Bloody Mercenaries: Feedback (or thoughts) on my piece

Hi,

I am a self-taught composer who has been composing for 4,5 years and who has finally decided to show the music to the internet. I would love to get your feedback or any thoughts in general on my new piece called Bloody Mercenaries:



Ominous beginning 🙂

The chromatic neighbor tones were weird to me between 1:05 and 1:50, but when they returned after that they made more sense. I really liked the way you included it around 2:00, whatever instrument that was is killer! Ope! There's the weird feeling again around 3:00. Maybe the issue is how pronounced they are? They seem to imply some harmonic change rather than being part of an embellishment/ornament/expression.... I don't know! The transition around 2:45 was rather abrupt as well, it felt like the track was ending and then "Surprise! There's more!"

A good track, might benefit from some tweaks but definitely good work! Can't wait to hear more!

Gustav

Agree with the thing about the out of scale neighbour tones. Maybe halving the length of them might make them fit more neatly into the melody. Or just leave it out and give us time to enjoy the bright major chord underneath.

How come you start with synth sounds and then transition to orchestra? You could make the intro section work with orchestra too I don't see why you'd change ensembles half way through

Those trumpet / brass shakes are wild! (eg. 02:21) Makes me think I'm listening to jazz/bigband. Sort of unorthodox given the genre but I guess it works.

Nice composition!

@sabiansoldier @Gustav Johnson

Thanks for your feedback!

I just wanted to address those neighbour tones. One of the ideas behind this track was to portray a morally ambiguous or morally gray person, thus the word "mercenaries" in the title. And one of the ways I decided to use to convey this impression was through contrasting minor and major chord tones. The harmony behind the melody B (1:05-1:40 and 2:50-3:25) is actually Am-D5-Am-F5-Am-E. Those power chords are used deliberately, because this way the melody is the only thing that defines if a chord is a major or minor one. And by switching it from major to minor and back I wanted to represent this sense of moral ambiguity. I'll attach an excerpt from Tenor and Bass parts from this composition to make my point clearer

But anyway, I appreciate your criticism a lot! Just wanted to present my train of thought behind those chromatic neighbour tones.

I figured as much 🙂 It felt more natural in some places than others, and I'll definitely be trying out some of your ideas on my own