Someone asked to see me write for less people: so here's happiness.

https://musescore.com/user/30353801/scores/6027312

Feedback welcome!

This piece shows real improvement! The ideas are much more clearly presented, and are really pleasing to listen to. It all just adds up to a sweet-sounding little piece. I guess writing a piece for a small formation was really fruitfull for you, and if you want to go back into writing pieces for orchestra I would recommend slowly building up to small ensembles, than finally getting to a full-blown symphony orchestra or symphonic band.

Perhaps this style in which you composed would benefit from not having chords such as the on on 4th M, 6th M, and so on. Perhaps you could add a different accompaniment figure in those moments, something like a small tremolo. It would make the whole thing sound a bit smoother, making so that when you do use chords like that, you would have a much more relevant-sounding cadence. This is just feedback, though, so it's just a matter of opinion.

Now would be a good time to learn how harp pedals work. For each note in 0#DIA, they can be shifted up and down a semitone. It takes some time to do this, and is better to have notated on the score. You can look up examples of the standard way this is done. 

@Jean Szulc Thank's so much! I think you're right about the smaller pieces, although I think that writing for orchestras are more fun haha.  I'll try to experiment with tremolos in those areas you said!

@Monarcheon Yes! Harp pedals! I really need to look at orchestration, that's normally everyone's biggest problems with my pieces. Thank you for your feedback!

A nice piece. Some interesting harmonic progressions/changes. Well done.

I personally wouldn't bother to write in the pedal changes if you expect a professional to play it unless for a glissando where you aren't showing all the notes. I'm unsure what Monarcheon said - I'll be asking next post. As I understand, the harp is tuned to C flat with no pedal pressed. The 7 pedals each raise a string a semitone then a tone throughout all the octaves for that note. "Optimising" harp music so to minimise pedal changing means the music can appear pretty weird but harpists are used to that!

Very nice.

On 4/24/2020 at 2:10 AM, Monarcheon said:

Now would be a good time to learn how harp pedals work. For each note in 0#DIA, they can be shifted up and down a semitone. It takes some time to do this, and is better to have notated on the score. You can look up examples of the standard way this is done. 

 

May I enquire what that is?

Cheers.

@Quinn

Thanks Quinn!!

I wonder if it would be better fitted for piano. The chords and accented octaves(no accents notated but they sound like sforzando accents) especially seem pianistic in nature. Though the harp is beautiful, it is good advice to not write pianistic passages for the harp. Also, why all the measure rests at the end of the score? I could understand maybe having 1 measure rest at the end of the score if you want the notes to fade out and want it to be an easy number of measures to count(multiples of 5 and 4 are easiest when it comes to counting measures), but why 4 measure rests? That's not necessary, Also, the repeated notes can cause string buzzing on the harp which can be undesirable(that's often why fast eighth or sixteenth note rhythms are split between 2 harps is to avoid string buzzing as much as possible)

@caters I had originally written it for the piano, but I liked the harp midi better. When it's performed it will be on a piano for my college portfolio!

Also in regard to the rests, Im just too lazy to take them out haha.