PeterthePapercomPoser

I've noticed that for Christmas music (yes - it's that time of year and I've already written a piece for the season!) I always tend to write in the key of Eb major for some reason. It also happens to be the key of my favorite Beethoven Symphony - No. 3. Perhaps it's because of that symphony that people ordinarily think of that key as "heroic" but I think of it more as a warm key. I also prefer flat keys, even if it causes way more flats in the key signature than is practical. For example - I prefer Ab minor or Eb minor to G# or D# minor. I'll just use the Ab major and Eb major key signatures and write extra accidentals for the notes I need to make it minor. Interesting topic!

Now I don't see any excerpt, just empty space where the notes used to be ... ???

@Monarcheon the excerpt you quoted is in bass clef? Did you quote the wrong thing?

I'll just tag @MJFOBOE in this thread. Maybe he might be able to help you..

To me, the whole point of having a pedal tone over some changes is that at some point or another it becomes a non-harmonic tone in relation to the harmony which brings in some nice dissonant color. But your plan of having AbM-EbM/G-Gbmaj9-Dbm works because the G's and Gb's are dissonant with Ab. Now, the only thing that puzzles me is .. why did you take the trouble of modulating to Db minor if you immediately go back to Ab major? I thought you were going to stay in the Db minor key longer to introduce a contrasting theme or something?

I think that's a good plan considering that the Ab note is a chord tone in both Fm and Dbm. But I do hope that during the Ab pedal note, the harmony that smoothly leads you from F to Db includes some dissonances with the Ab.

Omicronrg9 started the fashion of making a portfolio page in the "About Me" section of his profile: Now Henry, me, and many other composers on YC use this section to display a press kit/portfolio of compositions in their profile.

Thanks Vince! Yeah, in the case of this casting, where we ended up (by pure chance and luck) having 10 unique solfege degrees thrown with the solfege dice, it almost became a serial tone row. If we had gotten two more solfege degrees (Do and Fa) it would have been a complete 12-tone row. Thanks for your review! You're welcome and thank you for buying me the harmonica and Muzoracle! You've enriched my and other's lives for sure! This has been the most drawn out casting I have done thus far and I hope you gain from it!

I have written another piece for my friend Kat's Casting! This time Kat asked the Muzoracle if she will graduate from a 4-year university. (Muzoracle is a storytelling/divination tool similar to the Tarot card deck, but with cards with musical concepts and 12-sided Musician's dice and Solfege dice.) My interpretation of the cards and dice are displayed below. Since the first card drawn was a Conductor of Percussion card, I chose to use Piano, an instrument that Kat likes. The second card drawn was a Major 7th of Woodwinds, so I chose Clarinet, an instrument that Kat used to play. And finally the third card drawn was an Octave of Voices card, so I chose a solo Soprano singer. If you'd like to find out more about Muzoracle and how castings are interpreted go here: https://muzoracle.net/ This short musical interpretation of Kat's Casting is about a minute and a half long. Since the black 12-sided Musician's Die landed on F, the piece is in the key of F major. I created the following melodic/harmonic underdrawing guided by the cards and dice. The first solfege die landed on Ti and the card indicated a percussion instrument - in this case, Piano. So I had the Piano start solo on an E (in the left hand). Then I had the Clarinet and Soprano enter on an anacrusis into a melody that uses E, Db, C, and B. Since the interval of a Minor 2nd is prominent in the casting, I decided to transpose the whole melodic/harmonic underdrawing down a Minor 2nd giving me access to tones needed to create a V7 of F. I then used that dominant to bring the piece into F major and repeat the melodies and harmonies at the pitch level of F before repeating the piece and ending on an F7 #11 chord. I also liberally used accelerandi and ritardandi, guided by the accelerando/ritardando card in the 1st position. If you've gotten this far, thanks for reading! And I hope you enjoy listening to this short chamber work I wrote to represent Kat's Casting. Comments, critiques, suggestions, or observations are of course, always welcome. Thanks for listening!

Hey Vince! Nice prelude! Does this mean you're just going to keep writing more of these periodically? It would be cool! I think the tonic 6/4 chord in the last bar makes me expect a V before resolving to the final chord. It's such a well worn norm in classical music to hear the I 6/4 either followed by a dominant or a cadenza. Considering that a V/V and bII6 are both pre-dominant function chords, I don't think it would be unusual to transition from one to the other, especially since the V/V can function as a tritone substitution of the bII. But there are no bII's in those bars. In bar 2, the implied chords are V/V, IV, ii7b5, with an anticipation of the return to the tonic in bar 3. Then in bar 5, there is a resolution to vi. The only place where a bII appears anywhere in this piece (as Vince mentioned) is in bar 9 beat 3 but it's in root position with the 3rd omitted. But thanks for sharing Vince!

Hello again @Tunndy! Nice ideas! I think the following parts with 16th notes: should be notated as either being in 6/16 (or you could double all the note values and use 6/8). I've marked the strong beats as red down arrows and the weak beats as black up arrows. That's at least how I hear the rhythmic stresses in your piece. Thanks for sharing!

Hey @Tunndy! Although I don't think that this orchestration is entirely in good taste (with some parts still sounding quite mechanical and robotic such as especially the triplet 16th note runs) I think it's a huge improvement over your other orchestrations of famous piano pieces! You didn't include the piano in the orchestration as a crutch, and you use the instruments mostly idiomatically, making good solo instrument choices and giving the different instruments a chance to imitate each other creating changes in timbre that were original and most definitely not intended in the original. I like how you let the solo flute lead with the main melody, using the strings at first only to outline the harmony. Later you include some variations on the main melody to extend it. Then you include harp arpeggios in a way that sounds appropriate to a harp rather than a piano. You also create lots of variation and contrasts between restatements of the melody that in the original were the same. I like your use of dynamics and thickening up of the texture and creation of dramatic moments with the timpani. All in all, I think this was a very successful orchestration! (despite some things I would have excluded) Great job and thanks for sharing!

I think this question comes from the wrong place philosophically. When one asks the question "How do I compose faster?" one is really treating themselves like a machine, the assumption being that the more trial and error, the more one learns. Take this anecdote: While this anecdote addresses the concept of craft, it doesn't really get at inspiration. I believe that the question any artist or composer should really be asking themselves is "How do I enjoy music more?" or "How do I enjoy writing/creating more?". Without addressing this question one is quickly going to crash into a wall called "burnout". The pattern behind one's creative output is likely to become something akin to this: 1) Overexertion 2) Exhaustion 3) Creative stagnation 4) Increased self-doubt 5) Repetition. Asking the question "How can I enjoy music more?" will lead the composer towards music that they want to emulate, setting up a pattern of: 1) Discovery 2) Epiphany 3) New utility 4) Integration (or Refinement) 5) Sharing 6) Repetition (I won't lie, I partially used Google Gemini to help me come up with more healthy creative habit steps)

In the beginning and throughout the piece you set a consistent mood, which for me makes it sound like VGM. But then the way you use rhythms and ornaments from 0:46 on makes it sound more Baroque to me.

Perhaps my most intriguing Muzoracle casting to date - Fred asked the Muzoracle "How will I attain political power?". (Muzoracle is a storytelling/divination tool similar to the Tarot card deck, but with cards with musical concepts and 12-sided Musician's dice and Solfege dice.) My interpretation of the cards and dice are displayed below. Since two strings cards were dealt in the 1st and 3rd position, I used Violin and Cello. In the 2nd position I dealt a Tritone of Percussion so I used a Clavichord. In the 4th and 5th positions I dealt a Major 2nd and a Triad of Voices, so I used choir. If you'd like to find out more about Muzoracle and how castings are interpreted go here: https://muzoracle.net/ This short musical interpretation of Fred's Casting is about a minute and a half long. The piece is in C major since the black musician's die landed on C. I then made the following melodic/harmonic underdrawing that I used in the composition of the music. To fill out the piece harmonically I included Roman numeral interpretations of each of the dyads/positions in the casting. Since the piece starts with strings I used Violin, Cello and Harpsichord in the first three positions. The voices then come in on the 4th and 5th position. The Triad card is normally supposed to be interpreted as a major triad, but since this was a descending casting and the position where the triad card was dealt was descending I decided to interpret it in a negative harmony way, inverting the intervals of the triad downwards, thus producing an E minor triad based on B (Ti). Then, to conclude the piece I reversed the order of the chords in retrograde fashion to land back on the first chord at the conclusion, but reinterpreting it harmonically as a C major 6 chord. I also reinterpreted the triad as a major triad ascending from B (Ti). If you've gotten this far, thanks for reading! And I hope you enjoy listening to this short chamber work I wrote to represent Fred's Casting. Comments, critiques, suggestions, or observations are of course, always welcome. Thanks for listening!