The Mechanical Owl

Hi all,

Here's a little vignette for solo piano. Hope you enjoy it!

(Note: for those listening closely, the playback on the feathered beams is faked using tuplets.)

Charming! 
Main notational thing; you might want to use some cross staff notation in the measure 21 stuff on. Would just look a little better, I think.
Adding some L.H. R.H. markings on 31 might be good, but not necessary.
m. 16 might also benefit from rest beaming. 

I just think there could be more. It's cute as it is now, but these sections seem so stagnated, at least to me. It gives it an overall stilted quality to me. 
Good writing overall!

Yes, I like it... Nice stuff!.

4 hours ago, Monarcheon said:

Charming! 
Main notational thing; you might want to use some cross staff notation in the measure 21 stuff on. Would just look a little better, I think.
Adding some L.H. R.H. markings on 31 might be good, but not necessary.
m. 16 might also benefit from rest beaming. 

I just think there could be more. It's cute as it is now, but these sections seem so stagnated, at least to me. It gives it an overall stilted quality to me. 
Good writing overall!

 

Thanks!

Cross-staff beaming is on the list once the material is settled. In Finale, it's just enough of a pain I don't like to do it until I'm prepping music for a player. Good idea about the rest beaming in m. 16, it'll definitely make that more obvious.

Regarding the structure, I'm on the fence about whether to expand it or not. When I imagine it being played live with a pianist who is able to get the emotions across to the audience, it works a lot better for me. The MIDI gets across about half of what I want.

Just now, Adrian Quince said:

The MIDI gets across about half of what I want.

Haha, don't we all know it.

1 minute ago, Monarcheon said:

Haha, don't we all know it.

True. Part of my experiment with this piece though is playing around with more descriptions of emotions to see how it shapes the player's performance. There are metaphors and experiences that we get as humans (hang time at the top of a rollercoaster, for example), that just don't fit in notation. In my head, the treatment of the tempo changes in mm. 21-31 is much more parabolic, with hang time at the top and a sense of struggle in the ascending figures. Even with all the hidden midi stuff, the playback is only a rough approximation.