Dead Chicken

Awesome dude. I can't say much more. Just awesome.

Thanks a bunch, both of you. Some of the dissonance was intentional, and some of it could have began as errors on my part; I would agree that subtlty could be improved. I think part of what happened was that I have been working around this piece for some time, so nothing in it suprises me. I know what to expect. Everything, to my ear, fits what I was trying to do, so, again, I think it might come back to it being an issue of being more subtle. And there could very well just be blatant errors in counterpoint. I thank you both for listening and commenting. I have plenty of things to learn from this piece. By the way, the Messiaen is in my top 3 favorite Choir pieces

The harmonics were more for timbre I suppose; I wanted a little more support on that line, and harmonics, I feel, can provide that without being to intrusive. I started this before I had any knowledge of counterpoint, and didn't think about it at all :D when revisiting this piece, so it being lacking is completely well grounded. I appreciate you thinking it worked with the orchestra because this is really one of my first real tries at a larger ensemble. Thanks for listening and commenting!

Absolutely wonderful! I regret not being able to come over and see it; that would have been wonderful to be apart of. Best of luck to you in your coming compositional ventures!

Okay, so some of you may remember this piece from a year or so ago when I was trying to write something in Sonata-Allegro form. That project, died. A month ago I revisited this piece and decided to finish it. The first two minutes, roughly, are the old piece; the latter half is new. When I first started writing this, my goal was to take one idea and just expound on that without inserting too many new ideas. I did my best to keep with that goal. Thanks for any comments. I regret not being more involved with the forum, been kind of busy. Thanks in advance. Above the Tempest

Thanks for listening, and you seem new, so welcome! I agree, there is much more I could do. I should also clarify that it was new territory for me, prior to this my harmonic language consisted of the notes within the scale, with only an accidental once in a blue moon (the second movement of this is along those lines.) I also have to agree with you on my use of the instruments, it is a little bland range wise. Though, for this piece I didn't really envision too much modern playing (I will agree, snap pizz. could have fit in nicely.); this was meant to be somewhat straight forward. Thanks again for listening.

Thank you. Yeah, I heard someone use introverted somewhere, but I don't remember. Thanks for your time and comments!

okay, That clears a lot of things up for me. Thank you for taking the time to expound on that. And I definitely relish in this piece, for me it is a major jump from what I have been able to do previous. I definitely plan on using what sucess I have acheived here as a spring board into learning even more.

I don't have the foggiest. (I use finale.) But I'm sure there is an articulation tool somewhere, and there is always the manual.

From a string player: You can do it the way AntiA suggested. Though it could (unlikely) produce a moment of "why'd he do that?" because for string instruments ties and slurs almost always are a direction for bowings, though they can indicate phrasing. However, they'll get over it quickly. Another way of doing it is to just have the wholenote and put for instance a downbow mark at the begining, and in the middle of the measure an upbow marking. This is common, especially when there is a very long held note that is tied (an example of when slurring is more phrasing, than bowing.) And actually, if you do what AntiA suggested secondly, mark the following measure, most of the players would mark thebowing this way themselves. Another solution, if the point it two have the note following the long note to start on a particular bow, is to adjust a measure before the wholenote (using a slur or some other marking) so that going into the long note, no change is needed. Assuming here that this isn't a slow piece and a bow change isn't needed. Though I assume the reason you want the wholenote is to avoid the second attack from two separate halfnotes and produce one continuous note. It is kind of hard to know for sure without knowing the context in which this occurs, and your reason for wanting a bow change in the first place.

Thanks for listening. It is cool that you were able to pick up on some subtle ideas. And I would agree on the points mentioned with structure; I think it is one of my least famaliar, and weaker, aspects of my writing in general. As for haphazard, in my mind it is almost a positive statement, as the piece itself wasn't really meant to be all that "stable", but I am not sure if that is at all what you mean by haphazard. Thanks again for listening!

Oh, haha, okay. That is a correct observation as well. thanks.

Thank you very much. I assume by sparse you mean the lack of articulations and dynamics. And yes it is. I kept looking at it and trying figure out what I wanted but I couldn't put down just one way to play it. To me it seems very open to interpretation, seeing as the piece itself seems a bit introverted in my opinion. I noted everything I wanted set for sure, the dynamics in the begining, the intial softeness the one cresc. and decrec., and a handfull of bowings. I am not very picky with this one. lol. Thanks again for listening.

So I composed this a few months ago for a piano quartet and decided to make the minor adjustments needed to be for a string quartet. (Note that this movement is not in G major, but B-flat major.) String Quartet Mov. 2 in G major

This is the first thing that I have heard from you and I am impressed. You show a good propensity for orchestrating and creating a good range of colors. Though I do agree that is still a little "generic", it is still great fun to listen to. That intro was quite nice, I must say, as well as the ending. Good job.