林家興

A few days ago, I wrote a very short piano work for my brother's birthday, which is not something I normally do. I realised early on in the week that I had not yet got him anything and decided to write and put together a music video in one day, as one does. Of course, I paired it with some colourful lyrics to express my utmost brotherly love and affection for him (translation: extol his persistently annoying behaviour and call out embarrassing moments in his life). To my surprise, he did enjoy it more than I thought he would, so that was a success! I've removed the lyrics for seriousness' sake in the PDF, but I hope you'll find something of interest in here. As usual, I am also always looking for feedback and ways to keep chipping away at my pieces even after I've written them. Are the two main themes different enough in character? Does the form feel awkward or bloated? Anything else of concern or note? One thing I will admit is that I probably should not have notated swing entirely with triplets, so that's something I've started to fix up at the moment... Promenade (2026).mp3 Promenade (2026).pdf

Thanks for posting @Sebastian Guzman ! It's been a while since I've listened to the Liszt B minor Sonata, but I am definitely getting vibes of it here (most assuredly from your B-octave motif). Your musical language in this work does feel very Lisztian to me, which is inclusive of the harmony and the piano textures, and that I mostly do mean as a compliment. I'm curious to know what other influences/inspirations you may have had while writing this movement though, as some sections do seem to draw from other wells of musical ideas (e.g. the harmonic movements in b. 91-105 felt distinctly modern to me). I confess that I am not really in a position to offer super helpful advice but I hope you'll find this useful anyway. I also don't mean any suggestion as an attack on your writing, of course, but as an exchange of ideas that you could optionally disregard :) Exposition The B-octave motif is very reminiscent of one of the motifs in the B minor Sonata, haha. I see that the majority of the dotted rhythm in this motif is the backbone for the rhythm of the A theme, if I am correct... I noticed in your trimmed-down video you seemed to have cut out b. 54-62 from the A theme and b. 105-118 from the B theme? Admittedly, I prefer the abridged version as I thought the material in question to be a little redundant, given that you do cover well and to great length both themes in the exposition. My thematic economy side of my brain would like to think that one should only state a theme until the listener is familiar enough with it to recognise said theme when it pops up in the development. If you wanted to keep said material for symmetry/form-related reasons/other personal preferences, though, by all means do so. I do love the B theme in all of its mellow sweetness, especially its first half. The second half of the B theme feels a bit static with the repeated notes, but coupled with the rolling left hand accompaniment, it does give a sense of floating/gliding, if that is what you desired. As I said, I quite like the harmony you move through in b. 91-105. A charming change in texture from b. 154 onwards! Development The fugato start of the development seems a bit dry? I can see where you are going with the material but I'm not super convinced by b. 164-187, though I suppose some pedal would help, or varying the articulation and texture a tad more even if a fugato. I didn't quite exactly get fugato vibes from it either, given how long the statement of the theme is. This is completely a suggestion, of course, and it is up to you as to how you'd like your sonata to work, but perhaps using only the first phrase of the theme (b. 164-166) and then building up a series of entries in other voices could be rather effective. I somewhat find this example to also be a bit dry, but I like the energy build-up of this fugato moment in the development of the fourth movement of Scriabin's Third Sonata, if you wanted something similar. Interesting, from b. 178 onwards in the fugato, you introduce another voice that is the B theme, or at least an echo of it, if I'm correct? I am a big fan of juxtaposing thematic material in the development sections of sonatas, if so... The material in b. 196-215 seems a bit overly virtuosic? I'm uncertain whether there might be some significance in the chords/harmonies you use here, but I think it'd be great to insert more of the existing thematic material in here, fragmented or whatnot. Overall, the development feels short to me, not in the least because I feel like you could've pulled out your compositional chops a bit more. Given the length of the exposition, I think this deserves a heftier development with varied treatment and inclusion of all three of the A and B themes and the B-octave motif. Trying to set the tempestuous A theme or the B-octave motif into the suave atmosphere/mood of the B theme, for example, or more chopping and changing, there are a wide variety of things you could do. Liszt can of course be a great source of ideas here! Recap Nice to restate the B-octave theme. Maybe the transition from the end of the development could be made smoother? I'm not sure though. I like the recasting of the textures in the recap of the A theme, but it feels a little airy? I'm not sure if you were going for that feel, and if you were, then I am in no place to complain. I suppose you could add some deep bass notes on the offbeats to give it a bit more body and hold them with your regular pedal, or see if the sostenuto pedal could work (though it could make the right hand arpeggios rather dry). I also appreciate the A theme being a bit shorter here... With b. 236 onwards and B theme, the energy seems to drop somewhat, with almost the exact statement of the original B theme but transposed. It is once again up to you, but you could also recap the B theme in a different texture, as you did with the A theme. I felt like the energy levels ought to have ramped up a bit more moving further and further down to match the energy of b. 282 onwards to the coda, possibly? At the moment, the ending feels mildly content with itself, though I would think the large chords and dynamics would suggest otherwise. With notation and formatting, I also admit I'm not the best person to offer advice, but there does seem to be the occasional odd things, e.g. whatever is stretching out b. 122 (the rest in the upper staff can also be removed there), the clipping of text at the end of the system at b. 248-250, and the slightly overzealous floating slur in b. 288. I've been told that with hairpins, it's best practice to state exactly which dynamic the hairpin starts and ends at, including double hairpins like < so >, but I am open to corrections. Yeah, that's most of what I have to offer with thoughts. Excellent playing, by the way, I almost forgot to mention! This already looks like a difficult sonata so far with this first movement and you interpreted it very pleasingly, at least to my ears, and in a very convincing way (though I suppose it is up to the composer yourself to decide whether it was served justice, lol).

It seems you haven't attached anything since you posted? I'd love to hear/see how it sounds if you get around to uploading some audio or sheet music!

Wow, thanks Wieland, I wasn't very sure of what you had been talking about, but those are some very helpful notes you've put in there and it does help clarify what you mean (and also very meticulously well-presented)! Cross-staff beaming, yes, that's probably easier to read than main gauche and main droit text. Hmm. I usually do this sort of beaming with other works of mine so I wonder how I seem to have forgot with this piece. MuseScore 4 is being fussy with me for this and I might need to brute force adjustments to make sure I don't get overlapping stems, noteheads, beams, dynamics, and/or hairpins. I don't have Elaine Gould's Behind Bars but do you know what the convention is for whether to put the beam above or below the midpoint? Here I've gone for the side that has the majority of the notes but I don't know if that is standard: Thanks again for your help, and I do have to say this already looks possibly a bit neater than having m. g. and m. d. smeared across the page. I'm always trying to give my scores a clean and readable look so any feedback is always welcome.

Thanks everyone for your comments, I sincerely appreciate every one of them! As is ever the concern of a composer I'm very happy to know that the right mood/atmosphere came across to other people :) There seems to have been some discussion about the key and key signatures: I was never really a fan of music with all sorts of accidentals and black keys until I came across Scriabin, whose delight for the likes of F♯ major/D♯ minor, B major/G♯ minor, G♭ major/E♭ minor, and D♭ major/B♭ minor seems to have slightly rubbed off on me. Idk though, I felt like F♯ major gave off sweet lyrical romance (e.g. Poème op. 32/1 or Étude op. 42/4) vibes so I went with writing in that for this work. The key signature switch to G♭ major/E♭ minor was actually only a logistical sight-reading one, if I remember correctly. In the middle section there's some vacillation between a major key and its relative minor, which would have been fine for bars 9-12. However, I move a fourth lower in the following four bars, i.e. tonicising the dominant, which means that if I kept the original key signature I'd get C♯ major and its relative minor A♯ minor. Eek. Sharp overload. I am not quite sadistic enough to put that onto the performer, let alone F♭ major (though that has now given me an idea...). I figured that writing out the middle section in flats meant that I could resort to using natural signs rather than extra sharps in bars 13-16, but yo, @Luis Hernández and @Wieland Handke, you may have a point with it also engendering a somewhat darker mood, as I had intended. This is an excellent point, now that I'm poring through the score again. I think there are some spots (e.g. b. 12) where I quite like the arpeggiated quality, but I have also decided to add a few markings for spots where I think it is justifiable to have the other hand take a note or two. Was this what you were thinking of? Version with redistributions.pdf

I thought I'd share this short prelude I started last year and finished soon after (which I originally intended to use for Valentines' Day this year, but alas...). I haven't been writing much new stuff and am currently working on fixing up a few of my older compositions so this was one of the few things I did manage to conjure up in the past few months. I hope it's listenable? (as for playability, arpeggiating large chords is a must, haha)

I reckon the work invokes a certain warm and inviting mood that I seem to put down at least in part to the harmony, which isn't overcomplicated and at the same time not just simple triads. I, for one, love the descending material in bar 11! The rocking syncopation I also find to be pleasing and gives the piece a little bit of movement lest it become a little stagnant. Cycling some of the thematic material to the left hand from bar 20 is a nice touch. This is completely based on taste, but one thing that perhaps I'm not fully convinced by is the pedal E, occasionally accented, in bars 24-31 in the right hand; it, to me, seems to lend that section a leaden quality that strays somewhat from the generally contemplative atmosphere of the other sections? Apart from that, I did enjoy this work quite so. Writing music for other people is always somewhat daunting for me but I think it's really quite a nice thing to do, and compositions I find serve rather well as gifts. I hope your daughter liked it!

Hey all, I've lately become a little sick of writing solo piano music—I did set myself a goal of writing preludes in all the major keys and am nowhere near done—so I decided I wanted to try something new before the new year rolls around? This is my first time trying to write for this ensemble and also the first time I've ventured properly out of my usual idiom (normally Late Romantic/Impressionist with sprinkles of jazz and Asian folk influences). I don't exactly know what genre I tumbled into but I definitely like the general sound I'm getting from it. That being said I am certainly not finished but I figured I'd get some opinions first before I keep going... Cheers!

Ah thanks so much @Monarcheon for your comments/feedback/thoughts! It's rare that I get this much to digest in one go, but I'm not complaining if my steak is too juicy and my lobster too buttery. That's a good point you bring up. I did originally want to go for a much longer/expansive theme and variations piece (I think I had this one in mind as the model), but, as a chronic procrastinator, I think I rushed to try to squeeze it in—at the cost of something more substantial—for that competition. Now that that's over and I've realised the futility of arbitrary deadlines, I feel like I can put quite a bit more effort into this. I really like your suggestion about trying to back-engineer extra sections of the theme so I'll be going through my current variations with a fine-toothed comb shortly... Oh yes, I think that'd work very well, I'm gonna put that in! I was thinking something raindroppy for that accompaniment and this definitely suits it. Hmm, I think I see what you mean about the jump, if I presume you're talking about the octave B-to-B? I did think it was a bit iffy when I wrote it so I'm gonna see if I can write a few other versions. Did you mean you felt as if V1 and V2 should convene in bar 5? I'm not sure if this is related, but during my earlier drafting process I did actually think of having all the instruments settle on E in the last bar, so this particular version felt a bit odd to me with V2 falling to G at the end. I'll try expanding the theme and seeing what works best... Yes, definitely, that is what I meant, I seem to have forgotten what that was called! I'll go in and edit that, as well as the rolled pizzicato thing, which I also probably want with the viola. I'm also super happy to hear that b. 21 onwards worked because at the time I wrote it I felt it might have been too disjunct from the rest of that variation. Is it convention to mark a rolled pizz. with an arpeggio line, or something else? I probably want the viola and cello in contrary motion, with the viola up (with the regular arpeggio marking or the one with the arrow), the cello down, and the violins coinciding with the last note only. I like the first option à la Scriabin's Eighth Sonata, but I'm not sure if that might be misinterpreted: Also one of the things I noticed! I remember coming up that rising chromatic line and really digging it, but I must've forgotten that I was tiptoeing around the dominant in the other instruments. Although I'm pretty sure I liked the dissonance that came out of that, the resolution didn't seem very satisfying...I did a small shuffling around that probably works better? I'm certainly the least satisfied with this variation—maybe because I churned it out the fastest, lol—and I agree with your sentiment on the tremolo, contrast, etc. I thought the transitions into the B section and from the B section back into the tremolo were particularly poor, so that'll also need redoing. I'll probably rework it to give it more of a Prestissimo finale/final movement feel (I have a feeling I want to keep this as the last variation and fill the other variations in between) and give more time for the flittering to settle in before moving onto the slow B section, which I thought probably came in too early. Time to get cracking once all my exams are over...

Variations on Dies Irae.mp3 I haven't quite been feeling the compositional drive recently, but I did try writing something for one of the informal group competitions over on MuseScore that I'd thought I'd share here as well. I would have definitely liked to write more variations but I was kinda lazy and went with three, which I hope contrast well with each other. I'm always revising my work, so is there anything that you like/dislike about this? As a pianist, I'm also not good at composing for string instruments (this is my...second ever attempt at a string quartet work?) and would be happy to receive feedback on my string writing too! I feel like I may have been too enthusiastic with the slurs and probably should remove a bunch of them... Variations on Dies Irae.pdf

The harmony and colours I get from this are gorgeous (bar 12 tickles my brain, but all the movements from chord to chord are exquisite), as well as the appearance and disappearance and reappearance of that 'swinging-pendulum' motif, as Henry pointed out. I'm getting extra ideas for what other textures to put in my slow movements with what you've presented in b. 40 🙂, and I have to say that the piano strings from b. 52 onwards are an excellent touch. Seeing that this is just an intermezzo, I'm sure the other movements are just as interesting! I wonder how this fits into the ballet...

Hey everyone, I wrote a short work based on a particular rocking-up-and-down figuration that I liked while improvising. I guess it's a little bit like an étude w/ respect to technique but I also thought the almost perpetuum-mobile right hand gave it a somewhat toccata-esque feel as well. Hope you find it interesting; and if you have any suggestions/critiques/general comments I'd enjoy reading them!

A very sprightly waltz that I quite like (and I also think A major/F# minor are pleasant keys to work with, esp. on the piano). I enjoyed the syncopation and a lot of the forward momentum seems to come from the whirring quaver accompaniment or melody. The majority of the waltz seems to hover around the same energy level which slightly put me off (perhaps that's also a consequence of the Noteflight soundfont lol but I'll disregard that), esp. given the work's length and repeats. I would perhaps appreciate more contrast between the different sections i.e. varying dynamics, maybe a slower middle section, or the piece moves into a more distant key; but that's entirely up to the composer and if you have a vision, then it's all yours. I think you broadly did a great job composing for piano as a non-pianist! I don't have many gripes with the technicality or difficulty of the work, perhaps apart from the fact that the constant quaver motion might get a little tiring without a more settled middle section, although that's probably more so for the stamina of the pianist. Some of the five-note chords are certainly comfortable (e.g. 2nd bar, beat 3, right hand; I would take A and B with my thumb, D and E with my index, and the top A with my pinky) but others are a little less so (for the left hand in that same position in the bar, I could either play each note with one finger, which is a little uncomfortable, or try using my pinky and third finger to play two notes each, which are usually the pianist's weaker fingers). Another consideration is when those five-note chords are transposed, the one-finger-plays-two-notes fingering occasionally doesn't work when the two notes are black and white (e.g. bar 65). But, once again, these are only suggestions and a more accomplished pianist could make this work just fine. Thank you for sharing!

I tend to try writing very small works when I find myself beset with writer's block, so it is perhaps a bit telling that this is probably the shortest piece I've written to date, and the least like the style I usually compose in. The piece is mainly based off the melody of Brahms' 'Wiegenlied'; that is, if you look at it through a wacky Scriabinesque kaleidoscope infused with altered dominant chords transposing by major/minor thirds or tritones. More broadly, what do you think of it? Was I somewhat successful at reproducing Scriabin's aesthetic (his languid side, at least)? I'm open to other feedback too 🙂

There are actually some very pleasant harmonies in this; the way you've voiced the dissonances, with mostly a more open type of spacing, gives them less of that harsh/gritty feel and more of a floating/suspended quality. Although you say it's atonal, sections of it (especially near the start) occasionally seem to wander about a tonal centre, although it is by no means fixed. And kudos for the live performance!