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Thanks for the opportunity to provide feedback, and sorry I think I forgot about your reply. I just rechecked my notifications and found yours, so here are my comments. Hopefully this isn’t too late. First off I think you have a lot of nice ideas. You have a composer’s intuition, and these ideas sound like things I would have written when I was first starting. You have a nice sense of melody and accompaniment, and each of the phrases seems to pair the melody with an accompaniment pattern or echo pretty well. I think this is a high quality start to future composing yet to come. Finding it’s already good, I think each of these ideas of yours could actually become their own pieces. Changing meters so often makes it sound like a separate thing, so could you consider making a separate piece out of something like measures 1-16? Then I think the next easy improvement in quality would be varying up your melodic and harmonic pacing. It sounds like each idea has a similar feel for 3 or 4 measures out of the phrase, so could you look into some of Ryan Leach’s videos on Period and Sentence form? Here’s one: Cheers, and happy composing:)

I feel that emotional writing in the 7th hits me.

Idk, I still think the flow is off. Maybe its just a stylistic preference, but the cadences into rests, then starting back up again threw me off. I kept thinking the music ended, but then it kept going. It's nice as it is though, its a really great picture type of piece, like a tone poem. I just think it could have been shorter if you like it the way it is, to me its begging for contrast. Not necessarily something crazy, like throwing green paint on a black and white drawing. But for instance, your harmonic texture is nearly the same throughout. You change chords at the same rate, which makes it monotonous after a while. That can be fine, but we never went somewhere else, so it staled a bit to me. It was very pretty, and as always your coloring is fantastic. The sax is always a nice touch, and Im a fan of your style! Thanks for sharing bruh

I've recently been rediscovering the Metroid series Crazy story: About 12 years ago, I covered this song with a friend on OCR. I believe our mix is still up, and someone actually made a guitar hero cover of it.

Seasons greetings one and all! Just wanted to share this little experiment I tried this week, where I deconstructed Mozart's Requiem, then used little fragments to try and fashion a new piece. Later I decided to quote part of Mozart's work at the end: so it ended up a bit like a theme and variations in reverse. Not sure I'm done with it yet; though it may be finished? Including part of the original work probably just serves to show how weak my choral writing and voice leading is compared to Mozart's! I've a feeling it's a complete failure; but was fun to try. Anyway let me know your thoughts, if you have time.

If you're just wanting an orchestra to perform your uncommissioned music, then they may charge a rate to print sheet music copies and otherwise prepare the piece. Especially for student pieces. Like, recording an orchestra for example typically costs 10s of thousands per hour. In concert music, if they commission a piece, they would pay for that piece and then pay out performance royalties to the PRO on top of that. Also in concert music, if they did not commission the piece, but choose to perform it in a concert, the composer is paid royalties through their PRO. BUT I'm not aware of many orchestras outside of music college ones being in the business of playing concert pieces that that don't already come from classical repertoire, films or video games anyway. In short: If it's for a concert and you're trying to get them to play your piece in it, they may want some amount of money to prepare the piece, but not a raw fee simply to "play" it. They have to pay to play it. But it is a bit of a moot point. Most orchestras, at least that I'm aware of, won't even give an unknown composer consideration for concerts.

“Parallel fifths are allowed as long as there is a reason. There are moments when, to give a different timbre and texture and make a difference, it’s enough to truly justify it. Nothing is forbidden; otherwise, our horizons would never expand.”

Nothing wrong about parallel fifths, just write them, if you mean to. Do not write them in pure counterpoint, unless you mean to.

“Greetings, dear composers. And with this Allegro, my second sonata is complete, and I am very happy and satisfied with the entire work. This movement is like etude of modulations, but I believe I have refined it well enough for everything to sound natural and have the right balance. I hope you like it.”

i see sonata, i click this is magnificent. the motivic interactions... harmonic blending... so good. too long for my internet attention span. but I think it could work in a concert hall very well. and impressive fast octaves! very needed when it is the main motif one thing but that is personal opinion, the open octave accompaniment might sound a bit too hollow (like bar 67), does work better if the register is lower (like bar 17, 274 etc.) bars 189b-191a why suddenly regular triplets instead of the dotted? I find it becoming "too baroque" for a few seconds, especially with the traditional harmonies there. Again, opinion only, and I have no professional qualifications lol

look @Henry Ng Tsz Kiu it has only been a year of me exploring the pipe organ lol but thanks for tagging. surprised you weren't interested in those random pauses... I like the modal harmonies of the piece but I think it would really benefit from specifying the registrations, as the score currently stands doesn't look idiomatic for the organist, and the default computer playback isn't doing wonders

The counterpoint is very impressive, so well done! I would have liked to see how the lyrics align with the notes, but I'm not sure if note flight is capable of that. I would definitely recommend musescore if you can fit it on your computer. It is free after all. The main issue is how you're writing for your forces. Violin octaves are a little unreasonable for a tutti section. It's too difficult without a good justification. I would either NOT have the octaves, or have the violins divisi. And the voice ranges are going into risky registers. There's a good short guide "ranges for choral singers: a guide for composers" by Chris Hutchings that's literally just a page and tells you pretty much all you need for writing for choral voices. You can probably find it online.

This one is a little bit minor, little bit dorian, kept it on the simpler side. 😄 I hope you enjoy, and as always all comments and thoughts are welcome!

20247637.mp3 Sagai Go (Reprise).pdf I have reworked this piece since I last shared it, a few months ago. Sort of at a loss for what to do next, so I've been going over some older scores, correcting mistakes, improving harmonies and adding sections in places where it felt lacking. This score in particular, I had always felt was missing something; like the last section into the outro was rushed. So I added in a section between there to smooth out the transition into the outro, and have also changed the key of the score. I think it came out quite beautifully. I wasn't very scrutinizing to it for much else other than it's flow. If there are other mistakes that I missed, please feel free to call em' out 🙂

I have written another piece for my friend Kat's Casting! This time Kat asked the Muzoracle if she will graduate from a 4-year university. (Muzoracle is a storytelling/divination tool similar to the Tarot card deck, but with cards with musical concepts and 12-sided Musician's dice and Solfege dice.) My interpretation of the cards and dice are displayed below. Since the first card drawn was a Conductor of Percussion card, I chose to use Piano, an instrument that Kat likes. The second card drawn was a Major 7th of Woodwinds, so I chose Clarinet, an instrument that Kat used to play. And finally the third card drawn was an Octave of Voices card, so I chose a solo Soprano singer. If you'd like to find out more about Muzoracle and how castings are interpreted go here: https://muzoracle.net/ This short musical interpretation of Kat's Casting is about a minute and a half long. Since the black 12-sided Musician's Die landed on F, the piece is in the key of F major. I created the following melodic/harmonic underdrawing guided by the cards and dice. The first solfege die landed on Ti and the card indicated a percussion instrument - in this case, Piano. So I had the Piano start solo on an E (in the left hand). Then I had the Clarinet and Soprano enter on an anacrusis into a melody that uses E, Db, C, and B. Since the interval of a Minor 2nd is prominent in the casting, I decided to transpose the whole melodic/harmonic underdrawing down a Minor 2nd giving me access to tones needed to create a V7 of F. I then used that dominant to bring the piece into F major and repeat the melodies and harmonies at the pitch level of F before repeating the piece and ending on an F7 #11 chord. I also liberally used accelerandi and ritardandi, guided by the accelerando/ritardando card in the 1st position. If you've gotten this far, thanks for reading! And I hope you enjoy listening to this short chamber work I wrote to represent Kat's Casting. Comments, critiques, suggestions, or observations are of course, always welcome. Thanks for listening!

Judging by the music, I'd say no lol Aside from that, the music is really cool! The delay effect is haunting, and you've once again woven randomness into a great piece of music. Nice work there Peter

Yeah, and also more advanced pieces in your portfolio will definitely help!

@PeterthePapercomPoser Thank you! I am planning to create website. Hopefully professional one: one linked to soundcloud and youtube. But that takes time.

Omicronrg9 started the fashion of making a portfolio page in the "About Me" section of his profile: Now Henry, me, and many other composers on YC use this section to display a press kit/portfolio of compositions in their profile.

So far this is one of my favorites that you have done. The trio work well together, and this is certainly one of the most unique castings you've composed. I can see this being converted to just a piano, if you ever wanted to create an Etude out of this. It would be fun to play and listen to, and potentially falls into that Etude category. And like always, your recordings are getting really, really good.

For me, this will always be the catchiest song from a video game. It keeping popping into my head quite often in the most random moments since its release so many years ago.

There was something I was going to say about this part specifically and I remember like 3 days ago saying "When I get home I have to remember to say it" but now I'll be damned if I can remember what it was.

Well, keep in mind I don't write concert orchestral works much and neither did the composers I worked with when they were recording orchestras. So I'm not an expert on concerts. But from what I DO know about concert composers: Most of them come through academia. If you're a student, that's your best shot. Some churches might also have small orchestras. Otherwise, volunteering or getting some other job with an orchestra and building up a network with orchestra directors and what not you may eventually get them to perform some of your shorter pieces (not much longer than 4 minutes) in a concert. If you really build up a good relationship with them, they might even start commissioning you, which a single commission could be a 5-figure amount of money. But that would probably take years of networking and essentially proving yourself. The reason it's so difficult to get an orchestra to play new music in a concert, even if it is very good, is that orchestras have become very niche and they need repertoire on the bill that is basically guaranteed to put butts in seats; names that people recognize. If there are too many names people don't know, then they risk not selling many tickets. That's why so many concerts these days pull from games and films: It's the best source of "new" material that people will pay to see. Honestly, you may just want to reach out to orchestras near you and straight-up ask them about playing your pieces and what sort of hoops you'd have to jump through (don't phrase it like that though).

Well, that sounds cool! I will give it a listen!

I find the music in the tradition of Ennio Morricone and Nino Rota .... their Italian movie scores ... a bit of Film Noire here ... hauntingly beautiful music. Mark

Dear friends, hello! I'm Zhang Wenhao, a singer-songwriter from China. It's been a while! This time, I'd like to share with you a folk song that describes the comfort, ease and relaxation of rural life. It's called "Travel Notes of Mountains and Waters". This song tells the story of traveling and enjoying the mountains and waters. I think many people nowadays are under too much pressure from work and life, and they need an outlet to vent and relax. So I'm presenting this "Travel Notes of Mountains and Waters" to you all. I hope that after hearing it, you can temporarily forget your physical and mental fatigue and find solace. 亲爱的朋友们，你们好，我是来自中国的创作歌手张文灏，好久不见！这次来跟大家分享的是一首描写乡村田园生活的舒适、惬意、放松的民谣作品，名字叫《山水游记》。 这首歌讲的是旅行中游山玩水的故事。我觉得现在很多人的工作、生活压力都太大了，需要一个出口来宣泄、放松，所以把这首《山水游记》送给大家，愿你们听到以后，可以暂时忘记身心的疲惫，得到慰藉。 张文灏-山水游记.mp3 歌词如下/The lyrics are as follows： 《山水游记》/《Landscape Travel Notes》 作曲/Composed by：张文灏 Zhang Wenhao 作词/Lyrics by：张文灏 Zhang Wenhao 山腰上吹拂过一枕清风 听山脚蜿蜒过一泓水流 采茶女背着箩筐桥上走 茶歌悠悠飘到山的那头 硕果香把整座山园甜透 小朋友伸着鼻子贪婪嗅 穿过孩群我们到池塘口 有自在蝌蚪和鱼来回游 这山与水 我梦里来过 水畔有个你 山上有个我 你在山水中 笑着对我说 钟爱这秀美 如画的景色 这山与水 我梦里来过 水畔有个你 山上有个我 你在山水中 笑着对我说 钟爱这高雅 如诗的生活 怡人的稻花香随风飞舞 抚摸着脸颊像柔和丝绸 石径旁清泉自顾自清澈 像这处世外桃源的清幽 日头下落世界披上霞红 不远处袅袅炊烟升得稠 回到村庄我们举酒欢歌 饮尽山的包容水的温柔 这山与水 我梦里来过 水畔有个你 山上有个我 你在山水中 笑着对我说 钟爱这秀美 如画的景色 这山与水 我梦里来过 水畔有个你 山上有个我 你在山水中 笑着对我说 钟爱这高雅 如诗的生活

Thank you for your compliment! This is not a lyric adapted from any Celtic legend. It's something I came up with myself, and the inspiration came from the game "Warcraft III".

Hi there, I understand you were trying to write a barcarolle. Let break this down. You have the correct meter 6/8 and the right tempo (moderato). That is step in the right direction. However, you do not have the folk like character that piece calls for. Remember...you are writing a character piece that mimics a folk song that Venetian gondoliers would sing. Thus, the theme needs to be lyrical in character. And the bass line, none the less, needs to support that. I recommend watch this: Chopin examples

Hi. You know, I took inspiration from your 'About me' (actually, it is about you, but nevermind.) section. Thank you very much for that! I really appreciate it.

It took me days and hours but this poem is finally presentable. It's meant for a virtual orchestra, because its so huge. The literal poetic guide is in the description of the video, though it was written after-the-fact.

Quite the mighty show this is it was definitely a journey to listen to…~ that I usually do all of my critique in a transcript sort of like a judge tape this piece is definitely too long for me to do that. so to avoid this becoming a giant paragraph where it would take days to read I would just say my thoughts and observations here from memory definitely what a monumental piece. This was it sounded like the creation of life too, and definitely amazing with the pacing those little Interlude and instrument features kind of made the thing feel fresh and also variations within the common theme of just diatonic dissonance throughout. I don’t know Spanish or anything so you could correct me, but on the orchestration in the instrumentation, you wanted hand bells to be used. The thing about that is usually you’ll have multiple people play them in this case you’re treating it like it’s own mallet instrument which in this case they could be mounted on something. though that this is told to be for a virtual ensemble, it would be quite the piece for a existing orchestra to play in real life Monumental work for you keep going

Hello there! Before, I had the project in mind of writing 12 piano preludes, and that was just dandy. I don't know how consecutively I'll write more, but a few ideas have lingered lately so I figured I would dabble at it again. Here's a very short one in C, hope you enjoy!

Beast of a piece, let me know what you all think!

Hey everyone. I have been going back and forth on my first piano concerto for a long time. Unfortunately, I reached a point where my original design has acted as a roadblock for me to finish the first movement. I decided to restart the work and compose from scratch. I will add more context below, however as an introduction, this excerpt is the entire exposition of my first draft. It is five minutes long and I wish to have it preserved here on YCF. So, sit back, and follow along to the work-in-progress of my first concerto! 🎹 ________________ CONTEXT AND FEEDBACK: I started this project back in June 2024 when I improvised the first theme in one of my practice sessions. I fell in love with it and immediately knew I found a theme worthy for a concerto. I am sticking to late classical (and possible romantic hints) for this work. Hummel, Shostakovich, and Rachmaninoff are the main three sources of inspiration for my orchestration. It follows Sonata-form, however using three themes (1st, 2nd and closing theme) in the exposition. Recently, as I have been diving heavily into the works of Mozart, Haydn and Beethoven, it has dawned on me the level of sophistication each composer had in their writing. How Beethoven would use elements of the first theme to make his second theme, and later use the first movement as basis for theme and variation writing or fugal writing in his third movements. So, after a break in the first half of the year, I have been looking at this exposition and tried to add sophistication. However, I noticed so many gaps in the structure. As it stands, it feels like a compilation of several themes versus one long work showcasing the transformation of the motif and form. As a result, I have stopped working on it and grabbed a blank manuscript and wrote down the key three themes I want to use. I have yet to start rewriting, as I want to give my brain a break and simply ask for feedback. I would appreciate comments on form, orchestration and anything you deem fit. Please do not hesitate to be blunt either! (I may try to write pure double exposition instead of this quasi-expo before the first piano cadenza.) Thanks in advance!! 🙂 _________ EDIT: There is no English Horn in this work so far. I used my Orchestral template and forgot to remove the English Horn from the instrumentation page. Also, The score is NOT TRANSPOSED; it is a concert score)

Thanks for the feedback! I had similar thoughts. Since I am aiming for this style, it makes sense to use an even measure count in my phrases. As I am currently at a football game, I will reply in more detail, however, I will move to the discord so I can share a certain photo of my themes.

Hi @UncleRed99! Clearly I forgot your original post so I will just treat this as a complete new one lol. I think so too, I enjoy this Japanese style music with a slight sadness but not too much. I feel like in b.51 the transition to a louder passage is a bit abrupt, maybe add a gradual transition with a volume crescendo before it? Because for me it's the only place I feel abrupt in the entire piece even though there are other spots with the tacit after a fermata. I feel like the trumpet melody in b.61-63 is too high in its register and will overpower the other instruments. Overpowering is ok but I think it doesn't fit your style here too much personally. And in b.53-57 there's an imitation between oboe and saxophone, but I think the oboe is overpowered by the saxophone so the imitation is not the most effective. And in b.94-95 I feel like the accompanying figure is given too much emphasis particularly with the 1st violin and trumpet. Maybe remove the trumpet? I sound nitpicky, but I do enjoy the piece! Thx for sharing. Henry

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Uton mid blisse dancian! Lovely work ... Mark

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