U238

Although not as egregious as the other piece of yours I just listened to my main complaint is the same, not nearly enough rhythmic variety. Although you break it up a little better in this piece with a little negative space here and there, the runs are all very uniform and square rhythmically. The pentatonic idea is not a bad one, although has certainly been done many times before. Perhaps you could extend that concept a bit and use the same scale but modulated to get some harmonic contrast. Although I understand the premise of only using black keys, it does tend to all run together after a while especially with the lack of rhythmic variety. I think you would benefit from trying to think more motivically, it seems you try to throw a lot of notes out there to make it seem like a lot is going on when really there is not much substance to it. Kinda ends up sounding like just running up and down a scale. Keep at it though, there is a germ of interesting possibilities still in what I've heard.

Now I know that generally midi is incredibly unforgiving, but this was way too flat. A whole bunch of nonstop 16th notes just repeated ad nauseam generally without any break becomes tiresome very quickly. Also not only is the rhythm incessantly flat and repetitive throughout the whole piece there doesn't sound to me like very much variety in much of anything. You stay in the same very tight range the whole time and have very little variety harmonically and there is no melody at any point as far as I can tell. This piece desperately needs some movement of some kind. Some negative space, some contrast, something anything to make it not sound like the same 4 seconds looped for 4 minutes.

The opening aesthetic is very banal and uninteresting, I don't believe the departure from that style is wonky at all, without that contrast there would be not much of interest here. Bland tonal waltzes have been perfected by so many much greater minds than either you or me that there is not much to be gained from rehashing the style other than purely for personal satisfaction. Not that there is anything inherently wrong with that. Still, the moderately more adventurous harmonic section is not particularly exciting to me for several reasons. Chiefly being that while it is not as on the nose trite as the opening section, it still feels very flat in terms of general pacing and tone. I think it would benefit the piece for the tone and pace of the piece to be broken up even more to create more interest. Maybe some more negative space paired with more variety in the dynamics and tempo. Harmonic variety is only one of many tools for creating interesting movement in a piece. Not unpleasant to listen to though, and charming enough for what it is.

Typically speaking, it is extraordinarily rare for anyone to be a full time composer and nothing else. Most composers either: a) have non related professions b) work in academia c) work as performers or some other composer adjacent/music related profession

We have definitely been moving into a distinctly new era of concert music for the last 30 years or so.

What you are hearing is the submediant function, which is half subdominant half tonic.

A single tone is a single tone. There is only harmony when two tones or more are considered. An A following a C chord could be interpreted as a suspension and thus an extension of the tonic, Csus6 C E G A, or it could be interpreted as changing the chord from a tonic C to a submediant Am7 A C E G. Depends on context and the implied function, if any.

The submediant (VI: A,C,E) functions similarly to the tonic, as does the closely related mediant function (III: E,G,B) because of the two shared tones. The submediant is however more closely related to the subdominant than the subdominant is to the tonic, which means the submediant also functions similarly to the subdominant again because of the two shared tones (A,C). The progression I-VI-IV-V is incredibly popular because each successive harmony except for the dominant shares two out of three tones.

No. If you want a soundfile for a videogame you shouldn't be using a notation program at all. Sequencers and daw's are for that, and there is a comparable range of free, cheap, and expensive programs in that genre. Creating rough mockups that people can use to produce a performance is a different deal than trying to create a presentable publishable score.

This is a perennial question that can easily be answered with google. Many influential composers wrote seminal texts. Rimsky-Korsakov, Schoenberg, Tchaikovsky, Hindemith, Walter Piston, Allen Forte. The manner in which it deals with the divide between common practice and modernity mostly depends on the style and time period of the author. Obviously I imagine Piston and Forte deal with modern systems much more than Tchaikovsky or Rimsky-Korsakov, or Schoenberg.

And it could be just that your music isn't very good and the performers aren't interested. That's generally the main obstable to getting a recording for free. Or pay for it. Couple hundred bucks should net you a fairly good recording for a small ensemble.

If you are unable to handle being turned down by performers and audiences then music will be a difficult journey for you. Meet musicians, be their friend. Write music specifically for them. Pateceramics post is fair.

Yeah everybody likes the idea of being performed, but it doesn't matter how many composers stand up in support of it, you just need to find the performers. Ask people if they play an instrument; ask them to record the music you've written for that instrument. That's the only way this happens, a website isn't going to do it for you.

patreon.com

Yeah, nobody uses it.