chopin

The harmony and dynamics are really awesome. The harmony starts off pretty tame but I really enjoy how it deviates from the norm, and gets adventurous. I think the choir samples don't really do you justice though about halfway through. And Cantamus may be better for vocalization and accuracy, but most likely wouldn't come close to sounding as good as some higher quality choir samples that can sound out specific vowel sounds. As far as the lyrics, a minor critique (and I only know this because I am in the process of creating lyrics in Music Jotter). When you split a word between beats, the hyphen is used for this split, rather than the space. 1:20, are these parallel 4ths or 5ths? If so, was this intentional? And I really love the part at 0:50. You were able to get this part sounding pretty realistic especially with the crescendo!

Wow! 😍 You can probably tell one of my favorite composers is in fact, Chopin! One thing about the piano is that its too far away sounding, making it a bit of a strain to listen to. However, I can put that aside because these variations are in fact gorgeous. But one thing you need to do is.....and I can hear the whole forum thinking this too....please provide a score! Something of this much beauty must be documented! For example, the Fantaisie Impromptu variations are very fast, and I'm really curious how you notated this (for my own learning). Your key changing is also just, really really awesome. You don't overdo it, but when you make these changes, its magical. One minor criticism would be that the tempo is insanely fast. I personally like it, but some people may have a hard time with fast music without any breaks. This is why we need to let the listener breath a little with different rhythms. I do appreciate that you tone down the tempo towards the end which I feel is a beautiful touch!

Man, the delay effect is trippy. I think the plain version of this piece without the effects is wonderful. With the effects, its very cool too, but I feel like emphasis and clarity of the notes get lost. But with the effects, this is more of a "mood piece" that reminds me of space. My favorite part is the unexpected key change in the middle, and the ending.

Don't forget about this community. We have a Discord too, which might suit your style better. Did you make the recording more dynamic? Whatever change you made, I think it made the recording sound a lot better. Your chord changes definitely give this piece a very movie-like feel to it. If you are going to get an orchestra to play this, I'd love for you to post the recording of it here when finished.

The beginning is very strong, and love your chord progressions. You have a very nice rhythm along with a beautiful melody, and I feel the buildup works really well. When you change things up around 1:40 I felt like it was a great way to break things up. I wish you had more of these instances where you changed things up though. The recapitulation of your intro at around 4:20 is beautifully done. I literally have 0 criticisms with how you ended this piece, probably because you ended it with a recap of your intro, which I feel is very strong. The intro, 1:40, and the ending are by far my favorite parts. The only minor criticism I have would be to break up the momentum just a little more in the body of the piece.

Please make sure you take the time to watch our 2024 Halloween Challenge video, featuring our 5 challengers! @AngelCityOutlaw @Layne @JohnElive1 @Jan-Frederik Carl @sned If you want to see more of these types of challenge videos in the future, help spread the word by subscribing, liking, commenting on the pieces, and sharing the video!

@AngelCityOutlaw, I'm aiming for a week before Halloween. I'm almost done with the video, and when I am, I will send emails out.

@Jqh73o No worries, I will most likely start creating the video this week. And I will be locking down submissions starting now.

The ending sounds unfinished because you haven't harmonized it. This is my opinion of course, but if your piece isn't specifically a "solo", or if you are not executing a cadenza-like passage (something Beethoven is known for, especially in his Piano Concertos), I would probably just avoid long drawn out solos. Solos have the advantage of being a tension breaker, tension builder, or "the main character" of a piece. But this short piece needs to take advantage of the time it has by communicating as much as it can in such a short amount of time. The solos waste valuable time. And you don't need complex harmony. When I say "simple functional" harmony, that isn't a criticism. Chopin's Fantaisie Impromptu and Beethoven's 5th Symphony use simple functional harmony and they are masterpieces. In fact, you wouldn't want overly complex harmony since your piece is highly melodic, and complex harmony would take away from the melody.

Sure! If you don't mind, the part here, and 5 to 10 seconds in. I want to grab the violin and trumpet to show people how instruments can be used in unique and fun ways! If that's too complicated though, I'm ok with the first 5 bars or so, just so I have something to show.

@Layne@AngelCityOutlaw@JohnElive1@Jan-Frederik Carl@sned Thank you for your submissions! I'll keep this thread open for one more week but I'll probably begin creating the video sometime next week. If any of you have scores to accompany your submissions, please update and attach those to your posts. Its not required, but the more content I have for the video, the better.

You know my take on this, but I'll get this thread started. You have a beautiful melody, and this will be the star of your piece There are two thoughts here. If your harmony is simple functional, and you mainly stay in key, you HAVE to have a good structure and melody. If your piece is not melodic, than harmony becomes a lot more important. The main issues I see with this piece: Your solos come out of nowhere, and make your piece sound unfinished, and lonely. Your ending was much better in the version you send me over Discord, what happened to that? Your ending here sounds very drawn out and unfinished. At 6:14, you have an odd key change. The problem with something like this, is that you mainly stick in key throughout, and you already set expectations for your audience (simple functional harmony). I would reupload your newest version for better feedback though!

Great! And don't forget about my number one condition, which is to use Music Jotter. Just FYI, I am working on speed, and one of Music Jotter's big selling points will be responsiveness. I'm working on being even faster than Finale (which was Finale's big selling point over MuseScore). I believe a fast, and of course, easy to use software is important.

Welcome to the community @JohnElive1 and thank you for your submission! I love it! @Jqh73o, @AngelCityOutlaw, @Ivan1791, as a reminder, we have 20 or so days left before I close this thread out since I have to set aside time to create the video. Also, if anyone else wants to join, you still have time.

This is how I felt when Personal Composer was discontinued. Personal Composer was about as good as Finale, and for me, easier to use and format the playback (ahem, this is where most of my inspiration comes from btw). The reason I think Finale is discontinuing is because the cost of their engineering team is most likely offsetting their profit margins. My educated guess is that the engineering team is costing Finale several million / year. And this is coming directly from their website...they are just unable to keep up with customer demands these days. In other words, their codebase is too hard to maintain, and making changes is too difficult. Sometimes a complete code rewrite is required, and for some reason, Finale didn't feel the need to rewrite their codebase. This is definitely something I'd have to consider down the line myself.