Mert

SYS65 - thanks for your comment. The final set of chords (basically the last 7 measures) were very deliberate and thought out. The penultimate chord is a modified Neapolitan, basically combined with the Dominant, leading to a tonic chord without the mediant, plus an unresolved 9 suspension. To me, this gives the ending a lot of strength and grandiose. As for the use of more standard cadences at the end of phrases... it just felt right! I'm not sure what exactly you're talking about in your comment - most of my cadence chords contain very unusual inner voice movement. Lastly, I put the tuning cues for the timpani in the timpani part. It gets really cramped on the orchestral score, and the conductor really doesn't need to see those cues. :)

I enjoyed the music itself, but the audio playback was terrible! This aside, have you considered adding percussion and other such instruments?

This is the Finale 2007 demo of "Shards," my first completed work for full orchestra. On November 23rd, this piece will be premiered by the Symphonia Orchestra at Concordia College! The rehearsals have sounded great so far, although the tempo still needs a little work. Please let me know what you think of this demo. I included the sheet music. Thanks for listening! :) Shards

But thanks for the comment! And yes, 1:19 was the separating point.

Post-Tonal is an ambiguous term, but I use it to describe this for a couple reasons. The second movement (first thing you hear) starts out whole-tone based, then moves to rather typical atonality. This doesn't mean that certain pitches aren't more important than others, it just means there isn't one singular note that is centered around, and with the exception of the joke ending, there's no traditional harmony. The third movement centers around C minor sorta, but I still don't much use traditional harmony.

This is outstanding. Some of the better material I've heard on this site. I love the flow of ideas most of all; your form is elegant, connected, and never leaves me wanting as a listener. In many places, this reminds me of Howard Shore's composing. Do you have a career as a composer?

Love it! Please get it performed somehow. I think it has a lot of potential to really come to life. Upload more stuff please!

Another Finale recording... Don't worry, I have a live orchestra recording coming, too!!! This is "Darkness and Faith," a somber piece I wrote for a string quartet orchestra. That means, 3+ Violin 1, 3+ Violin 2, 3+ Viola, and 3+ Cello players. I think the recording I have speaks for itself fairly well. I appreciate all feedback! Darkness and Faith

This is the electronic recording of the second and third movements of "Ashes Fall," a difficult and post-tonal piece I composed last year for my composition lessons. Since the first movement is lyrical and requires the use of plucked piano strings, I was unable to produce a recording on my keyboard. Let me know what you think of this! Thanks. Ashes Fall

Thanks for the comments. I really tried to make the flute stand out, actually; I used it for the melody roughly equally as the oboe, which is difficult to do considering the oboe's piercing tone. But yeah, when it wasn't melodic, it often went along with the strings. I really should put up my score...

Thanks for the wonderful feedback! My goal as a composer is to destroy the silly wall between art and pop music, and this is one of the first pieces I wrote with that goal in mind (it's from 2006-07). The differences between the score and my recording are because of minor changes I made to the piece since I did the professional recording :( which isn't a huge deal, but ya know...

I find this question slightly misleading and overgeneralizing. I have to assume, given the wording and the context of this website, that "Music Theory" refers to Western Tonal Music. This is a major overgeneralization, since Western Tonal Music is such a minuscule fraction of all the music ever created on Earth. I almost ALWAYS consider musical theories when I compose music, and simultaneously, I ALWAYS use my inner ear, the musical ear. But only every now and then is the theory I try to apply Western and/or Tonal, so I responded moderately to this post.

Yeah, a live recording would be really nice! I'm working on that. As for the sheet music, I will try to get it put up soon! Thanks.

I have the .pdf of the score for this piece, but I do not hold an official copyright to this, since that costs a significant amount of money. How would I know that it would be safe to upload the score?

So, I've been a composer since I was very young, and I've been using Finale programs almost that entire time (except a few months of trying Sibelius). I have collected a rather large list of strange glitches that appear to be unique to a certain file of composition; they do not appear under the same circumstances in any other of my files. I was hoping that perhaps some of you could explain some of these spooky occurrences; otherwise I will just have to assume that Finale is haunted. 1) On a chamber piece I wrote for strings, percussion, and saxophones, there is a section where the cello plays pizzicato. As soon as it goes back to arco in the playback, there is a low, 8-bit sounding rumble produced that does not happen if I mute the cello. I tried re-entering the arco effect, but the rumble persists. 2) I wrote a vocal/guitar song titled "Friend," and the recording is on this site. In the sheet music, I included some glissandos to show where the guitarist should sweep the strings gradually rather than at once. When I press play, the glissandos disappear and in there place, gigantic lower case letter g's invade the score. This is the only composition where this happens, although I've had trouble with glissandos before (they seem to make Finale crash every now and then) 3) On a piece I wrote for a percussion group, my notes randomly changed into strange symbols that appeared to be Greek and Russian letters. I couldn't get them to change back, so I rewrote the piece in a new file, and that was fine. But I kept the original problem file to see if I could ever undo this mysterious mishap. Any guesses? 4) Dynamics won't work in the playback of some of my pieces, usually only in one instrument and only for a section of the piece. Usually when this happens, regardless of what I have notated, the volume reverts to ffff. 5) Also a playback problem, in a large multi-movement orchestral piece I'm composing, whenever I play it back, certain instruments do not sound at all in sections where many instruments play at a time. Is there anything that can be done about this? And is there any way to make the Glockenspiel not sound like a piece of crap? 6) On my friend's computer, studio view is utterly useless, since two gigantic blue triangles cover most of the notation area. You can see notes and dynamics through the triangles, but the staff lines, numbers, accidentals, and most other things are invisible. WAT is going on??? Thanks!!!!!!!!!!! ~Mert