Awsumerguy

Hello, @Ho Sen Ken! Thanks for letting us hear your work. I have to say: this is fascinating! I loved listening to it and began to tune it out after the first 2 minutes (as any atonal work rightfully should!). Reminds me very strongly of Sorabji and the rigid, cold atonalism of the 2nd Viennese School. I'd love to hear you discuss the techniques you used to write this work. Despite being a fan of serialism, I'm not too keen on the intricacies of writing serialist music, so I can't say much there. I will say that the dissonances are well balanced and the recurring motifs are very apparent and occur frequently. Great piece here! I don't want to know how long it took you to cook this one up 😅

Hey there, @Aw Ke Shen! Thank you for giving us this new work. Congratulations on publishing your first work, by the way! I'm sure it is an exhilarating thing (speaking as somebody who has never published anything before 😅). Speaking as somebody playing Rachmaninoff's prelude for an upcoming recital, I have to say it is... well, a little reminiscent, to say the least. I would have to agree with what @PeterthePapercomPoser said: it feels like your work borrows too heavily from Rachmaninoff's, while simultaneously offering only a handful of its own memorable musical moments. Just on a whim, I gave your other works a listen, and they seem to have a more developed and interesting harmonic characteristic that I feel is much more 'you', in a way. Because you were trying to 'thread' that proverbial needle, all of those little 'you' moments were swept away in this piece. That being said, I don't want to be a complete downer: it's an interesting work overall, and you took it differently in the B section and the repeated A section. That change to the original music was a breath of fresh air, and I didn't mind listening to it. But then again, we're just the critics: you shouldn't feel too bad about constructive feedback! It's always good to learn from your mistakes. Thank you for sharing anyway! It was worth my time listening to your work 😊

Hello, @Aw Ke Shen! Thank you for commenting on my work. That's certainly a surprise to me; I thought the bassline felt a little rigid after I finished composing, but I suppose that's neither here nor there. Maybe I'm being a little self critical. Either way, I appreciate the positive sentiment! 😭 Good to see I'm not alone in this. Keep fighting!

Hello, @Luis Hernández! Good to see you again. Thank you for the compliment! I didn't suppose my harmony was particularly inventive, but I suppose that's what you get for composing on the piano for too long 😅

Hello, @MJFOBOE! Thank you for the comment. I appreciate the time you took going through my work! 😊 While I originally had planned on maintaining a more sombre tone, I figured that'd get old somewhat quickly. After all, many of Chopin's nocturnes did not remain stagnant in a single key. An interesting thought, though! I might try writing sadder songs/pieces after this.

Nah it's cool @Rich, I always welcome a little constructive feedback! None of my friends at school know anything about composing, so I've had to learn pretty much everything by scratch haha 😅 I'm aware that what is written on the sheet may not have been the particularly intended effect (i.e. a kind of improvisatory embellishment) I was going for. I'll look through it before I go to bed and consider what to do next. Again, thank you! Your comments are well appreciated 😊

@Rich, thank you for commenting! I appreciate your kind words. I spent more time on this piece than I ever have on my other works, so I'm glad the effort has paid off. I am curious about your observation regarding the right-hand figurations, though: could you point out some examples of those to me? I could take a look at it and see if I could fix anything 😅 I could really go on about that piano sample: I used two separate pianos on MuseScore to get the effect I wanted. I'm quite pleased someone noticed the difference in quality! 😃

I haven't posted anything new in ages: I've been busy with school work, so I haven't had as much time to dedicate to composing as before. That being said, that doesn't mean I haven't composed at all. I finished this piece just yesterday, and I felt like sharing it with everyone here. Let me know what you think! 😃

It's always great to hear from you, @Thatguy v2.0 😄 I've decided to call it 'Subway Funk', as the piano-led ostinatos sounded like a moving train to me. Probably just being pretentious with the naming tho 😛 I really am excited to write more: there's a string quartet, a cello song cycle, and a nocturne on the way, but I've been practically swamped with all of this schoolwork (being a senior in IBDP sucks 🙃) so I haven't been able to compose at all these past few weeks. I've been required to pen a piano transcription of 'See You Again' for school, though; I'll post that here once I'm done, and then I'll work on the other stuff I mentioned earlier. At least, that's what my plan's like. Hope to talk to you soon! 👋

My my, how time flies. It's been a while. Anyway, I've finished the piece, @Thatguy v2.0. Felt like you might be interested 😉

I'm sorry if it seemed that way! I didn't mean to sound unreceptive at all 😓 I understand there were mistakes made in the piece, and I have come to accept them even before its completion; it's just a little disheartening because I had spent a lot of time on it, is all. Then again, I think everyone feels that way when receiving criticism over something they're proud of.

Oh, how you flatter me so! 😆 On a side note, I'm definitely not much else other than a subpar pianist outside of composition. I listen to a lot of music from a bunch of different genres and put them together based on what I've heard and feel sounds 'right-ish' to my (relatively inexperienced) ears. I will say that it's a lot easier to do that with a more amorphous genre like funk or jazz, though, than with a more rigidly structured genre like classical music. I guess that's probably how I managed to put together these 'alright' sounding solos despite having no experience with said instruments. I don't really know about my friend's plans for the piece, honestly: he says he's happy enough with just using the MIDI for now (again, it's only a modestly budgeted student film), though I know Musescore's playback on the saxophone is less than competent for high-speed jazz pieces like this (the 'growl' effect, for example, sounds awfully mechanical, and I myself am not a fan). I intend on lowering the fidelity of the sound to give it a 'grainier' auditory aesthetic: that should make it fit with the 'vibe' of improvisational jazz, if you catch my drift. If my friend does plan on getting this performed by his school band, then I'll write him a fake sheet to help his performers out. It'd be pretty hard to pull off these polyrhythms in-performance, I'd say (lol). I'll post the final edited version later at the top once I'm done with it. Thanks for your kind words, they mean a lot to me 😊

Hey @PeterthePapercomPoser, thanks for replying! I can definitely see that. I rewrote this piece from a much older piano-violin duet: at that point, I hadn't considered structure to be anything significant enough to study or follow (don't worry, I grew out of that phase 😉), so that unfortunately translated into the orchestral transcription. My music teacher also said as much when I showed the piece to her: she said it felt as if I composed linearly instead of harmonically. As an orchestrator, that hurt a little, I'll be honest. That being said, I envisioned the piece as being something more of a evocation of the feeling of a waltz instead of being a waltz itself: it acts more as an homage to the musical form than being of that musical form (if that makes sense). Or maybe I'm just bluffing at this point 🙃 But what do you think? I'd love to hear back from you 😄

I'll get that done once I'm satisfied with it; wouldn't want them thinking I was happy with an incomplete work 😉 Also, comments on this new edit, @Thatguy v2.0? I added the saxophone solo, but I feel like I'm adding a little too much mustard on this one. It'd be great to hear from you.

Hey, @Thatguy v2.0, thanks for replying! It means a lot to me. I'm flattered, frankly 😊: I've experimented with writing rhythmic, harmonically non-reliant pieces only once before, so your approval is a good sign I'm (probably) going in the right direction. Rest assured, I'll definitely post more of this piece once I've gotten enough done with it. I had a feeling my guitar writing would be the rank outlier here: I've only ever written for classically-rooted instruments (if barely), and I've never written for guitar instruments before. I'll also consider adding the chord symbols, although I don't reckon it'll be of much use on this particular sheet music: I'll create a fake sheet once I study up on how to make one of those. On a side note, do you think the guitar was an alright addition? I thought the timbres of the guitar didn't really 'mix' with the rest of the ensemble, so I got rid of it in the end. I've attached the reworked version below: I fixed some things up, and I added a (totally obligatory) bass solo at the beginning for good measure. Would love to hear back from you! 😄