UrKr

An interesting wind piece with a lot of different colors and techniques.

I really like the sound of this. It's constantly going somewhere. No directionless noodling. Not a dull moment. With that it did leave me wanting more though... So I agree that the end is a bit sudden and could really do with more winding down or more of a climax. So I really liked it, but wish there was more.

I need to find some pieces where I can hear various winds glissando-ing. This is one, but the glissando is only at the very end. https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=H32bC-bKx6A&pp=ygUYVGlzY2hlbmtvIHRvIG15IGJyb3RoZXIg

@PeterthePapercomPoser Thank you for your feedback!! You know, I was thinking that I was getting myself in trouble with those glissandi and lack of concern about breath. I admit I am quite ignorant with regard to technicalities with wind instruments. For instance I know that a violin can play long legato phrases even if the player has to change bows since the changes can be disguised with technique. I guess I sort of ASSumed a similar thing with the winds. The trill part is particularly egregious. Maybe I'll try a more dynamic staggered sequence of trills where the 3 trilling players cover for each other between breaths. It might even be a more interesting effect as opposed to the straightforward held trill. Now with glissandi I might have gotten even more carried away. They sort of solved a block since they're so different that they work as a sudden transition (I think). Looking more into it, if I got it correctly, the clarinet is best for glissandi. Flute struggles a bit more. Oboe and bassoon ever harder. They're currently chromatic. I might just notate something more precise. I suppose the glissandi at the end are even more problematic. I'm thinking I have to listen to more wind music with attention to these issues to get a better intuition. Oof, I'll have to give that another look! It's definitely meant to be more on the uneasy side of the spectrum. Though it's possible you detected something unintentional. Do you mean the ratio between dissonance and consonance - as in I might have added a dissonance I hadn't intended? Or perhaps something less definite?

I've been working on this piece for wind quartet and I would really appropriate some impartial feedback from fresh eyes/ears. First thing is the accidentals are a bit all over the place... I mean to fix that but I'm ignoring that for the moment. I think the transitions are are fine for the most part but I'm wondering about the overall coherency or any issues that might stick out to other or more experienced ears. The ending was rushed and I'm not sure how clear that is. I'm still thinking about what to do with it. I liked the idea of that simple ending with the motif, but I wrote it attached to some other part of the piece so now it feels grafted on to this ending. Any feedback and criticism very much welcome!

Yeah, it sounds good overall! I'm just always on the lookout for what a live musician would do differently.

Aww, I thought that was really cute. Listened to it with the video playing. I think the theme captured the playfulness + the adorable caution of the bunnies. Obviously the midi playback is limited. Like the last note is probably supposed to have playful/quick staccato attack to round off the piece.

Amazing, I love it. There wasn't a single moment where I thought "get on with it" -- nothing seemed to overstay its welcome. I really love the busy textures where individual ideas still manage to come through and play very nicely with the others. Really nice contrasts and transitions. I think a piece being "disorganised" (which I don't really detect here) is much better than being obviously organised (to the listener). around 7:47 from measure 153, I think that would really come through nicely in a live performance since string players know how to make an effective diminuendo with tone vibrato etc. The playback didn't really seem to want to do it 🙂

Yes it does sound useful to build up that sort of vocabulary rather than just an intuitive subconscious absorption of influences. I imagine it gets more useful the more of this kind of things you have in your backpocket. Kind of like when you learn a language there comes a point where you reach a critical mass of acquired vocabulary to where you can convey and understand much more than you were able previously. Thank you for the example!

@Henry Ng Tsz Kiu I see, I see. I'll definitely listen to that rendition when it's posted!

Cool! I've actually been listening it for the past hour. I think on first glance my favourite is the 3rd movement. I would love to listen to the thing with some better playback though! The Sibelius sounds kind of always sound like an organ to me. I can tell the ideas but it takes more imagination to appreciate some of them. Like repeated fast notes in the strings with sibelius playback have this machine-gun sound that's miles away from what is probably intended. Is there a reason you're not at least running it through NotePerformer? It's not a live performance, but certainly closer. I mean it's an hour long piece with years of work put into it. Do you have enough aural imagination to appreciate it, to your satisfaction, just in your head ?? 🙂 Did you ever listen to it with the trial version of NP at least?

Thank you! Could you link me to that quintet? Is it the one in C minor? For the scoring, if the piece was going to be performed by musicians I would definitely diligently make it more sensical for reading. Frankly a lot of the markings are there for the NotePerformer playback. So the slurs aren't so much an instruction to play it in one bow but just a phrase/legato marking. Thank you for the note on the ending! I think I'll revise it someday soon and I'll keep that in mind.

Thank you for your responses! Definitely food for thought, though these things tend to have to marinate for a while. I do know the outlines of theory. How functional harmony is supposed to work and simple modulation in that paradigm. But if I try to apply that it just doesn't tend to work. The only thing that does is counterpoint rules. But I learned about that by actually doing some exercises on a Cantus Firmus. I would be interested in some applied music theory course because I tend to take away little from hearing about secondary dominants. When I write I tend to just focus on each voice and how it plays with the others. Harmony emerges from that. So I tend to think in quite simple terms of what a voice should be doing and how to transition smoothly from one idea to the next. That's up to now the only way I can write (to me) natural sounding music that isn't a study on a grammar rule. I imagine it is useful to be able to reach for something concrete when you're looking for a specific musical effect or sound. But reading about theory hasn't gotten me there thus far. I wonder if you happen to have any resources to recommend for this. Or a way of approaching it. Because the way I've been reading about it, it precisely leads to a tune harmonised by I IV V... knowing just enough rules to be boring. That's very interesting. I've never really been in a situation where I was away from a computer for an extended period of time. If I could afford a month's vacation to nothing but cultivate my musical interests (violin/piano/composing) I'd love to do that sort of thing. I think being forced by circumstance to make such a drastic change has a very powerful effect on the brain. Something that I think is quite difficult to fake. If you don't mind, could you say more about how that went? What was the baseline from which you started? Did you find it difficult to know how it's going to sound? Did you feel limited by what you could come up with independently from an instrument (which modern notation software basically is)? Did you compose on the piano? I would be really interested to know about that transition. I have never done REALLY this seriously. There's so much music I like, but I've never really gone to analyse it with theory in mind. I can listen and find things that sound interesting but I don't know how I'd apply theory to learning about it. I find harmonic analysis quite exhausting and in the end not very illuminating. ------------------------ And example of a piece I absolutely adore is this Janacek quartet. Even got to listen to it live a while ago. And it was an amazing performance. Engaging all the way through. But I don't know how I'd analyse it with theory and mind.

I have been interested in composition for a while now, though in spurts of "inspiration" (using that term in the humblest possible way). I started off just noodling with musescore with absolutely no concept of what I wanted. I thought the solution would be to learn a lot of theory and use it. But while learning the grammar has been useful, I can't really compose with theory in mind (except for basic counterpoint guidelines). I mean, I can do it, but nothing really comes of it. The only way I can enjoy the process and produce something that gives me some personal sense of accomplishment is if I just sort of improvise with the notation software. I do have a vague idea in my head when I'm composing, but a lot of it is more sculpting than realising a fixed and solid idea already in my mind's ear. In fact, my mind's ear is quite limited in comparison to what I imagine musicians generally have. That is, I could generate very little without the crutch of notation software and playback. I do enjoy this process though and I'm not sure it's within my ability or even worth the colossal effort to develop a more traditional ear for composition. After all, I do it for enjoyment and have no pretentious about it whatsoever. HOWEVER, it has prevented me from seeking out composition lessons which I think I might enjoy as well. The thing is, while I'm personally at peace with my dilettante-ish ways, I'm afraid of how it would come off to a teacher. I almost feel like it would be in some way disrespectful. Honestly, this post is fizzling out. I'm not sure of the purpose, but I felt like writing this out. Did I just want a pat on the head? I don't know. Hopefully there's something here for discussion. Thank you for reading!

Thank you, Mark! I appreciate it! I wrote this piece a while ago and the thing I always note when I come back to it is the ending. I think I just sort of decided to end it there a bit arbitrarily. And maybe in a way that's a bit cookie-cutter in that it could be the ending to another piece just as well. Maybe I should go back and make the ending callback to the opening motif in some way. Maybe it already does to a small extent. Wondering if lingering too much on an ending would take away from the piece.