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Hello Here is another piece of the cycle "a la lune" according to Jules Laforgue. I didn't count. I must be at 4 or 5 on the same theme. Here is a kind of little song that looks like a waltz. Sweet bitter, of course, since it is lost love... Translation in the video in subtitles. Thank you for your criticism!

Hi! This Violin Sonata is commissioned by and dedicated to my friend Arjuna Clark @expert21. He had asked me long ago to write a Violin Sonata for him, but I only managed to start the work after finishing my own String Sextet and 3rd Piano Sonata. Luckily this one is completed before his birthday this year for a timely birthday present. As always, thank to @Thatguy v2.0 for making the audio. The whole work's tonic key B flat major, key scheme and styles of the movements are chosen by Arjuna himself. The work also featured the "ARJUNA" motive in all the movements, suggested by Arjuna himself: A=A, R=Re=C, J=G, U=Une=Bb, N=rest, A=A. The style here in this movement is a waltz style which I have never tried before but I know Arjuna loves it. I have toned down the playing difficulty for both the violinists and pianists, as I wish I can play with Arjuna with a live recording later. What I want to achieve in this Violin Sonata is simplicity and beautiful violin singing, since I didn't give much chance for the strings to sing in the String Sextet I just completed then, and my music is usually too complex. I hope I can write something simpler and lovely. The thumbnail is an ugly self-made birthday card I made to Arjuna LoL! Forgive my bad artwork haha. Here is the score and YT link for the music: Violin Sonata in B-flat major 1st mov.pdf Here is the timestamp for the video: 0:00 Dedication 0:06 Exposition, First Subject. Introduces the ARJUNA motive. 0:24 starts the transition with inversion of ARJUNA motive in piano, sounds a lot like Beethoven's op.110 Sonata. Modulate unexpectedly to D major in 2nd subject. 0:56 Exposition, Second Subject. Uses mainly the inversion of ARJUNA motive in D major. Ends with some pentatonicism as inspired by my own Sextet, just finish days ago before writing this one. 1:58 Exposition Repeat. A rare thing for me to repeat expositions but I find it adequate doing so here. 3:47 Development. Prime and Retrograde of ARJUNA motive in G minor first, then develop on the 2nd subject through G minor, B flat minor and to E major. Force a beautiful C sharp minor climax in 4:32, since it's my favourite key. Return to tonic key through major 3rd relationship. 4:58 Recapitulation, First Subject. Have the recap sneaks in in a Brahmsian fashion (again!). 5:16 starts the transition, this time includes a quotation from my own String Sextet in 5:33 in G flat major to fit the key scheme. 5:43 Recapitulation, Second Subject. Normal recap in tonic key, nothing changed. 6:37 Coda. Restatement of ARJUNA motive in its prime form, nothing complex here. Hope you enjoy! Henry

Hey Nicholas, I like your piece a lot! It sounds epic, and you take your time with each theme, which makes it sound coherent and easy to listen to. I don't have any experience writing for large ensembles, so I thought I'd only give feedback on your brass writing (I play the trumpet myself). First of all, in bar 21 consider raising the second trumpet an octave. That will make it easier for the first trumpet to hit his note: it is easier to play when being 'carried' by the rest of the section - and that two-octave gap is to large to give that effect. (As written it will sound like a solo instead of team work.) My teacher used to say: 'Trumpet players are surfers. We surf on sound.' At certain points in the score you write divisi for the trumpets, horns and first trombone - but you assigned three players to each part (in the preface)!! Which of the two voices should get two players? Either split up in three parts or make a note in their score, telling them what to do. But also consider that your brass section is humongous (A dozen players on trumpet and horn): You can change the parts to avoid all divisi. E.g. after bar 102 you could give the trumpets the root and fifth and the horns the root and third. In Musescore this will sound just the same, but when played by a real orchestra all voicings sound distinctly different. Not having divisi also is less confusing - especially if your players don't get (many) rehearsals. Btw that 1.5 octave jump in bar 106, first trumpet, looks really scary... Lastly, from that same bar 106 your trumpets and horns are playing fortissimo - which basically means 'as loud as possible'. Therefore the four (!) crescendo's you write later in the part won't have any effect... Either tell them to take back before each crescendo, or don't write them at all. That'll conclude my oddly-specific-feedback : ) . I should tell you again - I'm no pro at all, and your writing already is really good. Don't take this as harsh criticism: I'm just better at pointing out imperfections than giving elaborate compliments :)). I really enjoyed listening to your piece! Kind regards, Marius

Hi to all! Here's another silly experiment I tried with electronic music. I was trying to see if I could write something musical just by copying and pasting into different synth types available on MuseScore. Think the second half works better than the first; but I'll let you decide.

This piece contrasts an excerpt from Walt Whitman's preface to Leaves of Grass with 1 Peter 1:24 "All flesh is as grass...", otherwise known as the best part of the the thoroughly excellent Brahms Requiem. Whitman's text urges us to think for ourselves and do the right thing, letting our lives speak for our morals. The biblical passage reminds us that our lives are beautiful, but short, lending urgency to Whitman's words. There is only so much time. “…read these leaves in the open air every season of every year of your life, re-examine all you have been told at school or church or in any book, dismiss whatever insults your own soul, and your very flesh shall be a great poem and have the richest fluency not only in its words but in the silent lines of its lips and face and between the lashes of your eyes and in every motion and joint of your body...” -Walt Whitman For all flesh is as grass, and all the glory of man as the flower of grass. The grass withereth, and the flower thereof falleth away: 1 Peter 1:24

Thanks, Henry! Yes, the beginning is a jazz minor scale (melodic minor ascending used for both the scale up and the scale down) with fourths raised for a bit of extra leading tone (leading tone to the fifth). And then we flip around a bit between Mixolydian and eventually a nice bright C Major. One of my bigger challenges with this piece was being sure that Whitman's lovely text would be heard through everything that is going on. It's a long and wordy text and I knew I wanted to work the "all flesh is as grass" in as well as a second idea. The text ends up similar in length to the "credo" section of the big masses, so it presents the same problem of how to fit it all in. I ended up doing a fair amount of homophonic writing in the early parts of the piece to keep the text clear and understandable and using the piano part to keep things lively, as well as having different voices come in and out to add emphasis to certain lines and keep things interesting. But by the second half, the singer may have a disorientingly fragmented experience, since I was often needing a voice part to switch back and forth from the poem to the biblical text in mid-thought to try and keep the lines from becoming too tangled with each other. To avoid some overlapping of people singing different texts simultaneously, I chopped the lines into little pieces and stitched them back together as a quilt to get the important words to punch through. Hopefully it's not too jarring an experience. The Catholic Church's Council on Trent (1545-1563) apparently specifically condemned this kind of polyphonic tomfoolery, feeling that interfering with the understandability of a text was missing the point of singing as a mode of communication. But of course, then what the heck do you do about the credo section of your choral mass to keep it from being boring and ten minutes long if you are composing for the church?

Hi Maggie! Yeah I love that rest bringing the lightness of the theme as well, which matches the waltz rhythm and light mood of the movement. Yeah I was just trying to be simple and might me a bit too simple here, but I thought reaching F minor (b.74) in a D major local key setting would be quite enough for a surprise! Yeah I hope I can play this in real life with Arjuna, so I'm definitely writing interactions between parts, otherwise I would be bored as freak! Henry

I have just watched Wes Anderson's The Phoenician Scheme today and I find the music really matches the film's eccentric style. The film quotes a lot of Stravinsky's Petrushka and Bach's famous Cantata BWV 147, as well as ending with the Firebird. The original music reminds a lot with Stravinsky as well, tho when the piano joins in it's more like Schonberg in a way with its tone and color, tho the rhythm and mood is still Stravinsky, or even in Riley's minimalism

Hello, I just finished a cinematic Grade 6 piece for concert band and I'd like to share it with everyone! I am very proud of it especially as a 16 year old composer. The story of the piece is a fire god of which has been long forgotten, he then awakes and imposes his wrath on humanity. While this is happening cultists gather to worship this fire god. There is no heroic conclusion, the god wins.

Hello @NicholasG! I think @Marius_ already got many good points and I'm not going to repeat what s/he said. You should be proud of it. Your orchestration and mood portrayal is very mature as a 16 year old and I like many of them. Your motivic usage is lovely too. I really like the ending starting from b.93, good preparation to it and nice rhythmic variety. Maybe for me you can also add more varieties in the harmony as well, since most of the passages are more diatonic and less modulatory and dissonance. Thx for sharing! Henry

Look in the description of video for performance notes. I also had attached a PDF of the score. Keep note that this is one of my shorter works and has been rushed so not a lot of effort had been put into this

Hi! My name is Isen Lark, and I'm happy to share the first composition I decided to publish on Spotify: "Paper Swan". The paper swan sat by the old piano, its wings curled from time and dust. Somewhere, a song played softly—one we used to know. The notes wavered, like the swan might lift off, but never did. MIDI.mid

Excellent! I love the way your ARJUNA theme skips along rhythmically in the violin part; the whole piece has such a lighthearted feel to it. I would have liked a little more bold variety to the repeated wind blows fair, wind blows cold theme that we see in the violin at measure 62, since it comes up several times. It feels like you could have pushed the harmonic surprise there a little more in those places, but I know you said you were also trying to simplify your ideas in this piece. Excellent job keeping both parts varied for interest and letting them interact with each other in diverse ways that will let the musicians enjoy bouncing off each other's musical ideas. This seems very fun to play! I hope you'll enjoy it!

Very charming! I'm definitely getting a Beethoven/Brahms vibe from this movement. The modulation to D major in the exposition is unexpected, but it works! The 2nd ending/intro of the development is a little odd. I think a little more motion from the piano into bar 102 would make the transition smoother (suggestion: maybe the violin motif in 102 could be played in the piano bass line at the 2nd ending). Another minor suggestion (and this one is just a personal preference)...3 before the end, maybe have the violin play a pizzicato B-flat major chord (maybe without the piano). The violin writing is very idiomatic for the instrument. The piano writing seems fine to me...though not a pianist myself.

Hi Peter! The Nimrod theme is 10 times better than mine lol! I love that variation very much! Well I don't care whether a friend is known through real life or internet. Arjuna is definitely much closer than many people I know in real life. I won't write a piece for someone I don't treasure. Yeah I just try to for light mood and simple style here, something enjoyable and not too difficult. Honestly I quite enjoy composing this piece after the Sextet since that one takes tons of efforts. Thx for your review Peter! Henry

This is a piece for orchestra, with a prominent solo Violin part, similar to Danse Macabre. The story is a journey through tales of fairy and monsters in the woods, with the violin acting as a Puckesque narrator.

Would the title Sonata for violin and piano be more appropriate? We say violin sonatas informally, but the compositional weights seems balanced at least to a certain extent imo

A very light, and elegant Mozart / Beethoven-esqe influenced piece. But now that I listened to this more closely a second time, this sounds more Beethoven. I noticed you kept things a lot more simplistic with this composition. The simplicity makes it easier to follow the story. For example, I noticed you referenced your sextet's pentatonic themes in a few places too which was a nice touch, particularly here: 1:38 3:28 5:27 6:27 Your key changes from the major to parallel minor also made me think a lot of Beethoven's key changing style. For example, at 1:07, this is a prime an example of some key changing techniques I hear in Beethoven's concertos. I loved 3:40 - to 3:53. This was a section that could have been used to segue into a completely different theme. But I suppose you didn't want to venture too far off from the main theme of this piece. Either way, great piece, fun traditional classical harmony and nice references to your sextet.

Hi @Henry Ng Tsz Kiu! I really love this sonata! In this particular movement, the ARJUNA theme brings to mind for me the Nimrod movement from Edward Elgar's Enigma Variations. Funny how both this work and Elgar's were written for friends! Very cool that you dedicated so much time and effort for a birthday gift to an internet friend half a world away from you! I really like the very classical-yet-romantic leaning graceful music that isn't too waltzy. I think I like this work because it's not too Beethovenian - I hear more of your own individual voice coming through in this and I also find it more joyful and entertaining for the same reason. It's also amazing how much this was prompted by Arjuna! Thanks for sharing!

Hi 🙂 Here's the third and last movement of my first complete string quartet. It's a moderato which starts quietly in the main D Major tone, before modulating in its first theme to a strong A Major viola-leaded melody. Then both main themes from the first and second movements are sequentially reexposed. Follows a happy interlude in D major. Whereafter first theme comes back and developments bring us slightly as a conclusion to the final exposure of the principal theme of this string quartet (the one from the adagio), first hinted at in the background by the viola. Thanks for listening ! 🙂 Regards, Marc

Hello @famedstingray59, Welcome to the forum! What is the film featured in your music? I quite like the a bit post tonal sytle for the unsettling mood plus a pretty satisfying end, though still with some dissonances lingering. Thx for joining our forum and sharing! Henry

Right now, I’m readying my music project workspace in my computer’s hard drive for my eventual migration from Finale to Musescore and Dorico, e.g. creating MusicXML files. Also, even though burned out, I’m trying very hard to finish my Fantasy Reflections 2nd track for violin and piano. Lastly, I have rough piano sketches for some pop ballads right now, being enamored by my really guilty J-pop phase these past 12 months. Although melodies and colorful chords progressions come relatively easily to me for these pop songs, I’m still doing early research and brushing up on drum patterns, lyrics, and pop instrumentation. Some advice for me is appreciated! ~Frank

Hello everybody, this is my first post here. I've mostly composed and released solo piano music (recorded myself) so far, with the exception of two symphonies - last of which I finished in 2020. I've now composed a piano concerto with Sibelius 7.5 and Noteperformer 4. It's been five years since I produced anything orchestral so I am sure it will come off as rather clumsy in the orchestration (I am self-taught), and I am also aware that the piano part itself is not as virtuosistic as the form would require it (especially in the first movement). The ensemble itself is not large (strings, trombones, flute, clarinet and bassoon, and timpans, besides the soloist). I don't think I have much else to say. I would like to hear some of your opinions. You can ask me anything and I will answer as far as my knowledge of the topic affords me. The work is linked here from my Youtube (I tried to embed but it seems I'm not able or capable to). Thank you for your interest. Piano Concerto on YouTube

Also when the brass is playing the melody I would try to harmonise it. That'll make it sound more 'full'. Although that is also a neat card to only pull later on in the piece, if that melody returns. This also goes for woodwinds, but it is less important there, cause of the different textures the instruments have; when they are playing in unison it'll probably sound more varied already. Brass sounds really epic but also kinda like a sine wave imo... Especially when they are a bit pitchy

Getting back into composition from a long hiatus, I decided to orchestrate a piano piece by Claude Debussy. The piece is a movement from his piano suite Estampes titled La Soireé dans Granade (Evening in Granada). I'm still not too familiar with Debussy's piano music as a whole, but this suite definitely piqued my interest in that genre. I wasn't aware at the time, but several high profiled figures have orchestrated this movement (and other movements of the suite), and I did avoid listening to them so I don't copy them. Link to the original piano composition: The audio quality is a little meh...this is the last piece I wrote before I switched out of Finale/Garritan to Dorico/NotePerformer. Any feedback is appreciated!

Hi @danishali903! Like this arrangement! Love the English Horn very much. Yeah especially when the horns and trumpets are playing with the mute it sounds a bit off haha. Thx for sharing! Henry

Hi @Some Guy That writes Music! I like this very much, just like you said it doesn't sound very complex, but because of that it sounds really peaceful to listen to. Love your imitations between instruments and that Lydian Bb. Even though the opening theme recurs it doesn't sound monotomous at all given how you modulate; I love your modulation to Eb major in b.25 very much. The counterpoint there sounds really nice. And of course a very nice retransition back to C major. This music almost reminds me of some very simple yet deep film/anime music, unlike those shallow film trailer music with bombarding brass and a loud climax at the end. I hope I could have doodled something this high quality like you did haha! Thx for sharing! Henry

It has that sound, but I don’t know how to describe it. I think that B flat is contributing to it. it has been nostalgic fairytale Disney sound. I heard it another music.