el-russo

A piece inspired by the poem by Lermontov (one of the greatest poets ever) with the same title. A Lonely Sail is Flashing White Here's an English translation: A lonely sail is flashing white Amist the blue mist of the sea!... What does it seek in foreign lands? What did it leave behind at home?.. Waves heave, wind whistles, The mast, it bends and creaks... Alas, it seeks not happiness Nor happiness does it escape! Below, a current azure bright, Above, a golden ray of sun... Rebellious, it seeks out a storm As if in storms it could find peace! His life was short lived. He was killed on a duel at the age of 27 in 1841. His main characters share the same personality: they are divinely beautiful and at the same time they suffer and bring suffering and death to those who love them.

Thank you Maddrummer. I'll be reading Gauldin soon, plus sorting out the musical modes in my head. Your invitation to turn to you for explanations is priceless!

Thank you, thank you, thank you, Maddrummer. I've got Fux and both Gauldin's books. I guess I wasn't ready to begin studying them due to disgust for theory I acquired early on when I took music classes as a child. I think I've come to the point where I have to overcome this feeling and do it the right way. Thank you for helping me realize this: this: and this: As for this: Yes, please!

Great. I wish you good luck which you are destined to have once you turn to counterpoint, since your ideas sound good and it looks like they come to you at ease.

Thanks for pointing my mistakes out, Maddrummer. I only hope with time my composition skills improve. Being a self-learner I've always had a problem keeping the rules of what's allowed and what's not in my head and following them. Is there any way that could help me understand or systematize those rules? Are they closely related to the history of music in which case I should read something on it? Do you care to give me a short explanation that would send me in the right direction? What I've done so far is the following. A few years ago I realized that nothing in music was of a greater interest for me than baroque counterpoint writing. My first experiments were poor, so I searched all over the web for information on how Bach taught his students. I think I found everything regarding this subject. His students said he would start with teaching them realize figured bass to learn harmony. What I've done to substitute for that (having no knowledge of harmony or figured bass) was writing out vertical developments in Bach's scores. I quickly realized there was no end to the depth you could choose to write out harmony with. You could limit yourself to just the main functional developments, but then the harmony lost its beauty and charm. The secret was in the voice leading that created those harmonic changes. Yet I spent some time doing just that: writing out the vertical. Then I went to Bach's inventions (just like his students did) and without the knowledge of analysis, I would simply compose a subject of my own and apply the same developments to it that an invention had. It sounded great but it wasn't actually me. It was Bach. Doing the above I found how the ways of subject imitation worked and was able to track them down in different voices in the inventions, while continuing to pay attention to harmonic changes. Soon I noticed that my own composition experiments weren't as depressing as before,which gave me some hope. Of course I read the existing analysis of some inventions,but it never revealed to me more than hearing a piece itself. So I realized I needed to work out my own criteria of analysis. All of the above took me about four years, considering a day job (I am an English teacher) and my poor analytical abilities, but I am not going to stop. Sorry for a lengthy post, but I guess I could use some guidance.

Great improvisation, Derek. There are enough ideas for subjects, countersubjects, developments etc. passing through the piece. Did you think of organizing them contrapuntally maybe?

Hi, Rachmaninoff. Sorry I've overlooked your reply. I'm glad you liked it and of course I'll upload the score. Just give me some time to enter it in the score editor.

I liked the piece. I really liked the layered melodies, they sound original and reveal your good taste. I only think that you said it all by minute 2 musically.

Linked fixed. Thank you SYS65. I followed your instructions and everything's working now.

Thank you very much soundscore76 for your kind words. I'm glad you liked the piece. I think you're right, I could probably do better modulating into different keys and just being more flexible with the structure, rather than making it more of a song with recurring patterns. I'll take your advice in the future.

Hi, Sorry to say, but I have encountered this bug again. Another piece I've uploaded recently isn't linked to from the forum post. The link takes me to Young Composers home page. Here it is: http://forum.youngcomposers.com/t30052/lullaby-for-the-hero/ Would the moderator check what's wrong there, please. Thanks in advance, Michael.

A lullaby for woodwinds and a guitar/harp in the style I would characterize as romanticism with classical elements. As usual, comments are welcome. No score yet, sorry. Lullaby for the Hero

Hi, Jahreszeiten 13, a lovely piece! I agree with the posters, who say you could try recording it with harpsichord samples. If you don't have them, you could send me the MIDI file and I'd make a recording for you.

Thank you dearly, ParanoidFreak.

Thank you very much. Works as expected now.