PeterthePapercomPoser

Hi again @UncleRed99! Nice quintet! I have struggled myself to write for brass ensembles as I often expect too much from the Trumpets and think that their range should extend much higher than Musescore allows. I really enjoyed the music and I think it was good that you found a way out of writer's block using this ensemble. I also do not think the piece sounds at all unfinished. I think it easily finds rest and resolution in probably many places - it just seems like one of those pieces somehow. I noticed something in the score which looks wrong: The 8th note triplets here take up only the duration of a quarter note and hence the measure for the French Horn here has a duration of 3 beats. I think the rendition somehow plays it as quarter note triplets akin to this measure: and even the pitch content in the French Horn seems the same. Thanks for sharing!

I think the chord is kinda functioning as a French 6th in Bb major. Despite the fact that it's missing an E on top to create the necessary augmented 6th, the function of the tritone substitution is still there since there is a Bb in the Violas. And the slip into the suspended 4th (Cb) and the addition of the 2nd (Ab) is a very individual and unique harmonic characteristic that makes sense with the voice leading between the two chords.

Hello @Some Guy That writes Music! I love the very dramatic feel of this piece owing to it's singing melodies, irregular meter and quintal harmonies. You build your very first harmonic sonority on an A minor 9 b13 which is a daring choice given the flat 9th interval between the E and the F in the sonority. I personally would probably have chosen to use an F# in this case. But you make it work, creating a very hopeless soundscape. It sounds like it could accompany some scene in a World War II movie depicting the depressing atrocities committed by the Nazi's. Thanks for sharing this very affecting piece!

Hi @Layne! I like how you're exploring more unusual scales/modes. You start out in C minor with a #4. And you use lots of unresolved dissonance to create tension. You venture outside of your original tonality into C# minor even. Then you go into a section that mixes major and minor seamlessly creating a very unique sound that I'd describe as "yearning". You're growing and your harmonic choices are becoming more daring and extended. What I perceive as some weak points of your approach is that most of your stuff is slow and the melodies extended over a long period of time. Have you written anything fast and exhilarating like a scherzo? This approach allows you to easily write pieces of considerable length because your melodic material is so stretched out over time that it's diffuse and dissolved. I can't for example easily whistle or hum any of your melodies after listening to your music because your melodies aren't happening rapidly enough to be "catchy". Maybe you intend this to be more background cinematic-style music with a set mood that has to be sustained for a long time? Those are my thoughts - thanks for sharing!

Hi @AngelCityOutlaw! Dang! I love the main overdrive guitar shredding those power chords, at first in C Phrygian and then you go to what sounds like a modified octatonic scale (C, Db, Eb, F, Gb, Ab, and Bbb). Very cool sounding riff! Thanks for sharing this demonic doom metal instrumental!

Hi @JorgeDavid! Very beautiful recording and rendition! I personally feel like the electronic dark pad synth could be switched out for string orchestra. But that is just my own personal taste and I have a bias toward acoustic instruments. I also think that the synth gives the piece a bit of an 80's or 70's vibe and if it were my composition I would want to avoid that connotation. But I don't know what your intent was with using the synth. This way you've written out the chords is a bit confusing. Are you talking about and F# chord with an added 4th and 6th? Or an F chord with an added #4 and 6th? I can tell from listening to the music that you mean the latter but it's just written confusingly. I think you have done a wonderful job with what you have! I guess your choice of synth was required by your friend wanting it all recorded on real instruments? In that case, if your digital piano doesn't have good string sounds then the synth would be preferable. Thanks for sharing and congrats! Did you play this all yourself?

Hi @UncleRed99! I love this piece! It's damp and full of emotion in a very nonchalant way which I think is a characteristic feature of music from Japan and China informed by Western music. It's nice and bittersweet like something out of an Anime. I don't hear anything about the piece that sounds rusty or flawed in any way. I love the saxophone! It's just overflowing with passion and/or sadness. It's one of those pieces that's a bit emotionally ambiguous as emotions sometimes tend to be. The harmony suggests melancholy but the melodic contour suggests hope. It's also very well produced and the rendition is excellent! Congrats on an excellent collaboration and thanks for sharing!

I wanted to add that I have recently experienced this phenomenon where I wanted to reject a piece of music that I had already finished on paper while I was entering it into the computer. Because it was sounding so horrible and bad I thought that my composition was just a dud and that sometimes things just don't work out the way I intend them, musically speaking. I was ready to trash the composition but instead decided to just finish entering it into the computer to see what it would sound like in its entirety. It turned out much better than I thought and now I enjoy it immensely! I think I just had to get used to the weirdness of the piece. It was good that I didn't write the piece in the sequencer/notation program/DAW because the immediate feedback of the process of writing it would have severely discouraged me from continuing it. I am glad that I was able to delay judging it until it was finished and not being able to hear it helped me in this process. (In case someone is interested the piece I am talking about is my Arpeggio Etude for Piano). I thought I would share this anecdote in case it might help someone who is suffering from writer's block or finds themselves prematurely rejecting everything they come up with as I have sometimes done. Thanks for reading!

Hello people! I'm working on my next giant variations project. But, in the meantime Mike (@chopin) asked me to write an Arpeggio Etude for him for his upcoming Music Jotter Arpeggio feature exhibit. "Music Jotter just implemented arpeggios (for chords, or arpeggiated chords), and the video will explain the difference between an arpeggiated chord and non-chord arpeggios." The piece is short as I wrote it all completely in my small musical notepad that I carry around in my pocket everywhere I go. Let me know what you think if you have any suggestions, constructive comments or critiques! And thanks for listening. Edit: I'm including a 2nd rendition of the piece that Mike made for me using Music Jotter and 8DIO Steinway Grand 1969 sound samples. Thanks Mike! Edit no.2: Also, check out what I have to say about how I created this piece in Why I Compose Music on Paper. Arpeggio Etude.mid

I'm admittedly not as familiar with the movement as you are and so can't really tell just by listening to this updated version what changes you might have made. There's definitely places in the movement where development takes place and places where one would expect an exposition of themes, with a typical ostinato vamp preceding the entrance of the thematic material. But the themes themselves aren't given enough breathing room and space to shine and to let them become established in the listeners mind from my perspective. So from my perspective the movement is definitely motivically driven, but thematically diffuse, but I do understand now that that is the way you intended to write the piece. I just think that it could be much more lucid and musically significant to your listeners (or at least to myself as the listener) if you took care to exposit the themes first to make them memorable to your audience which would make your development of those themes that much more interesting and exciting! Thanks for sharing.

This depends on how many percussionists will be playing the parts. It seems easy here for one person to cover this part, so I see no issue with having them all on one staff.

I'd imagine I just copy the character from Google: più mosso. I just copy and ctrl-shift-V it into what I just typed. Doesn't it work the same way in Musescore 4?

Hello @UncleRed99 and welcome to the forum! I think, for a piece that's based almost exclusively on the Andalusian cadence, this isn't bad! You mix up the chord progression here and there to create some variation from the typical i bVII bVI V progression and you have a key change in the middle of the piece from E minor to F# minor which injects some novelty into the piece. I followed along with the score and I noticed multiple places where you have some incorrect enharmonic spellings. Most of the time you have the right idea in E minor having D#'s as the leading tone. But it seems like you forgot about some of those Eb's. Likewise, in F# minor, the leading tone should be E# rather than F natural. But that's just a nit-pick. You include a lot of variety in the individual parts that keep the piece fresh despite mostly following the same harmonic progressions. Great job and thanks for sharing!

Hi @Rômulo Mello! I don't remember if I've reviewed your work before or not, but this symphony movement sounds really Haydn-esque to me! I think you totally nailed the form of the movement and the structure lends the music a sound of elegance expected of classical period of music. The themes are catchy and make the music easy to follow along with. Your orchestration, where you use the Horns as a long sustained pad underneath the Strings and Winds is very idiomatic and appropriate for this period. Thanks for sharing!

Hi @Bjarke! This piece sounds like it would have been a great submission to our "Dreamscapes" competition. It's for a combination of 1 monophonic (Viola) and 1 polyphonic (Piano) instrument and sounds quite dreamy! To be nit-picky, the way you've written this rhythm is a bit confusing: Even though the piece is in 6/8 this rhythm is a 3/4 hemiola and so should be organized as three pairs of 8th notes. Thanks for sharing!