"Shapes" for Assorted Trio

I hope to do a set of these pieces. Also experimenting with dissonance.

Short but sweet... I liked it! The dissonance was interesting but not jarring/chaotic. I especially enjoyed the sudden modulation down to B (with an F# chord to keep it from sounding too much like a "step down" from C). You show a lot of promise in thematic development; hopefully soon you tackle some longer pieces to test your mettle!

Keep it up!

20 minutes ago, Tónskáld said:

Short but sweet... I liked it! The dissonance was interesting but not jarring/chaotic. I especially enjoyed the sudden modulation down to B (with an F# chord to keep it from sounding too much like a "step down" from C). You show a lot of promise in thematic development; hopefully soon you tackle some longer pieces to test your mettle!

Keep it up!

 

Thank you! Do you have any tips for composing longer pieces? (Most of my pieces just 1-2 pages long)

@CalibriStandard Well, the most important thing is to have a reason to write a longer piece! A lot of well-meaning composers (present company included) like to write longer works just for the sake of writing longer works, and the results can be pretty boring. It's also important to keep in mind that music tells a story, and every good story has a problem that needs to be solved. When you're writing a long piece of music, or one with multiple movements, you want to present a "problem" to be fixed later. Musically, this translates as dissonance and consonance, or tension and resolution. Really, the possibilities are endless. I like to introduce a theme in its skeletal form (for example, either just the note values or the intervals, but not both together), tease the audience throughout the piece with it, and finally resolve it at the end.

The trick is what to do with the music in between, and that's where variations, modulations, motifs, counterpoint—all the tools a composer has at his disposal—come in to play. It's really more art than science, so just dive in and start getting messy!

4 hours ago, Tónskáld said:

@CalibriStandard Well, the most important thing is to have a reason to write a longer piece! A lot of well-meaning composers (present company included) like to write longer works just for the sake of writing longer works, and the results can be pretty boring. It's also important to keep in mind that music tells a story, and every good story has a problem that needs to be solved. When you're writing a long piece of music, or one with multiple movements, you want to present a "problem" to be fixed later. Musically, this translates as dissonance and consonance, or tension and resolution. Really, the possibilities are endless. I like to introduce a theme in its skeletal form (for example, either just the note values or the intervals, but not both together), tease the audience throughout the piece with it, and finally resolve it at the end.

The trick is what to do with the music in between, and that's where variations, modulations, motifs, counterpoint—all the tools a composer has at his disposal—come in to play. It's really more art than science, so just dive in and start getting messy!

 

Thank you! I think I understand