Sahir Haider

I have no doubt that your niece will thoroughly enjoy both listening to and learning these delightful pieces ! There's enough variety in here to keep a beginner at the piano thoroughly engaged.

Hi Behdad, These are wonderful, sensitive and moving pieces and do complete justice to the title "Romance". Great command of the style. This could definitely be used in a movie to great effect. Also wonderfully played. Seems you have access to some great performers ! Love the piano part starting at 6:38, and lots of nice cello parts throughout the piece too ! I wish you all the best !

This is an enjoyable collection of pieces, although as the above commenter mentioned, the piano sound and mechanical rendition takes away some of the charm. It will be interesting to hear a real piano recording. I particularly enjoyed "Gathering Leaves". Didn't quite get into the last movement, but again that might change on hearing a real piano recording.

This is a wonderful piece Mike ! And so melancholic.. gives me the blues listening to it. As pointed by another reviewer, it does remind one of Schumann. I'd say the nostalgia here is also quite reminiscent of some works by some of the more lyrical modern composers like Silvestrov or Kancheli. I've heard this atleast 5 times now, cuz its the kind of piece you want to repeat back as soon as its over 🙂 A fine work indeed ! I'm glad I didn't miss this.

Thank you so much Mike ! I should elaborate on the "self-taught". I'm completely self-taught as far as music theory and composition goes. I started teaching myself these about a couple years ago, although at an intuitive level I knew some of those things from having played/improvising/composing at the piano for many years before that. For piano, I'd say 99 percent self taught ( If i had to put a number to it ! ). I took some piano lessons for a few months at a point of time when I was already playing my favourite pieces by Ravel , Debussy, etc. So, by that time my technique was sufficiently well developed ( although obviously flawed as it still as today). I say 99 percent because my classes focussed mostly on things like interpretation and musical phrasing regarding the specific pieces I was playing at the time and not so much on general technique/keyboard skills itself. I would've continued my classes but I lost my job back then, had to move back to a different city and for one reason or the other never took lessons again. So really most of my piano learning has come on my own and from spending a crazy amount of time listening to the great recordings of the past... and spending a crazy amount of time at the piano. I should mention I'm a terrible sight reader though as I learnt piano by ear first for many years. I'm glad you pointed this out. The thought has occurred to me. I just started teaching myself orchestration last year ( using Sam Adler's book and some of my favourite scores by the likes of Ravel, Stravinsky etc). I already have ideas regarding the instrumentations of certain sections. But not having orchestrated before, I think I might start with a simpler piece first. But yes, I totally agree with you that I should orchestrate it. I understand your point. Its true most of the ostinatos are in the middle register, and I'll consider that for future pieces ( or if I create a revised version later), to perhaps add more variety on that front. This is helpful ! Thank you again ! I'm glad to hear you liked my harmonies/melodies. I put a lot of thought ( and time) into these. And yes, the video took me a lot of time to make too. The entire process of composing this piece, learning the harder parts, writing out the score properly and the final video editing.. I'd say took me around 8-9 months.. I guess I work at a painfully slow rate 😄 .

Thank you ! 🙂 I'm happy to hear that you think I've succeeded in what I was trying to do here. I don't think I intended it to be so "busy" when I set out to compose it. It just got composed that way haha.. I rely primarily on intuition and my experience at the piano while composing. I understand though that some parts may sound too busy to some. This, I'm aware of. There are definitely imperfections in the recording ..And I play on a mid of the line digital piano... It does what it can. I'd like to have recorded this on a Steinway grand or something. But I won't blame it all on the piano 😄 , the pedalling required for the correct sustain in certain sections is quite tricky to pull off too and I probably messed up here and there. I do have to mention that's exactly what I wanted though. Maybe that sounds odd, but it was the idea of contrasting themes that still flow or lead smoothly into each other but in a "one directional flow" kind of way, is what I was going for. I was actually quite sure of receiving this criticism 😄 . But yes, I purposely didn't use the common methods often used for achieving "thematic unification". For a piece that does that though (atleast I was told it does that ! ), please listen to my previous piece "The drifting waltz" on my channel. Ravel is my favourite composer. I've played Ondine and I could not dream of achieving that level of awesomeness and perfection haha. ( I have a performance of his Jeux d'eau on my channel too if you'd like to hear). I must have heard Gaspard de la Nuit countless times, its an absolutely untouchable masterpiece. Us mortals can only aspire to that level. Ravel has talked about how his first goal was achieving technical perfection. He certainly did or got as close to it as a human could ! I want to really thank you for your critique. Its always nice to get some detailed feedback. Gives me something to work with. I'm glad you still enjoyed the pieces despite its imperfections 🙂

Hi Everyone, Please have a listen to my second finished composition for solo piano . I've always liked to improvise and compose themes on the piano ( or in my head), but its only in the last couple of years that I've undertaken "serious composing" along with fully notating it too. I'm completely self-taught in music, so feedback is always helpful in evaluating where I stand. Here's the link to my own performance ( with score) on youtube: Also, here's the link to the score (also attached as pdf) : https://musescore.com/user/25828516/scores/6605352 The title "Mood River" suggests flowing through various different moods, and sometimes even moving between subtle shades of the same or similar moods. Thank you very much !!

I really like this a lot !!! Its a long piece and I've just heard it once, and have a feeling that multiple hearings will make me like it even more. I guess the influence of Ravel and Debussy is probably obvious , but I also sense some inspiration from early Messiaen ( preludes) , Mompou and Takashi Yoshimatsu. Could be wrong about these latter composers, but its what comes to my mind. A lof of this is very mysterious ( and I'm a sucker for mysterious music ..). There are indeed some places of astonishing beauty , like from 3:15 onwards or from 5:30 onwards till next couple of minutes or so, the entire "Snowflakes fall like humans do" and more . I'll be listening to this again for sure and will probably get more into it . Thanks for sharing this !

Thank you very much !!! Actually I haven't composed any "unpublished" pieces, and I just made a couple of enharmonic spelling changes and a rhythm correction on the last page after I published this piece. But its definitely true that I did spend quite a bit of time upfront making sure I'd have minimal errors in the score. And to help your mental health 😂, I'd like to add that , as mentioned in my post, I have been composing themes and improvising on the piano for many years. So, in that sense I wouldn't consider myself new to composing. But indeed, this was the first time I composed an "Exact" piece , putting together various themes in a (hopefully) coherent way and also the first time notating a piece. I guess I was also helped by the fact that I've played several pieces by Ravel, Debussy, Rachmaninoff, Prokofiev etc... So, that helped me a lot, but frankly I still find it tough work to properly notate a piece. Thanks for your feedback ! I'm glad you liked it 😃

Really Interesting ! Very atmospheric , sets the mood from the first note.. A haunting one ! .. I think I like the second half of the piece even more. ( Although I thought it ended somewhat abruptly .. but this could be just a subjective thing..).

Thank you very much !! Really glad to hear that you enjoyed listening to it 🙂

Thanks a lot! This is really good to hear for me. I definitely wanted to make the transitions between the contrasting parts/styles seamless. So I'm really glad that, based on your comments, my efforts seem to have paid off! Also great to hear that I could keep your interest till the end. I supposed I could come up with a better description in words...

This is a wonderful little impromptu ! I can only imagine it would sound even better in a real piano performance ...

Thank you very much ! Really glad you liked it. Yes, I was aiming at a slightly "unconventional" treatment of the waltz form, so I'm glad it seemed to have worked fine !

Thank you so much for your feedback. Indeed, I was trying to create a polystylistic piece as the description in my video suggests. I'm really glad to hear you liked it !