pik02002

I concur with cavatina. Mozart piano concerto 21 mvt 2 but also "Death of Falstaff" by William Walton always gets me in a reflective mood...sometimes tears

Nikolas, thank you very much for taking the time to look through the score and help me! You are too kind.

With this piece (as with most of my pieces) the main theme just came to me as i was doing my daily improv on the piano. I sketched out the main themes and then from there I would sit on finale and just wait for ideas to pop into my head and punched them straight into finale. Even though it would have been smarter to make a two piano score to this piece first I orchestrated everything as I went. When I would get stuck i would go to the piano and play up to my stopping point till something came into my fingers that worked then i would just sit down and write it all out and wait for more ideas to come to me. Does that help? I have maybe two pages of actual hand written sketch of the whole piece...other than that it was all written in front of the computer screen. Its very hard to explain the process I go through....things just pop into my head....

hey Nikolas, on a lot of the spellings I spelled the chords so that the parts would be easier to read for some parts like Bb descending to A instead of A# descending to A. But i guess thats not kosher?! i dunno...

Hey everyone, I apprecaite all of your comments on my piece! I am sorry i haven't been able to personally respond to all of them I recently had finals and plus my laptop has been in the shop so I haven't had a lot of time lately. I also hope to have more time to make comments on all of the pieces that everyone else posts since you have been so gracious with me. I do have another question concerning this piece that I could use your help on. I know the score is not in tip-top shape....however I thought it didn't look too bad! So what are specific things that I could do? Especially as I prepare to submit my works to grad schools and things like that. By the way...I use Finale

Hey there, I think that I am still searching for my voice as a composer...it is kind of a hard thing to do. I enjoy trying new techniques but I really have difficulty with some "modern" music, or advant garde music...i feel that it doesn't communicate and music is a form of communication for me. However, yes, the piece is a little outdated. I don't apologize at all for the film music influence. I want to go into film scoring, plus, I think film music is sort of a link between the lay person and classical music. If you ask anyone to whistle a John Williams tune I bet they could do it...ask them to whistle a Shoenberg tune and no go. So I guess I am sort of a "populist" in that sense. My engraving skills leave much to be desired, Finale often gets on my nerves and so I put up with a medoicre score. However, this piece I was still printing off parts the morning before rehearsels started so i was in a hurry!! Don't be fooled by my bio...it is a little misleading about my age. I am actually 24 so I probably should actually be a lot more advanced than I am...anyways Keep the criticism coming! I take all of your suggestions into consideration and appreciate them as I work on becoming a better composer!

To clear things up a little bit 1) Bar 61 was surely a problem for the orchestra, if played correctly it is a very magical (somewhat unexpected and random) moment in the music 2) As far as the harp goes, the piece calls for 2 and we only had 1 at our disposal so I had to sacrifice some harp parts. The celesta...who know?! :^) 3) Yeah in the percussion 2 part you will see the score call for an offstage soprano. Very good ear! because she is almost inaudible too.. 4) Artistic merit by the pianist I actually wrote the piece for one of my friends who is a pianist (even though I would have loved to have premiered it) So Mitchell Mckay is the soloist in the recording. I just got to sit back and relax in the audience. Actually, relax might be the wrong word......

Hey there, I would also recommend listening to symphonic band pieces and get an idea of the sound that you want. then sit down and come up with a melody or harmonic basis of your piece. I actually had the privilege of writing a piece for my symphonic piece my senior year. If you ask me how I did it...i would say i don't know...i just sat down and started writing. Sometimes it just takes staring at blank staff paper for an hour before the ideas start flowing

hello, all...i appreciate your kind words. I hope to be able to participate more in this forum as I am brand new and still trying to get things figured out TO answer a previous question: yes, I have had the luck of using live orchestra on many of my pieces. My university ensemnbles are very willing to perform things that I have written

Hey there, it should work because Mozilla is the browser I use and it comes up just fine. once you are on the homepage click on Samples at the top and you can listen to the recording

I would be interested in what you all think of this piece that I recently wrote and premiered. You can go to my website Musical Samples to listen to it Link to MP3: http://www.aaronpike.com/resources/Fantasyshort.mp3 Fantasy editing copy.pdf