PeterthePapercomPoser

Megami Tensei Gaiden: Last Bible II - Dungeon (from an SMW rom hack): LB2_-_Dungeon_3mix.mp3

Final Fantasy VII Remake - Tifa's Theme:

Please submit links to your "From Nothing, to Something" competition pieces here! (Please don't submit your music directly into this thread - rather, create your own dedicated thread where members will be able to review your music there - Upload Your Composition for Analysis and Feedback and then copy and paste the URL of your topic into a reply that you make in this thread). Thank you for your participation! To read the requirements/specifications of the competition and declare your intent to participate go here:

The members have voted in the poll and decided upon a theme for the next competition - "From Nothing, to Something"! This competition has no monetary awards - only kudos and badges. We are inviting the members/competitors to review and to participate in the creation of the badge awards that will be dispersed at the end of the competition! So if you have any ideas for particular badges that would accord with the kind of music that will be submitted for this competition and the theme of this competition, let us know in the List of Manually-Awardable Badges thread and we will take your ideas into consideration! Please reply to this thread to declare your intent to participate in this competition! The winners will be determined by popular voting polls! The duration of each piece should once again be between 3 - 7 minutes. Reviewing the entries will once again be spearheaded by the members/competitors at large. You are free to use the Official Competition Reviewing Template or you can review the entries in any way you see fit or create a template of your own making! Thank you for whatever time and effort you are able or willing to give towards reviewing the competition entries! There will be tiered "Ardent Reviewer" badges given out for this event: Featherweight Reviewer - for reviewing 33% of the entries Welterweight Reviewer - for reviewing 66% of the entries Heavyweight Reviewer - for reviewing 100% of the entries We are instituting a policy of not allowing any AI generated works in the competition. Because of this you will be required to detail how you created your piece and submit a PDF score or midi file for the perusal of the staff and members at large. The musical entries to the competition are final once submitted. This is for the sake of consistency of reviewing (so that each reviewer reviews the same piece of music without any changes). Instrumentation: As per the poll, the competitors will be tasked with writing a piece for a mixed trio/quartet/quintet of individual instruments/players/singers. Deadline: As per the poll, this competition will take 2 months, so the deadline to participate will be Thursday, September 24th, 2026. @MK_Piano's theme for the competition can be found below: What greater challenge of a composer than to take nothing and turn it into something! Your goal is to take the text from Paul Verlaine’s summer poem “Donc, ce sera par un clair jour d'été,” (So, on a bright summer day it shall be) and turn it into a piece! This poem is short, but filled with evoking images of what summer can feel like. Attached is the poem in English: So, on a bright summer day it shall be: The great sun, my partner in joy, Shall make, amid the satin and the silk, Your dear beauty lovelier still; The sky, all blue, like a tall canopy, Shall quiver sumptuously in the long folds Above our two happy brows, grown pale With pleasure and expectancy; And when evening comes, the breeze shall be soft And play caressingly about your veils, And the peaceful stars looking down Shall smile benevolently on man and wife. The poem in French and English Entrants to the competition thus far: @MrBelegro @Fruit hunter @Ninja Nolan @Kvothe @TristanTheTristan @MK_Piano @Matthew M @GMoneywroteasong Here is the submissions thread for the competition where participants are encouraged to post links to their composition (rather than posting their piece directly into the pre-existing topic - make your own dedicated topic so the members at large can review your music there):

From "Flow - The Psychology of Optimal Experience" by Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi: And, perhaps our community here on Young Composer's can also be evaluated based on how much it is able to facilitate optimal experiences for its members, how much it is able to help them achieve their own goals and have optimal listening experiences both of others' music as well as their own. Thanks for reading!

Hi @Martynas123 ! I think the melody in this recording gets buried underneath the less important voices. It's important to balance the parts properly in the mixer or by using dynamics in order to bring out the most important aspects of the composition and relegate the less important parts to the background. With piano, in Musescore, the way I usually do this is by using multiple pianos and giving each individual piano its own dynamics/levels in the mixer. That gives me more control over parts I want to bring out in high relief above the background figurations and parts of the chord which shouldn't be as emphasized. Then of course you have to edit the playback file to make it look right for the PDF export, but for me at lease, it's worth the effort. Thanks for sharing!

From "The Occult" by Colin Wilson: And if you've gotten this far, thanks for reading!

Thanks @Grant Weep for your review of @Martynas123 's piece! I would argue that the spelling of the chord in measure 12 is correct with an A# instead of a Bb because the function of the chord in question is a German Augmented 6th chord. The augmented 6th in question is between C and A#. In this type of chord, the C is expected to resolve down to B while the A# resolves up to B. One could argue that its function is similar to a tritone substitution dominant 7th chord which would in fact be spelled C, E, G, Bb. However this type of spelling is used in jazz music. In the classical period, the proper spelling and function was quite different from its conception in jazz.

Hello @Martynas123 and welcome to the forum! I think symphonies are usually written for a string section with winds rather than a string quartet like you have here. Make sure you choose "Violins (section)" instead of "Violin" or "Violas (section)" instead of "Viola" in your instrument choices to get the full ensemble sound. Also, symphonies often also have Timpani and some brass (at least French Horns). A mistake I noticed in your score: You have a B natural in the Contrabass while the Violin 1 plays a Bb which creates a wrong-sounding cross-relation. I would change the Bb in the Violin to B natural and I think that issue would be fixed. But there's multiple times throughout the score where that happens so I'd make sure to peruse the score for those instances. Another thing is that you use this rhythmic motif very frequently: In order for the listener to not get bored of too much seeming repetition, it is advisable to repeat or sequence such rhythmic motifs at most 4 times in a row but not more. Those are just some things that stuck out to me upon hearing your work. Overall though I think you did a good job! It doesn't quite sound dirge-like enough to me though. The beginning is very funeral march-like but later on it starts to sound even perhaps a bit happy. Thanks for sharing!

@interlect is "Contemporary Composers Sector" supposed to be a competition theme proposal? How would it work?

I wonder if you even read the quote @interlect because what you wrote doesn't seem to have anything to do with what I wrote.

Here's a musical quote from Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi's Flow - The Psychology of Optimal Experience: And if you've gotten this far, thanks for reading!

Unfortunately the poll has already been voted upon by a large number of people and can't be changed at this time. But we can certainly include concert band as a possible choice of ensemble in future competitions! Edit: I have included "Concert Band or Wind Band" in the choices - although it's not likely to win because a large number of people have already voted (unless they go back and vote again).

Yes, in previous competitions, when people already had a piece pre-composed WAAAY ahead of time (like years) that fit the instrumentation and other requirements for the competition, they were able to submit it. However, such entries were obvious to the judges and it didn't predispose those entries to being judged favorably as they didn't fit the theme of the competition as nicely. But that doesn't and shouldn't keep the contestants from trying if they wish to do so. To concur with what @MK_Piano mentioned above, I do think we will from now on count the ensemble size by the number of performers/players not instruments. That can include just about any sound that a human being and their available tools at hand is capable of producing (although this can get pretty involved if you care to do so). Also there's a very easy way to get Musescore to only display staves that have events in them (if multiple instruments are played at once like in the case of an involved percussion rack or something).

Hi @stewartIM and welcome to the forum! I think writing a set of variations on two themes is a really great idea! And writing them so that their order can be reversed is especially ingenious! I listened to both versions and was amazed that there weren't any awkward transitions between variations - perhaps this is because you wrote each variation as a standalone piece of music? If you were tasked with writing them as one smooth and continuous piece of music it would be harder methinks! Also - amazing performance of your own music! Great job playing and recording this piece! My favorite variation was perhaps the Chiasmus: Bleak. Although the Lamentoso variation was especially affecting as well. Now for some critique! I write a lot of variations and I consider it my life's calling to find themes that nobody has written variations on and write variations on them! In my own composition adventures I usually expect there to be an intensification of the awareness of the theme throughout the variations. When I listen to some of my favorite variations pieces my mind is stimulated by how different they get while still being audibly related to the original theme. In other words, the pieces stimulate the listener to recognize the theme in all it's various new and different forms. But, in your variations, I don't perceive that to happen. Perhaps it's because you're using two themes? Or perhaps your variations don't have as tight of a motivic development as I've come to expect from other favorite variations pieces I've heard? But don't take this the wrong way - I've still enjoyed your music immensely and it is very good! The other critique is that the music in both versions seems to just stop and there's no audible drive to a strong conclusion - this is obviously because the piece can be played backwards and forwards and it would be impossible to accomplish because of that - unless you had two conclusions - one at the beginning and one at the end. In any case - I enjoyed your music very much and thank you for sharing!