Niku

In a strict sense 'modal' music contrasts with 'tonal' music by not emphasising on the harmonic progressions to create tensions. Old modal music uses individual lines that have more tension when the move further away from the 'finalis' (the modal equivalent of the tonal tonic) and when the rythm becomes more complex. The line finally returns to the starting to to relax the tension. In that time polyphony was based on the intervals that those individual lines had between them, not the chords that were created with them. In fact people probably didn't know that chords existed in that time. Actually, if you want the piece to sound modal try not to do things that are usual within the scope of the harmonic tonality.

In my opinion your piece has some nice ideas but is too boring, your main theme is rythmically not that interesting and you repeat it too often which gives the feeling of 'this again?' with listeners I think. Also, this is a very nocturne-like piece with the arpeggio's as accompaniement almost throughout. I think you could do so much more rythmically especially. An idea might be to have in one section of your piece multiple themes or ideas, accompanyments or rythms. The Allegro part was nice, this is where your impressionistic influence shines through most, except that I also think it is too long and too unvaried.

Hi, sorry for reacting so late, Harmony teachers are usually extremely fast in correcting those mistakes, that's why I suggested that. However in my whole post I didn't mention that I was talking about common practice 'rules' which are used in harmony class, but as this is the 21st century nobody really cares if you end a piece in a totally different key (if you can explain why you want to create this effect at that moment in the music), then it's a totally valid idea. But in the common practice time pieces were usually based on starting in one key and ending in the same, creating 'tonal tension' in the middle by modulating to other keys, and relaxing this tension by going back to the home key. They would not modulate to a remote key in the end because it creates a sudden tension in the end (However, they might have done it for a character piece for a certain effect). On your question of modulations in general. In these things it is sometimes a good idea to start with extremely easy forms and then experiment from there. In tonal harmony the most basic form with tonal tension is the Da Capo form (A B A) with the B part in the dominant key (or relative major if A is minor) of A. Another comment: I don't think your piece is static... actually, you don't need to modulate at all if you create enough contrast otherwise, which I think you did fine. :) Greetings and a good change of year, Niku

Hi, Just listened to the last one, and wow that was different stuff! You must have listened to Stravinksy's early work somwhere along the line because I feel his influence. That's a great thing I think. This is a nice movement although in form this one felt even waay more chaotic. You make 'commas' in your music but, I constantly feel confused to where the music is heading and where it came from. But I already said that. Some other tips: The flute ornaments (the fast scales upward) are nice orchestration effect but please don't overuse it because it is clich

Minimalistic music can be really cool, I like John Adams. Most other minimalistic music also puts me to sleep, but that's okay I think because, the whole concept of minimilism is to do less. But Glass' music really annoys me! Some composers just tick me off with their annoying motifs. And Glass is minimalistic and thus repeats his stuff also 10000 times, that really makes me go aaargh.

Hi Sebastian, Sorry that my post sounded a bit harsh, :( this was not my intention, I really like what you are doing. :) I listened to the second part yesterday. That one is really great, you use orchestral colour very subtlely. You were able to create the atmosphere you wanted to have. I like the parts with the solo violin a lot, it feels a bit like a concerto movement like this. What you could have done is change between orchestra + solo / solo / and orchestra alone in the solo part, this would have created more contrast. You could also let the solo violin reappear briefly during the other parts. Also, on the wole you can do much more with more detailed dynamics I think. Something I wanted to ask you, have you studied classical form in any way yet? If you haven't I think it will be interesting for you to study what other composers do to make from all their seperate phrases a whole. Also, this piece somewhere reminds me of some of Richard Strauss' music, have you listened to Also Sprach Zarathustra (yes the beginning is terribly clich

Absolutely beautiful music, your constantly filled, vertical setting creates this amazing feel of enormous warmth. Also the harmony combined with the different atmospheres you prescribe is great. And congratulations on getting this work performed so nicely :D. Thanks for letting me hear this, Niku

Hi Lizard, This is a very nice setting of the text you used, and you are using nice alterations. However, when I hear it I feel that you made some little mistakes. On the crossing of voices, I was learned that it should be avoided in homophonic settings, except when you have no other choice when going to the next chord. Although I think in this age nobody will care if you cross all voices constantly. So to me it is a matter of choice. Because I always do harmony in a 4-voiced grand staff, it's hard for me to read the chords fast in this 4 system score. I think it's a good idea to check with your teacher to filter out the common mistakes (wrong doubling of notes and paralel 8ths and 5ths and incomplete chords.) What I find quite fancy is that you do not modulate much in this setting at all (exept to G major), untill the last line where you go to (the somewhat distant) key of F major. The piece will feel very unfinished like this. If you want (in the context of harmony class) end a piece in major while starting in minor just change the very last chord (or of a senctence) of the whole piece to a major chord. It is possible to use this modulation (though not at the end) but it is a good idea to combine it with 'easier' modulations within the piece for some balance. Maybe as an alternative you could have used very heavy alteration in the end because you used alterations a lot before. Also, I like the part where you leave out the bass, you can create more contrast by leaving out other voices too sometimes. Hope this helps a bit, Niku

Hi Sebastian, I listened to the first movement of your symphony a few days ago and I quite enjoyed it. There are some problems I have with it the piccolo has been adressed as I understand, however, using it as a solo instrument is quite a nice idea but I just can't think of any situation where it could work. Maybe with a very light accompanyment with long drawn-out tones. But I do think the instrument is overused. The rest of your instrumentation is very heavy, I think using more contrast between smaller groups and larger groups, solos and contrasting instrument sections will create a more interesting orchestration. There is this scherzo-like part which is really brilliant. But it was so bad that you repeated it! Such a great section should not be repeated literally (although you can 'quote' it somewhere) because then you lose people's attention. I was thinking: oh yeah this part is so nice, and then I completely lost my focus on the music because I already knew everything that was coming. I started waiting for the next part, which is a bad sign. The thing this piece is missing is some great themes or thematic ideas. I hear that you have recurring themes and harmonic patterns but they are not catchy enough that you remember them or really enjoy them. It might be good to work very hard on those melodies to get them really outstandingly beautiful. (How else will people remember your music, or refer to it.) Just my comments, Niku

Your argument, as I understand it, basically comes down like this: Pop music is stupid and simple because 1) classical music is so much more complicated, and pop music is full with uninteresting, simple features. 2) it is used a lot as background music. some arguments against these: 1) different kinds of music focus on different aspects of things you can do with sound. Gregorian chant ONLY focusses on one beautiful flowing line that has as less elements of repeat as possible, and little bit on the text it is based on. Even rithem and the highest point in the melody are almost always linked. Yet we call this classical music. Modern pop music, I believe is mostly homophonic, this means that counterpoint does not play a role. It is not a good idea to even look for counterpoint within pop music, it does not exist. Also, pop music is a vocal genre which produces mosly short songs. The focus here is on 1: repeating harmonic patterns (which are based on classical cadences but ignore most of the rules) with a repeating rithmic pattern repeating each bar. The rithmic patterns is, nowadays, usually where the complexity is (this is exactly why rap exists at all!), try to listen to some modern pop music to analyse what happens rithmically within one bar. Complex syncopation often plays also a big role. This is why this kind of music is also danced to. The focus however to me seems to be even more on text and melody. In pop music that is never meant to dance to this plays the biggest role. Even still good melodies in pop music also use heavy sycopation. Another example I want to give is Indian classical music. It uses no harmony at all. It is however very complex in all the different scales (classical music from baroque to classical, which is very popular uses only 2(!) different scales, even pop music uses more (pentatonic blues scale, jazz scales, church modes etc.). My argument against 2) is that the concert hall didn't exist at all untill the Romantic period. In the time of Mozart is was normal that people talked during performances, only in the Romantic period it became customary to be silent during performances. So many of the classical music played today was performed as background music, this does not mean that people didn't listen to it or enjoyed it. Thanks for reading my post, Niku

Hi humnabnabisco, Technically what you are referring to is not a cadence, but an altered chord or modulation. Since bVII (in major) is not a normal chord but could appear if you mixed the minor and major variants of one key which is common in Romantic music. In that case, since VII normally has tonic function this is not a cadence but could be used within the 'I'-part of any cadence. It can alternatively be interpreted as a replacer of IV, thus a plagal cadence. But, actually, this can also be used as a so-called mediant modulation (not sure if that's the correct term in English). In the classical period, modulations were done to keys that were related to the tonic in 5ths throught diatonic and later also chromatic modulation (This means that you can modulate to the keys of I, IV, V and their respective major and minor variants, although people later also modulated to other keys). In the romantic period it was discovered (at least as early as Shubert) that you could modulate also to the respective mediants of the currently used chord. The modulating chord's root differs a 3th with the previous chord, and in order to sound like a modulation it needs to containt chromatically altered tones of the previous chord (or else the new chord could still be explained in the previous key). Because of their very suprising but pleasing character they are used all throughout film music. Hope this explains something, Niku

http://www.mti.dmu.ac.uk/~ahugill/manual/ This is extremely handy. I had forgotten about the page but found it back in my bookmarks yesterday. I don't know if anyone knows it but it has quicktime videos with players in the philharmonia orchestra explaining about their instrument. It also has a harpist explaining how to use the harp.

Well, I can't give very specific tips if I don't know what kind of orchestrations you've been using. But, basically, if you're writing loud passages it's not very hard to create a huge sound, even with a small orchestration. But if you're writing softer passages just try to use more instruments, use different instruments or tweak the dynamics. Actually, if I'm writing something for orchestra I'm often spending more time tweaking the orchestration than creating melodies/accompanyments etc. It could just take some time.

The Harp in orchestral music won´t be noticed that much if it isn´t either playing solo or with other instruments. It will definately not be heard if the strings and brass are fully playing above mf. But in those cases the Harp can be great as an accompanyment, adding to the tone colour. Btw, if you want the harp to be noticed as the main instrument, don't use the celesta. If you just want it to add something to the piece, use whatever you like :D I actually have a great example, my orchestra is currently playing the Polovetsian Dances 8 and 17 (A. Borodin). And in the first bit of 17 (the softer, slower part with the very well-known melody) the Harp first serves as a rythm, playing only a's on the beat. After that the harp is doing arpeggio's on the beat with some solo woodwinds and some strings play between p and mf. In this part the Harp is very well heard. In the bit after that the Harp plays chords just after the beat, but the orchestra is playing around mf in which it kind of drowns, but still adds to the colour very well. As a general advice: If you want the harp to be heard, use the higher register and just keep the other instruments soft and not too many.