j.hall

The first book I would recommend reading would be "Musical composition" by Reginald Smith Brindle. It is filled with great explanations on most aspects of composition. A great all-round book. I had a lot of use of this when I was trying to develop on my own before I finally got admitted to a composition course (I still read it from time to time). If you want to write contemporary art-music (I wish there was a better name for it) then I would recommend this book: "Techniques of the Contemporary Composer" by David Cope. It really opens up your mind and gives tons of new ideas. I think that this book could be useful if you want to compose film music as well, since you get more tools to work with. And if you want to develop your harmonic language into something more modern then a book called: "Twentieth-Century Harmony" by Vincent Persichetti It can take a while to understand this book and you really need to play through his examples on a piano (unless your sight-reading is up for it, that is) to get what he is talking about. But it's really worth the trouble if you ask me. This book really made me realise how free you are to do whatever you like as a composer. I would also recommend a orchestration book to learn more about the instruments and how to write for them. The one by Samuel Adler is my favourite, it's called Study of Orchestration. Unfortunately it's a bit expensive (and you should really get the discs with the audio examples for it).

I fail to see why you think the minimalism comment is misguided. Would you be so kind to enlighten me? Could you argue that everything you "know and feel" does not affect the results of what you produce if you write an etude? If you hide things (be it IN the composition or FROM the composition) then that could likely be a side effect of some kind of experience of yours - something you know and feel. I think these rules are simple but they are understandable and a good start for beginning composers. Deeper aesthetic and philosophical thoughts might be too heavy for someone just starting out (depending on the maturity of that person of course). I don't think the one who wrote this had this in mind for someone studying composition at an university.

Everyone works differently so my advice here might be void for you. I find that some basic knowledge in music history is essential if you want to be able to evaluate your music. It helps to know what other composers have done up until this point. You can get a lot of ideas from other composers and if you want to develop your compositional technique it sure does help to have a firm grasp on the techniques used by the big ones. The way I see it, this is one way of practicing composition, you don't always have to compose to get better at it. I would say that nothing stimulates the creative flow more than getting impressions from someone else's music. There are some books out there that analyses different compositional methods which can be helpful. But if you aren't the type that learns by reading don't worry about it, a teacher can tell you about most of it. :) That said, it is very ,very important to write a lot! But what is maybe more important is to get feedback on what you write. It doesn't necessarily have to be a composition teacher (you'd be surprised how healthy observations you can get from people without a clue about music) but that's probably where you'll get the best feedback. If you can't find any composers to teach you then maybe a music theory teacher could take a peek, they often have some basic composition skills (but beware, a lot of them are red-tapists). A common mistake a lot of people do when starting to compose is that they take on more than they can handle (I know I sure did!). As I said, you should write a lot. With this I mean write a lot of short pieces (around 2 minutes I would say). And it's best to limit the instruments to a smaller group. Trying to write a symphony the first thing you do isn't a good idea. You could compare this to as if you are starting out playing piano and immediately start practicing on some virtuoso Chopin-piece. It might take you a week (or even more) to get through the first bar of that piece and the chance that you will get tired and give up is very likely. A lot of people do this mistake with composition, leaving them with a hundred pieces that have a really cool intro but nothing more. A very important thing in composition is the structure and form in the music and this what you should be practicing on by doing a lot of these short pieces. After a while you will get a great sense of form and you can start making more ambitious project. I would like to repeat that I think that books can help you a lot on the way (if you, like I mentioned, do like to read) but in my experience nothing beats a good teacher.

Listen to and analyse Tchaikovsky's Op. 39, No. 15, Italian Song. It's a good piece to study since it's easy to get a good overview and it has that (if you ask me) typical italian sound if you want to set that kind of mood in for example film music. This piece, if I remember correctly, is in the ionian scale. I would recommend studying the gestures and phrases, I think that's what will help you emulate an italian "sound" since the harmonic language seems to be similar to a lot of other folk music. Note that I'm addressing this matter from the point of view of film music. I'm not attempting to trivialize Italian folk music.

Your use of rhytms isn't very far from what could be expected from a tonal work. Serialism works very well with complex rhytms, tuplets and quintuplets makes it really interesting. If you think of it every musical style has it's traits and standard gestures. The results are often not convincing if you combine an aspect of one style with another (exceptions always exist of course). For example having an opera singer singing RnB might not yield the best results (but again, there can always be exceptions). And even though it's "atonal" doesn't mean you can't have a direction with your music. Think of where you got your points of departure and arrival. Try to think of your music as a journey from one to the other. For example, a piece might start out with a rising figure in the bass which constantly increases in rhythm and eventually is taken over by a treble instrument and finally reaches a climax on a high fortissimo note and then gradually falls back down again while slowing down. This is a very clear example of direction through the use of register, line, rhythm and dynamic. If you thought it was fun to write serialism I would suggest you write more stuff in the same style. Nothing is better than keeping on trying. Remember that it's better to finish a lot of short pieces that aren't great than leaving a dozen of unfinished long pieces. Oh, and it can be helpful for inspiration to listen to serial pieces by Webern and Berg for example. I hope I was of any use.

First off I think it has potential, it all hangs on the bigger picture. I don't really feel any direction in terms of dynamics, register, rhythm or harmony. It's basically very static. I'm not sure that the transition from the tutti to only violins in bar 16 will sound convincing. If you want that kind of "drop" then maybe you could put more thought into it. As it is now it gives the impression kind of like trying to start a car but it fails so you turn the key again to try again to get it rolling. You did seem to have a fairly strong idea of what everything represents. Maybe you have a thought behind the static feeling in the beginning, if so I'd suggest putting in more different dynamics and maybe start out with less orchestration at first so you can add more variety through instrumental colors. Otherwise I suggest that you could try increase the direction forward somehow, there are lots of ways to do this of course. Maybe this could mean the "Great Spirit" gets more and more excited as he starts closing in on what to create? Increasing rhytmic activiy is always an effective approach, or maybe you could go with increasing dissance but that might not suit your intent in this piece (or at least not in this passage). A third approach could be to "build out" the register of the orchestra by starting at middle c for example and expand the register in both directions by adding instruments. Everything can be combined of course. I hope I gave some helpful advice, keep going on this. As I said it looks promising. :)

According to a comment he made on his youtube channel he has found someone.

I'm sure this could develop into something good! It's refreshing to see some good-old-fashioned twelve-tone rows. ;) What exactly do you refer to with "free form"? It would be interesting to hear your own explanation of this. Have you thought of expanding the rhythmic aspect of this work? Both pieces are rhythmically predictable which contributes to making the music less interesting. Using twelve-tone rows with common rhythmic patterns in tonal music is hard to get away with. I get the feeling that you might have been inspired by Schoenberg's 4th string quartet, if not, then I suggest that you listen to it. It has a good balance between a little unpredictable rhythms but still not making it feel all random. Of course you can't write like that since you are working on a duo, but the way of thinking is still very similar. And apart from all that, a notation question. Why don't you write out the repeating notes in the second movement? I think it will be easier for the musicians to read their part since those abbreviations often only occur on single notes in the middle between regular notes. I would only write abbreviations like that when a part is repeating the same note for a more consistent period. Keep up the good work!

Thanks bryla! That was exactly what I was looking for. A shame I don't really have any money at the moment. I'll guess I'll just try complete my own sample library with the easiest of modern techniques. :)

Does anyone know of some kind of vst library with modern techniques, such as for example key clicks on woodwinds or playing on the "wrong side" of the bridge on strings? I have searched for it a lot but I haven't had any luck, so I have started making a program like this myself. So far I have flute clicks done and it works great in Sibelius and Cubase. If no one knows of a program that already have done all this then I will probably continue sampling more flute techniques and some for clarinet.

Thank you all for the comments! As for the instrumentation; I wrote this for two flautists in mind, my girlfriend and her classmate (who has a B extension). Both are studying flute at a higher level and I asked if it would be too difficult but they assured me that they could play it, although it will be a challenge. And regarding the ending, I think this might be a matter of taste. I listened to it again and concluded that I like the way that the second flute kind of dies out at the end. That said I do agree there are a few places with "boring" passages where it feels like the second flute plays unrelated material. I actually felt this when I was finished writing it but the limited time aspect got in the way of working on it more. I should try and fix this when I have the time. You guys also wanted to know what my teacher thought. I am not sure where I put my copy of the score with his comments (he always printed a copy of the score before the lesson and had his comments all over it) but as I remember it he didn't have much criticism about it. He thought I had done a good job rhythmically, never letting the "drive" disappear. And yeah it's a bit short! But I am planning to remedy this with two additional short movements also in a Baroque-atonal style. Thanks again for the feedback! I'll be back soon with some more interesting stuff.

My teacher gave me an assignment to write a short miniature for a duo of two treble instruments of the same kind (two flutes, two violins etc.) and I chose two flutes. I took a great deal of inspiration from Bach's inventions but put that inspiration in a freetonal environment. The formal idea I had was to increase in intensity and then decrease again like an arc stretching from the beginning to the end. Duo for two Flutes

You end it on a tonic, if you want to keep some of that "drive forward" use another chord instead, either modulate to some other key or just end it on the dominant instead. The first idea that comes to me is to let it end on the dominant and let it smoothly fade out and overlap with a contrasting theme - maybe something like what bkho suggested. I don't know if he meant to only use violin and harp, that would make it very contrasting considering how the piece started. Personally I'd go for a contrasting lyric theme played by cellos and maybe accompanied by the other strings only, to begin with (but at the same time I don't think it should loose too much of the direction forward that your music seems to have). And then introducing the rest of the orchestra bit by bit to the point where most instruments are playing, that will probably make for a good transition back to a varied repetition of the first part of the piece. If you wouldn't want to go down that much in dynamic in a contrasting section it would be better using the first violins in their higher range for the same kind of expressive feeling but with higher dynamic. Do you have the ability to show us the score for it? Would make it easier to give you more specific suggestions. It's always good to begin a piece with thinking of how you want the dynamic curve to be. I start out by making a straight line representing the time of the piece. Then I make a curve above it representing how the dynamic in the piece changes up and down. A piece gets boring if you use the same dynamic the whole way through, so it's good if you have some sense of direction. That goes for chord progressions as well. You have really mastered how to write music that is filled with action, lots of nice parts in the background. I wonder how you write? Do you start out with everything at the same time for an iea or do you chisel out the melody/chord progression for the whole piece first and then fill in the rest? If you tend, like me, to start thinking of everything at once for an idea (orchestration, chords, melody etc) it can be hard to come up with a continuation for it. You might dig in too deep, so to speak, in an idea. Try to think of how you will want the piece to be as a whole from the moment you come up with the first bit of idea. You can always reject those thoughts and change them as your work progress but it's not a good idea to have 1/3 of a piece 100% complete and the other 2/3 is nothing but "blank bars". You could try out to work on two different parts in a piece simultaneously and if you get stuck just leave it and fill out the blanks later. Sketch out a bit in the beginning, a bit in the middle and a little in the end and then the rest will feel like it comes automatically. I hope all this babbling of mine gives you some ideas of how YOU work best as a composer. We all have to find our own system to work with.

Well, I have had the same kind of problem a lot of times. First off; try to think of a way to make the accompaniment set the kind of mood you would like the piece to have. If the piece is lively you might want to try to make the accompaniment lively somehow. If you are trying to write a peaceful piece, then go for that kind of accompaniment. Try to come up with a short rhythmic motive that can serve as a basis for the piano part. Schubert's works for piano and voice were helpful for me when I tried to find ideas for the accompaniment. Secondly, the easiest way to make the accompaniment not dominate would be to give it a rhythmic activity that is different from the melody's and to separate them by register. This will make listeners perceive them as two different things but it will still be clear what is what. After a course in counterpoint I must say I feel I handle this problem with the accompaniment better. To generalize a bit; make the piano play something simple when the clarinet plays and then to make the piano part more interesting let it play something more interesting when the clarinet has a pause. A very simple example of what I am trying to say: clarinet plays 8th notes piano plays quarter notes 8 8 8 8 8 8 8 8 4 4 4 4 then the clarinet plays half notes and the piano plays 8th notes instead ("taking over" the rhythmic activity from the clarinet) 2 2 8 8 8 8 8 8 8 8 It could also be a good idea to let the piano play the melody at some point as a kind of contrast.

Re-uploaded with a few updates. @David Volgan: I actually don't feel the need to descend with the sopranos or basses. It might take the edge of the solemn atmosphere I wanted. I will consider it though. About chord progressions, I would say that's a question of taste and what you are trying to achieve with you're writing. I did want this piece to be static, solemn. @nemesis: I do have EWQL Choirs and Word builder but somehow it didn't want to work when I tried to put it in for this work. @jawoodruff: There are some places I might agree with you on the stopping of the overall flow. It serves a dramatic purpose at some spots in the piece though. I do have rhythmic variety in a lot of places where the flow would otherwise stagnate. Thanks to all of you for taking the time to listen and giving me your opinions, I will listen to your critique and advice and try to improve it further when I get the time.