PeterthePapercomPoser

Hi @Henry Ng Tsz Kiu! Wonderful and simple use of secondary dominants and classic sequences. The melodicity of the piece is also more defined and the pastorale nature of it is more solidified with the birdsong allusions. But it has its Sturm und Drang moments to it as well as the occasional random pauses before the birdsong gets its solo moment which is really a great way to emphasize that aspect of the composition. You underline the birdsong by exposing it in solo relief - very clever. Lately every piece I've heard from you has been getting better and better. And imo this whole sonata is an even more substantial achievement than your sextet! Great job and thanks for sharing!

Hello @Churchcantor and welcome to the forum! I've noticed that you posted a large number of your pieces already, sometimes commenting on your own topics multiple times. There's a few reasons why you should avoid doing that. 1) Posting too many works in a short time tends to overwhelm the members and reviewers on the site and they might not pay as much attention to your work as if you posted one work at a time. 2) Commenting on your own topic before anyone else has had a chance to reply also makes it look like people have already replied to your work in the "List of works with few reviews". If a piece has more than 5 reviews it gets removed from the list even if all the replies are just you replying to your own topic. This piece has a very clever name given that it explores the use of parallel tritones! Cool idea! I think calling it an "experimental etude" is a really good description! But some etudes, besides being exercises in some kind of theoretical construct (in this case the parallel tritones and also some surprising use of polyrhythm) also manage to be musical and entertaining. What with all the heavy chords and copious use of repeats this piece gets really tiresome to listen to even once (I also can't identify a reason why the repeats should be there). I can't identify a melody or some kind of musical hook to get me to tune into it on more than a surface level. There's also no dynamic contrast or balance between different elements of the composition, some of which could be more important than others. It's a cool experiment though! Thanks for sharing.

Hi @HoYin Cheung and thanks for your review! Thanks! I used Musescore Studio 4 and Musesounds for all the solo strings in this piece. As can be seen in the score, I fussed around a lot with the dynamics in order to bring the different contrapuntal lines in and out of the foreground throughout the piece. Thanks for listening and commenting!

@Henry Ng Tsz Kiu and I brainstormed a little bit about what I could write next to give me a small diversion from my giant variations project. We decided that I could write another microtonal piece. I have written microtonal inventions before, so now I tried my hand at a microtonal fugue. It's a 4-voice fugue for string quartet and I tried to very scarcely use the microtones, only opting for occasional microtonal passing tones and sub-minor 3rds here and there. Nonethless, I think the piece retains a different microtonal flavor to it, but let me know what you think! I'd appreciate any observations, suggestions, critiques or comments! Thanks for listening!

Hi @Henry Ng Tsz Kiu! I really love this sonata! In this particular movement, the ARJUNA theme brings to mind for me the Nimrod movement from Edward Elgar's Enigma Variations. Funny how both this work and Elgar's were written for friends! Very cool that you dedicated so much time and effort for a birthday gift to an internet friend half a world away from you! I really like the very classical-yet-romantic leaning graceful music that isn't too waltzy. I think I like this work because it's not too Beethovenian - I hear more of your own individual voice coming through in this and I also find it more joyful and entertaining for the same reason. It's also amazing how much this was prompted by Arjuna! Thanks for sharing!

I am also working on a set of variations and mash-ups on themes not written by me (from a famous videogame). I am using so many themes at once that I am also feeling unmotivated lately to work on it. It seems like one of those never-ending snowballing out of control projects. I hope that I'll finish at least one part of it. I think because of my ginormous orchestral project, the next thing I'll want to write is a piece for 1 monophonic solo instrument accompanied by 1 polyphonic instrument (like the Dreamscapes contest rules). It would be a nice change of pace. And if I manage to write something "dreamy" then it will be all the more interesting. Besides that I was thinking of writing my own variations of more of the themes from the "Bits to Bangers" competition, since I already did the "Harvest Moon" Piano Quintet. I think I majorly prefer working on previously written video game themes, and if not that, then I prefer for my own music to retain a VGM style or media purpose to it somehow.

Hello @A Ko and welcome to the forum! It's so fun that you snuck in some themes from other composers' works! At around 4:10 it sounds like you're quoting Mahler - Symphony 4 or 5 perhaps? It's amazing that your first finished composition is this long and for orchestra - congrats! Incorporating other composers' melodies in your own works smoothly and seamlessly is quite a difficult endeavor and it gives the listeners a fun little Easter egg hunt to go on - very clever idea to involve the listener in the listening process in yet another additional way! Thanks for sharing!

Ah, ok. Thank you for the correction. I will be able to listen for that now. I did sense some changes but it seemed like an alternation between i and V and without a score, I couldn't be sure. Thanks for your reply!

Hi @Samuel_vangogh! You made this art? It looks great! The music is wonderful too! The delaying of the resolution to the tonic through repeated ii - V's is to me a very cool feature. The ending is quite unusual as well and despite not ending on the tonic, it still sounds finished. Also, something I noticed is that (at least in the beginning) the piece seems to be in the Acoustic mode (or Lydian b7 or Mixolydian #4). But there's plenty of chromaticism as well. The simplicity but exploration of non-harmonic tones is also a bit Satie-like. Thanks for sharing! P.S.: would you post a link to your artwork, if possible as a high resolution image? That would be really great! Thanks in advance!

Hey @Fugax Contrapunctus! Great idea! I really like how the canon starts on the dominant, making the F minor tonality only a later emergent property of the harmony arising from the counterpoint. I think the Musesounds strings are a bit difficult to deal with to get them to sound as intended. I wonder why you changed the articulation to staccato as each new voice enters when it wasn't staccato in the Cello? It would make the entry of each voice more obvious I think if they entered on a fully held quarter note. The beginning and ending of the canon, I think are the best parts. But the middle could really have used some space/rests in the line to imo to give the ear an occasional break from the barrage of constant melodic material that demands to be digested by the ears. Thanks for sharing!

Hi @Fugax Contrapunctus! I think your hours of labor on this unusual subject really paid off! I think the subject and the counter-subject are really well matched with each other with one moving while the other rests on quarter notes. It creates a kind of question/answer dichotomy between the voices and increases their independence. I think this is one of the best fugues you've written and seems really mature and less mechanical. It's very fluid, natural and spontaneous. The only thing that bothers me is the ending on a feminine cadence. I felt like the last chord came too early and should have been reserved for the strong beat of the next (non-existent) bar. Thanks for sharing!

Hey @Layne! Your harmony and main theme are full of tension! And the piece is saturated with the theme throughout. But you do have a contrasting middle section that doesn't use the main theme for a brief moment. I'm surprised nobody has mentioned this yet but your main theme sounds a lot like the theme to "Back to the Future", especially with the first 3 notes (F, Bb, E). Thanks for sharing!

Mark, I think what I mean by artificiality is that the notes lay flat on the page. It might be partly a result of you conceiving of the music as a visual structure. One has the impression that one is hearing a work meant to be experienced all at once, since it seems to have been conceived that way, in a sense. The same thing is true of Stravinsky imo. He worked at the piano and there's an essay somewhere out there about how the piano heavily influenced how he conceived of his music. There's sometimes a certain lack of fluidity where the music spontaneously surprises the listener at each moment of its playing. That's what I experience when I listen to some of your music and I interpret that as a certain artificiality. Thanks for asking!

Hi @Some Guy That writes Music! I love the song-like quality of the music and the breathtaking modulations! Some of the melodies sometimes sound like they're wandering around aimlessly up and down the scale in step-wise motion which doesn't make for a very interesting melodic content. Other times you break away from the step-wise motion and the music seems much more romantic and purposeful there. Although I guess the other extreme of avoiding step-wise motion would be to skip around to chord tones. Of course, that wouldn't be interesting either all the time. But you do show some good choice use of non-harmonic tones on strong beats to really bring out their beauty. Thanks for sharing. I really enjoyed the romantic flourishing and I loved the quiet ending!

Hi @Fugax Contrapunctus! This perhaps makes me think of a slow funeral march with its metronomic regularity and depth of emotion. I usually try to try to steer clear of orchestrating stuff the way you've done here where the choir is basically just doubled by the strings and woodwinds. You seem to have made it work, but I wonder if that will translate to a real performance. Perhaps with a careful balancing of the orchestra and a formidable enough choir, the orchestra won't drown the choir out. But you seem to have deliberately omitted the brass which might have been too forceful for the venue and the nature of the music, so I guess it's best to leave them tacit. Thanks for sharing!