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Posts
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About mercurypickles
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Profile Information
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Biography
Hi! My name is Evan, I live in Wisconsin, and I am 17 years old. I love listening to Bruckner, Mahler, Strauss, Vaughan Williams, Schubert, and a random assortment of pop, folk, and rock music. I started taking piano and voice lessons when I was four years old, and I've been taking composition lessons for about a year now. I'm really excited to keep writing and grow into my own personal style!
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Gender
Male
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Interests
Composition (obviously), hiking, history, photography, painting, ceramics
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Favorite Composers
Mahler, (Lili) Boulanger, Bruckner, Ives, Schubert, Barber, Vaughan Williams, (Richard) Strauss, Faure
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My Compositional Styles
Modern, Neo-romantic, Post-impressionist
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Notation Software/Sequencers
Musescore
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Instruments Played
Piano, Tenor/Baritone (voice), Saxophone
Recent Profile Visitors
727 profile views
mercurypickles's Achievements
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I've actually been wondering the same thing! I'm not really sure what to do, or how to do that, so I'll do some digging to try and figure that out. I was considering changing that line with the english horn to a different instrument, but when I experimented with that it just didn't feel the same. I'm keeping it as is for now, at least until I'm able to come up with a better solution. Thank you both for your feedback, as well as everyone else who has left wonderful comments and opinions on my work. : )
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mercurypickles started following Icescape , Andante cantabile (potential symphonic movement?) and Two Sleep Motets (SATB)
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Hello everyone, It's been a few months since I posted an orchestral piece, and this is the first orchestral piece I've finished in those few months. I'm trying to refocus on writing larger scale pieces because I feel that my best music emerges when I'm working in larger forms for larger ensembles. In a strange way, I just find it easier. This piece is something I sketched out over a few days and decided, on a whim, to orchestrate. The result is something I'm actually pretty happy with and am very excited to share! I did my best to link the various passages using transformations of previously stated material, and I think I was at least partially successful. Please tell me your feedback so I can improve and grow! Intrumentation: 2 Flutes 2 Oboes English Horn 2 Clarinets 1 Bassoon 2 French Horns in F 2 Trumpets in Bb 2 Trombones 1 Tuba Cymbal Timpani Tam-Tam (gong) Harp Violins 1 Violins 2 Violas Cellos Double basses Edit: I've removed the attached score and mp3 and posted a youtube video instead.
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Thank you!! I love Bruckner motets and I maaaaaybe stole just a couple of stylistic elements that I think can be borrowed without plagiarising. Unfortunately I can't really help the samples. MuseScore is MuseScore Thank you for your response!
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Thank you for your feedback! Personally, I do not mind parallel 5ths at all. I find them quite colorful when they're used correctly. As for the spacing in measure 39, I find it creates a very open sound, which I quite enjoy. Personal taste is what matters though, and I'm glad you liked the first one. : )
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Hello everyone! It's been a long time since I last posted, but I've been very productive over the last month or so and I now have several recently completed compositions I'll be posting soon. These two motets were written over the last couple of days, and since the texts were similar in tone I decided to bundle them together as "Two Sleep Motets". The texts are from the Bible, but I specifically chose verses with minimal religious connotation to allow a wider audience to enjoy the pieces without worrying about the texts. I hope you enjoy, and please give me any feedback you may have as it helps me improve greatly! : )
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Short "chorale" in c# minor for keyboard
mercurypickles replied to mossy84's topic in Piano Music, Solo Keyboard
Running contrary to what @Luis Hernández said, I actually thing the modulation is quite beautiful. Unexpected, but lovely! Then again, I'm also a bit of a sucker for strange modulations to very distantly related keys, to me it sounds magical. To each their own! This was lovely. : ) -
The purpose of those dynamics gradually decreasing is to produce the effect of a fading echo. The clarinet should be that quiet there, that motive needs to disappear, this is the intended effect.
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Thank you!! I’ve been experimenting with my orchestration on various pieces quite a bit, and I’ve found I really like this kind of spare, transparent texture, especially when I can then contrast it with a more concentrated, rich color. It works very nicely, in my opinion, and I’m working on a couple of other projects in a similar style. Thank you for taking the time to listen and leave a comment!
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Thank you for your comment! I’m so glad you like the alternating textures. It’s so interesting how different people can look at something and come away with completely different opinions, and neither more or less valid than the other. I appreciate that you took the time to listen to it and comment. Thank you!
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I appreciate your feedback and I think I see what you mean about the string passage. It’s purpose is to be a bridge between be two halves of the piece, and I kind of wanted a sort of ethereal feel where it just sort of *happens* and the atmosphere resumes. I may have the timpani play underneath it to maintain the connection, I think that may help.
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Thank you so much for your feedback! I take the comparison to Rautavaara as a huge compliment. I love Rautavaara!
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This is a piece I wrote to depict the feeling of standing alone in an icy field at night. I live in a very sparcely populated area, and it can get quite cold here in the winter. The second half of the piece, after the short episode in the strings, is almost identical to the first half, but it feels lighter in character due to all the minor chords being turned major and vice versa. This was also the first piece I've written using MuseScore 4 and the new sounds are pretty good! They've definitely helped my music feel more "real". The piece is nominally in D major, but it very quickly modulates to D minor and then is further altered from there, until the string episode occurs and we end up back in D major, which is where the piece ends. Also, I've been listening to a lot of Bruckner lately, and there are traces of that influence in parts of this piece, I think. Thank y'all for listening! If you have any feedback I'd greatly appreciate it as it really helps me improve! Happy Holidays!!
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That's a great point about the dynamics at the climax, I'll look into tweaking that. Personally though, I sort of like the way those strange unresolved chords creep in at the ends of phrases. I should mention, however, that I'm looking at setting a couple more short little poems like this and potentially creating a little choral suite out of them. I think that would fix the issue of the seemingly sudden climax, as well as the the unresolved chords since I could work that into the fabric of a slightly larger work!
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All good lol, just wanted to clear the same things up for potentially some other people by just dropping a PDF and an MP3 as well! 🙂