pateceramics

I like your theme here very much. It would give you lots of interesting room for development. As for the voice software, I do think it can really help people understand how a piece will sound all put together. Even among professionals working in the arts, not everyone is good at visualizing a finished product, so anything that pushes a demo towards accurate representation of the performed work can be helpful for people checking out your work. How much work and expense is it to put this extra layer into the recording? For something like this, where you have orchestra plus soloists and choir, it may be more worth it than for smaller works, because if you didn't, it might be hard to choose an instrument to represent the voices that would stand out in the mix, particularly for someone who was trying to read across the full orchestral score and pay attention to everything at once. Looking forward to seeing the development of this project!

Thank you for taking a listen, Luis, and I'm particularly glad to hear that you enjoyed the piano! I'm not a pianist, so I always have concerns when I write a piano part. I sang a concert of German lieder recently with some particularly lovely piano accompaniment, and tried to pick apart what Brahms and Herzogenberg did to make their own piano writing for choral works so successful.

I'm impressed both by your light touch playing this, and the lack of scratching out on your handwritten copy. If I wrote that way, it would be all chaotic scribbled out former ideas. The interplay between your first and second sections works very well! A very satisfying piece to listen to!

Hi Tristan, This sounds very nice! I would suggest finding a different composition software to use, however. The spacing of the notes on the page is a bit all over the place, which makes this challenging to sight read. Musescore is a good free option that sorts that out for you automatically. I haven't used Vocaroo, but I understand it has some AI features for editing recordings?

I would be tempted to just add a caesura marking between the repeated section and the continuing bars of #5... Since this is a work for solo instrument that doesn't need coordination between players, there is no reason you can't trust the musicality of the soloist to add an appropriate amount of rest. It's always nice to see something written for solo instrument, as so many of them are a bit neglected by composers. Very enjoyable and I think a live performance would bring out the phrasing nicely.

Matthew 5:3-9 KJV The Beatitudes from The Sermon on the Mount 3 Blessed are the poor in spirit: for theirs is the kingdom of heaven. 4 Blessed are they that mourn: for they shall be comforted. 5 Blessed are the meek: for they shall inherit the earth. 6 Blessed are they which do hunger and thirst after righteousness: for they shall be filled. 7 Blessed are the merciful: for they shall obtain mercy. 8 Blessed are the pure in heart: for they shall see God. 9 Blessed are the peacemakers: for they shall be called the children of God. There are a few more beatitudes, but given the times we are living in, ending with peacemaking seemed like the right choice. I wrote this so that choirs with fewer tenors and basses could combine them into a single section and have better balance against more numerous sopranos and altos. There are a few short splits for the baritone part to keep life interesting, but they are all doubled by the piano part so that the whole section can decide to sing just the upper part if they are mainly tenors, or just the lower part if they are mainly basses, or divide between the two. Enjoy! Maggie Blessed Are They-Furtak.mp3 Blessed Are They-Furtak.pdf

Thanks, Mark! It's just a round with the W. E. B. Du Bois as a separate layer on top when you get right down to it, but that's certainly more organized than I usually am. Something I'm trying to be better about.

On the one hand, yes, it can be less daunting to work on smaller projects at first. On the other hand, you don't seem to be daunted, and look at how much helpful feedback you have gotten by making this brave attempt that can guide you going forward! The bigger the piece, the harder it is to get it performed, but in terms of learning, write what interests you. That will keep you writing, which will keep you improving. 1. If we are never allowed to share what we write until we feel we are on par with Beethoven or Brahms, the world of new music is going to dry up. 2. No one says you need to stop with this single draft, you too can keep revising this piece for twenty years. 3. I bet Beethoven and Brahms shared what they were working on during their 21 and 30 years of sketching and revising, it's how we keep finding new things to fix and are encouraged to keep going, so keep writing, keep revising, and keep sharing periodically. I never learned to knit because though I tried to learn several times, the people who taught me always insisted I start with a scarf, and I would diligently get about a foot in with nice even stitches and be dying of boredom and ask if I could put it down and try a simple pattern for a hat or pair of socks and they would refuse to share the secrets of hats and socks until I had made several more feet of scarf. So if working big is what interests you, to me, that's fine, as long as you don't need the encouragement of seeing things performed, which is easier to get with shorter pieces for smaller groups of musicians. As long as you are interested, you'll keep going, and that means you'll keep learning and improving.

The Concert Choir of Northwest Missouri State kindly included this piece in their fall 2025 concert program. Thanks to the singers for all their hard work! You can hear them here:

I put together this arrangement of Bright Morning Stars in 2015, but just made a new score demo video for it. Enjoy! Bright morning stars are rising, and day is breaking in my soul. Where are our dear mothers? They're down in the valley a' praying, and day is breaking in my soul. Where are our dear fathers? They've gone up to heaven a' shouting! And day is breaking in my soul!

Starting with what you've got is a great idea. Start with whatever you already know and are comfortable with, and then you can build from there. So you can try coming up with a tune to play on guitar, and then try writing the notes down accurately using free software like Musescore. Or, the reverse, try writing something for guitar using Musescore, and then try playing it. Either will help you get better at knowing when something is a half note, or a quarter note, or a dotted eighth note. Either will help you get better at reading and writing pitches and knowing when to use accidentals, and when the sharps and flats are part of the key signature. I like the advice to start with children's songs or folk music. You could also add Christmas music to that list, or songs from summer camp, or any music that you know by heart. Anything you are very familiar and comfortable with is a good place to start. Do one or two of those, and then when you feel like you can accurately write down the notes and rhythms you want and know the basics of the composing software you are using, you can start arranging pieces, or writing your own tunes. It's like learning to read and write. We start with picture books, so we know what is going on, even if we get stuck over the reading. We start with being read to by someone else, and following along with our finger on the page, and writing letters with a pencil. We start writing short, simple sentences. Then we write short stories or poems or book reports, and can read more fluently, and we learn to use Microsoft word and type quickly, and then can write whole novels if we like. But for now, don't overthink it, just get started. 🙂

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! 🙂

A very fun sound world! You might be letting yourself in for some trouble at bar 13 beat 4, since all parts have big leaps simultaneously. There is a big chance of the tuning suffering in a live performance. That said, since this is a very short exercise, people could just devote a lot of practice time to that one spot. For those playing along at home, some things that might help a choir tune big leaps: 1. Use accompaniment to help singers seize the key again quickly if they miss their jump. 2. Only leap with one part at a time, so that if they don't stick the landing, the other parts will easily provide a steady foundation to help them readjust quickly. 3. Give a part a brief rest so they can prepare their vocal placement to leap more gracefully. Even just a tiny moment of disconnect will help. Here, the way you have set the text to the music gives a natural pause if you just read the line aloud, which means singers could either disconnect the two notes of the leap, (do it non legato), add an eighth rest to take a full breath, or, given the nature of the piece, even take it out of time with a longer pause (rubato) to get as much time as they need to reset vocally and have their next note firmly in mind. If someone sings your exercise, they would probably take some sort of a pause, since the text allows it, so nice job there! Also, I particularly love your first "their soul is melted." The harmony sounds very melty. 🙂

I made a multitrack recording of this piece too, if anyone would rather listen to that. You do have to listen to me, an alto, singing the bass line and then pitching it down a few steps using GarageBand, but it works, more or less!

You have a very sweet voice, and it was very fun seeing the way you had labeled sections of your piano part to get a bit of insight into how you think as you write. I do the same thing on my scores while they are in progress. Lots of little notes to self in the margins about what might come next, or other possibilities if I decide I don't like the current one. The most obvious way to shrink the range would be some key changes for either the highest or lowest vocal sections. You are writing in a style where that would fit in very smoothly.