Keifer Brown

Thank you for the reply, @Maarten Bauer! I don't play any wind instruments, so I'm relieved to hear that I managed to write a good passage by chance. I added the bowing as suggested. Hope you're having a wonderful vacation!

Hey @Music_is_my_dream, thank you for posting! You've come to the right place if you really love music and want to get into writing! :) While you don't really need to play any instruments to start writing music, it really helps if you know what the notes are on a piano and can read sheet music. If you don't already know how to do that, I'd recommend starting there! It's much easier to write music if you can work it out on the piano rather than in your head. Songs themselves almost always have both melody and harmony. While melodies can be easily written without any training, harmony requires you to know music theory. You can learn everything you need to know about music theory online, but a good book (and my personal resource) for beginning music theory is Elementary Harmony 5th Edition by Robert W. Ottman. It'll tell you everything you need to know about chords to write your song. It also helps you learn how to read sheet music. Best of luck, and welcome to YC! :)

Thanks for the follow up! I'll be sure to get that book. I've really been putting off studying composer's scores in depth because of (mostly) laziness on my part, but I'll try to be determined to do it! And thank you for the positive feedback! I feel a lot more invigorated to continue working on this piece because of that! :)

Thank you for all your thoughts, @fishyfry! I really greatly appreciate it! I'll make all the changes you suggest and take your advice about clarifying form! Thank you so much! :) Yeah, the reason for the huge pause is because I haven't actually finished either theme (both are intended to be part of a larger exposition), so it's not there because I want there to be a pause, but because I just haven't gotten to writing that part yet. A question: I'm worried about the flute part at M. 66. Is it possible to play that passage at that speed on the flute, or should I break down the rhythm there like I did with the oboes? One thing I'm concerned about: I feel like the instrumentation might appear to be chosen at random. Any thoughts for how I can be more deliberate with instrument choices? Thank you again for taking the time to comment! Edit: Oh! One more thing. How do I notate that the 1st Oboe should switch to English Horn?

Hey guys! I recently attempted (keyword attempted) to begin writing a symphony. So far I have partially worked out the exposition sections of the first movement, which I intend to be in Sonata-Allegro form. A problem, however, I ran into very quickly was that I am not at all familiar with assigning instruments to various ideas or lines. I quickly stopped working on it because I had no clue whether the work I had done was at all acceptable, even though it sounds good to my ears. So I let it be for several months. Then it occurred to me today that there's a section on these forums for unfinished music especially! So I gathered the files together to post it. Any comments are welcome! I'd especially appreciate opinions on the instrumentation itself. I realize that the score isn't the cleanest, but I haven't seen the value in making an unfinished project look pretty. Thanks very much!

I like it very much! Especially in the second half as you said. I actually thought it almost ended too early: I liked where it was going and I wanted more in that direction. I'm not very qualified to give feedback but I'm almost of the opinion that it's too bass heavy. I thought it would've been nice to take the violin and maybe the clarinet higher over the other instruments?

Thank you for the feedback @Vadrif D. Zobrist! I'm so glad you loved it! I'll definitely keep that in mind. I've been working hard to write something good enough for someone to play so I can learn what actually works as opposed to what I think will work. Until I can manage that, I'll focus on keeping errors of that nature out of my work. Thanks again!

Thank you for the clarifications! :)

Thank you for the reply, Monarcheon! 1. You're right, they are artificial harmonics. I'll correct that! Is this written correctly?: 2. I was aware of the relative shortness of the piece but I didn't really see where development fit in with my overall plan of the piece. 3. I wasn't aware that was a problem, thank you. My ear tends to "forgive" dissonance (if that makes sense) so I have trouble with hearing issues with that. 4. Ok. Would you mind clarifying if it's a hard and fast rule that you have to divide notes going across the center (except for whole notes) of the measure? 5. I did in fact want a direct modulation. Do you think a common chord modulation would fit better? I rather like the effect of the direct modulation but I'm so inexperienced that I may not know what I want. 6. When you say "heartrate machine with little blips in the line," do you just mean that's because there are technical issues with the piece, or are you talking about how the overall piece sounds to you? And how can I avoid this? EDIT: Are you by any chance talking about the more or less constant eighth note motion throughout the piece? Thank you again so much for taking the time to give feedback! I really appreciate it! :)

Hey, my name's Keifer Brown. I'm 18 years old and I started learning composing in, roughly, August last year. I've written mainly for string orchestra but I haven't had any of my music rehearsed live, so I don't know what my compositions really sound like except in a sequencer. I've been looking at this site for a bit and I decided to post a piece I've written here for critique as you guys seem to be really helpful and nice! :) I have attached sheet music (Veil Sheet Music.pdf) and an MP3 (Veil Render.mp3) for a piece I've written for piano quintet, called "Veil." Any advice is welcome! I look forward to joining this site's community as well.