the orchestra sets up the cadenza with its 64 chord, the timpanist suddenly decides that they're the soloist and starts playing a timpani "cadenza" before the trumpet gently nudges them aside and proceeds with the real cadenza. I could even imagine a bit of stagecraft where the trumpeter gives the timpanist a "what the hell?" look and maybe the conductor pretends to try to get their attention and make them stop. Anyway, I'm glad you liked the concerto. It's certainly one of the better pieces I've finished, in my opinion.

Coming back from the dead just to vote on this. The core of any artform is the creative process, and the use of genAI to generate music is anti-process. It focuses instead on the result, and advertises itself as a "facilitator", a "helper", or something to remove the "hassle" of the process. It misses the point that when passion is involved, the creative process is a hassle that one ultimately enjoys. There is no art without passion, and all genAI does is vomit results to the passionless. A creative process comes about through the passionate development of a skill, and it fosters further understanding of said skill. The result is one particular target of a process at a given point in time: it comes about as the inevitable conclusion of a process. This decades-long shift of focus to the result is what makes genAI seem legitimate, because it's the endpoint of a logic that defines art as the object instead of the craft. It's made of the same cloth as the commodification of art, and the reduction of everything to "content." It's a corporate point of view, which can't conceive of art in any other way, and only seeks to expedite what it wrongly perceives to be nothing but a very slow assembly line. I am a composer because I know how to make music, and I learned how to make music by making music. A prompt engineer did not learn how to make an illustration, they learned how to tell a particular machine to do so. One could argue that prompt engineering is a craft, because it isn't absent of human involvement. But where it fails is in never being directly responsible for the result. With genAI, nothing about how to directly reproduce the result is learned because there's no process involved, only instructions by proxy given to a glorified blender. What differentiates genAI from art is the absence of a skillful process directly related to the object. Therefore, the point, and what makes one anything from a hobbyist to an artist, is the process. It just so happens that one cannot go through the process without inevitably coming to a result, which informs more process, and so on and so forth. That's how an artist grows.

Thanks very much! The Hummel concerto (as well as the Haydn) was very much in my mind when I was writing this. It took me a little over a month to compose this; I think I started it in early November and finished mid-December. I have no contacts at all in the music world, so no, I'm afraid there's no way this would ever be performed.

I never read books on my shelf lol!!!

Hello beautiful souls, firstly I want to tell you I love listening to music. When I listen to a piece of music, I wonder what the inspiration of the composer behind it is. I want to know if all this talent is god gifted or we make it with practice. I want to pursue music composition as my new hobby, can you please guide me through how I can start? It’s not like that I know nothing about music as I used to play guitar and piano in my college days but I’m not remember that much now and yes please consider me as a complete beginner. Thank you.

I have already uploaded March and April from my Spring Trilogy, here is the finale, May. Since this month is traditionally rainy in Slovenia, the beginning has some features of rain with various aleatoric timbre playing on orchestra, while cello brings the initial melodic motif with its various transformations. Music becomes more "down to earth", more energetic and passionate. It continues to bounce between these two contrasting characters and ends with cellist playing improvised harmonics of a basic tone of c with unisono violins and violas while lower strings play some low ranged aleatoric pizzicatos.

I have moved on to Chapter 7 of Persichetti's "20th Century Harmony" which covers polychords. The prompt for the piece was "4. Extend the polychordal passage for piano:" Thanks for listening and I'd appreciate any of your comments!

HI @PeterthePapercomPoser I can tell you are enjoying these exercises! I love how you use the harmonic and melodic motives that he presented thorough out the entire piece. I think we need to have something like this for YC challenge. 🙂

Thanks! It's a bit of a lighter finale, like that of the Hummel trumpet concerto or of some Beethoven concerti, which I thought was needed after the long and serious adagio.

Kirby's Epic Yarn - Weird Woods

Very enjoyable finale! I like how you let up tension, but tension is still there; you don't let up. Does that make sense? Probably not, but this would have rocked Vienna in the 1790s.

Wow, a lot to digest... About bar 16. I guess I was sloppy not to add crescendo to basses. About mixing sharps with flats: I prefer diatonic intervals to diminished even if the vertical structure looks strange, I guess for practical reasons (for example, this always happens when harp is used). Beam over rests: from my experience, it depends what type of metre is used. I try to properly control the beaming but sometimes it looks a bit rough. Still, we are used to such notation at the ear and rhythm training sessions. 🙂 I usually don't add extra bowings, unless I am 100% in necessity for the specific articulation. Maybe I am a bit more aware of the bowing since I have a daughter who plays double bass. 🙂 Anyway, thanks for the comment. You really pointed out specific situations which made me take some extra peeks in the score. 🙂

Anything I say isn't gonna be very useful, since you've clearly gotten a performance of it, so it's obviously “good enough,” but I'll throw some stuff out. What an interesting piece, here. It has some very Barber cello concerto-esque vibes, mixed with almost a little bit of Meyer's violin concerto? I love the harmonic language you used throughout and it's very refreshing to see some good string writing. I really liked the transition back to the opening material: I love cascade effects because I'm a normie, but it's used really well here to bring us back to the original register too, which is clever. I think the only real musical note I have is just wanting to hear a little more textural variation. Like, I think the upper strings are homophonic with each other essentially the whole time, which is admittedly a nice split from the full homophony of the intro/ending material, but it feels like—especially at big moments—there could have been some more counterpoint. I have a few score nitpicks, like sometimes your markings that feel like they should apply to the whole group aren't done so (e.g., cresc. in bass in m. 16, mp for cello in m. 17). Bass note spacing issue in m. 73, etc. I was very surprised to see you mix flats and sharps in m. 77, especially when the cello acquiesces to the B major in the orchestra by the end of the measure, but I understand wanting to make the contour clearer in the solo instrument. Have you considered using beam over rests? I'm sure you have; it's just some of the rhythms starting in m. 58 are (despite being totally fine with practice) kinda rough to look at on first glance, and you're at the disadvantage of doing it with 16ths and not 8ths as is normal for that kind of texture. m. 62, in my mind, clef changes are applied only to the note and not any rests; I'm sure it makes spacing look better having the clef change in the solo be just at the beginning but it made me do a double take. And I'm just selfish, but I'd have loved to see some bowings (🙂), just for that little extra professionalism pop, haha. Great work and very enjoyable to listen to!!

Hello! I was working on a movement and I wanted to go for a lake-theme so I was wondering whether C or G Major sounded better for this. I also provided scores for each major key.

Maybe you could start from C major then try and switch from C major to G major to add some more texture to the music from time to time

As composers, we never really know why we compose. If we knew it , we might never have become composers. I DO know why I became composer. It is the passion and the will to speak positively to your audiences and, if necessary, criticize the negativity or simply enjoy the widest range of possibilities of art. It is also about exploring and sharing your talents with everybody. The Bible also says the talents should never be burried. And you should always try to improve your skills and explore the little explored and be open-minded.

And what makes your music so good compared to masters such as Mozart, Beethoven, Mahler, Prokofiev, Shostakovich, or so many great living composers? You must imagine that you are the best there is, the best there was and the best there ever will be...

Me and the computer "wrote" this using quaternions where a = duration , b = pitch , c = dynamic, d = articulation.

It is always strange to listen to microtonal music as it sounds out of tune rather than a coherent musical language. And it is used within the traditional d minor with more or less classical melodic and polyphonic technique which is certainly unique. To some extent it reminds me of the third string quartet by Aulis Sallinen.

After many years, I have finally composed a new tango, my fifth so far. It is for double bass and piano, since my daughter Eva is a decent performer and always wanted me to compose for her. The tango has a typical A-B-A form and uses a modern musical language with added dissonances, based on a tonal centre of e but without clear major minor progress. The middle section is in much more clear yet still modal f sharp minor, very melodic and utilizes the high range of the double bass. The composition end with powerful energy and one final snap pizzicato on a low e.

Hey Alex, Thank you so much for such a nice feedback! I will do my best to work on the weak spots in the future. Martin

I was trying to make a symphony a bit like what Gustav Mahler would make, that's why the orchestra is so large

I looked at the score. My advice regarding symphonies would be first master traitional symphonies ideally with traditional orchestra (a whole lot smaller orchestra) in the cannon style of classical or late romantic style before even attempting experimental or innovativ music. How can you invovate without a good foundation of the tradition? Brahms spend 21 years on his first symphony and beethoven so i heard spend from sketching to full orchestra 30 years on his symphony no 9. A symphony is not something you should be doing lightly. I don't say this to be rude but just to give some perspective on the symphony. If you comfortablely can craft a symphony that stand along side Beethoven for example or at least immitate the form style and orchestration then and only then I would say you should try something like this. Also how are you going to get this performed in the future with a orchestra so large? Compose for the musicians not the computer. I would also recomend sketching on a single staff or piano sketch. This is to make something more idiomatic and playable. Only after the whole piano sketch is complete then orchestrate.

I can see why you struggled though, the motif is not the easiest. But this is one of your best exercises so far in my opinion, because it encouraged out of the box thinking for this one.

This is quite nice. I like Persichetti's book but I've never done the exercises in it; you're making me kind of want to give them a try, though!

Oh I must have overlooked them! I am getting old now......

I see them. They're the tiny little arrows attached to the accidentals (see image below).

Hi @PaavolaPyry! It does sound improvisatory with all the sudden chord progession but I like it. Nice playing as well! To me it sounds like a Lute Baroque prelude in more modern chords. I am sure @PeterthePapercomPoser would like the piece as well as he wrote a lot of microtonal pieces, and @Thatguy v2.0 wrote many great guitar pieces. I hear some of the microtones but don't see them on the score, will you add them on the score? Thx for sharing! Henry

Seasons Greetings all! Here's a little something I'm cooking up for a concert next year. It's based on the Epitaph of Seikilos, which is the earliest surviving complete song. I tried to give it a flavour of Antiquity, and to create unexpected harmonies. Haven't come up with lyrics yet; though it will start with the original Ancient Greek text translated into English. Maybe my piano part is a bit too thin? Or perhaps I should keep it sparse? The notation is intended for midi, and I'll be adjusting the dynamics upwards by at least one degree for the musicians. When I make the final score, I'm intending to write out the spread stacked chords in full as arpeggios. N.B. Score updates will be posted further down the thread.

LoL - I looked on my secret bookshelf in my closet and I realized that I have some great musical books in there that not even *I* have read! "Musical Form and Analysis" by Spring, Hutcheson "The Development of Western Music" - A History by K. Marie Stolba "Orchestration" by Cecil Forsyth (only read fragments - quite funny!) "The Technique of Orchestration" - Sixth Edition by Kent Kennan, Donald Grantham "The Lives of the Great Composers" - Third Edition by Harold C. Schonberg "The Virtuoso Conductors" by Raymond Holden "Twentieth-Century Music" - A History of Musical Style in Modern Europe and America by Robert P. Morgan "Counterpoint" - Fourth Edition by Kent Kennan (haven't read yet) "Mozart's Letters, Mozart's Life" - Selected Letters Edited and Newly Translated by Robert Spaethling (haven't read yet) "Music in the Galant Style" by Robert Gjerdingen (which I'm still in the middle of reading) And a bonus book that isn't a theory/history text: "The Music Lesson - A Spritual Search for Growth through Music" by Victor L. Wooten Enjoy! Peter

Hey PaperComposer I really liked this. There was a lot of creative time signature switching up, and I think you orchestrated this really well. I'm not a string player, so I won't comment on the triple stops (Looks daring haha). I love how you broke up the 7/8 theme in different ways, and really enjoyed the clever use of each instrument. It's always nice to pick out different parts when listening and follow along without getting bored. I will say that I didn't care too much for the B theme. I felt like the A material was strong, and I appreciate the nice contrast it gave, but as a whole it felt a bit out of place to me. Kind of like I went back in time to a noble's manor in all its splendor every time I heard it. 😜 Moving forward, I would work on your transitions and pacing. You have great ideas that are uniquely you, but it felt rushed in between sections, like it was all just crammed together. Spread it out! You have four instruments, let them all have their time to be heard. You have contrast in your thematic material, but an easy contrast to employ is simply letting the viola and piano play for a little, or solo violin, or whatever combinations you would want to create. For some reason I've listened to this piece several times within the last days without commenting, so I figured I would share a few thoughts since I've enjoyed it so much. Thanks for posting 😄

Hi, beautiful and interesting. I love the exposition, every instrumente has its own work, the counterpoint seems to be born naturally. The FIRST change to the "dance" part m. 38 sound a bit odd to me, coming from a thicker and dramatic section. Very smart those previous glissandi with a "comic" effect that lead to the happier "dance" part. The second time I hear this is not so unnatural, once learned. The development of this part is briliant, only some spots are a less clear, in my opinion: m. 55 - 56, ... probably because there are too issues to have in the ear: 3 agains 2 rhythm, trill, staccatto... Nice work anyway. These are only minor impressions of mine. Overall, there is lot of work here. Interesting tonality, not often seen, particularly in orchestral sets (where some sections are better written in other tonalities, enharmonic following transpositions). But some works comes to my mind in this tonality: Scriabin piano sonata, nº 2, Liszt La Campanella, Shostakovich string quartett nº 8 (movement II).

Interesting, I hadn't considered there being three themes, I guess I'm biased toward assuming there would be only two for some reason. As I listen again this structure is more clear. I'd say give it the melody somewhere, and maybe trade back and forth between the other instruments. As an example, maybe give the right hand in the piano the melody in m.20-27 while the violin has a secondary role (maybe an echo to the piano an octave lower when the piano plays sustained notes), then have the violin take over to finish off the section. This also might make it more clear that a new theme is starting. Yes I do hear it as a ii V. As I sit and play the progression (G#m, D# Major, G#m, G# Major) on my piano a few times I hear what you're saying and I'm somewhere in the middle now lol. Maybe since the G# major on the downbeat of m.97 isn't immediately preceded by the D# Major on beat 3 of m.96 it doesn't sound as resolved to me? And since the D# major leads to the G#m, the G# major comes as a surprise? I dunno, if you're happy with it don't let me change your mind lol. I remember, you've come a long way in such a short time. At this rate you'll be composer in residence at a major orchestra by December 😂.

Really good work! I really liked your melodies and each instrument has unique, independent, and interesting lines pretty much throughout the piece. I also liked the contrast between the light major theme at m.38 and the darker section preceding it. I will say I think it might be a little "violin-heavy". For pretty much the entire piece the violin took the spotlight; if some of the melodies were passed around a little more it might add more variety. I also think the piano was particularly underutilized. I'm certainly no authority on sonata form, but I thought you did a good job. Here's how I interpreted it: m.1-19 - Introduction m.20-37- Theme A m. 38-42 - Theme B m. 43-74 - Development m.75-84 - Recap Theme A m.85-89 - Recap Theme B m.90-98 - Coda Am I close? I liked your development section and thought you did a good job twisting and turning the themes into new ideas. I will say the restatement of m.75-84 seems a little short since there was an additional phrase the first time I heard it in m.20-37. Maybe add an additional phrase like the first time to make if feel more balanced? Lastly, the end of the piece doesn't feel resolved to me, was this your intention? I think since I hear D# in the bass in m.96, followed by a big G# major chord in m.97, I'm expecting to hear a C#, rather than ending on G#. I have a feeling this was your intention since you hint at this being the first movement of a larger work, but just wanted to be sure. Again, really good work, and thanks for sharing! If I were in your shoes I would make it my goal to get my hands on some decent sound libraries and put together a good audio representation of the piece, (or better yet, get it performed). The sounds you used aren't too bad, but I don't think it does the piece justice.

There is no creaking on sonatina's violin. you can use them directly in musescore, no other player is required. The squeaky violin sound , good works on chords, making them more realistic. in this video I used two different violin sounds ( sonatina and vanilla sfz ) here to make it look realistic: https://youtu.be/uZC1NCCtCUk(still not as good as a vst, but not bad.)

The melodic ideas on the violin are nice but I think they can be developed. I got used to the sounds of musescore, but violin is really bad. Sonatina orchestra is free and works on musescore. For a squeaky violin effect sound, you can also try: https://vis.versilstudios.com/vsco-community.html