Ballade No.1 in B-flat Major

Hello! This is a ten minutes ballade (yes, it's big) that I've composed in the past couple of weeks. It's very intense and very fast-paced, especially in the middle part. I hope you enjoy!

Wow, you use so many chordal elements here: dim5ths, complements, major 6ths, and so many more. The flow of the work was gorgeous, and I can't even criticize the thematic development. The audio rendering was great, seemed to mimic how a human might play this.

A couple of critiques:

You used so many chromatics (not a bad thing at all), it makes me wonder how useful a key signature actually is in this piece.

The distorted waltz at 184 didn't feel like it belonged in this piece. Perhaps if it had been foreshadowed earlier...

The ending, to me, was a bit "meh." I expected either a loud crash or quiet slipping away, not just a simple accel.-rit. coda.

But those are really just minor quibbles. Overall, I enjoyed this work immensely. I'm used to listening to works that smack of some other great composer (Mozart, Chopin, etc.) but this one sounded unique. Great job pulling this off in your own voice!

Thanks for sharing.

7 hours ago, Tónskáld said:

Wow, you use so many chordal elements here: dim5ths, complements, major 6ths, and so many more. The flow of the work was gorgeous, and I can't even criticize the thematic development. The audio rendering was great, seemed to mimic how a human might play this.

A couple of critiques:

You used so many chromatics (not a bad thing at all), it makes me wonder how useful a key signature actually is in this piece.

The distorted waltz at 184 didn't feel like it belonged in this piece. Perhaps if it had been foreshadowed earlier...

The ending, to me, was a bit "meh." I expected either a loud crash or quiet slipping away, not just a simple accel.-rit. coda.

But those are really just minor quibbles. Overall, I enjoyed this work immensely. I'm used to listening to works that smack of some other great composer (Mozart, Chopin, etc.) but this one sounded unique. Great job pulling this off in your own voice!

Thanks for sharing.

 

You are welcome! Perhaps the waltz didn't matched the piece, but I felt like there's no connection between the quick run before the waltz and the part after the waltz. So I just put a quick break before the craziness happens again.

I thought of working the coda after working on bar 147, like it would be perfect to speed it up then slow it down, and its not like the usual V-I chord progression.

And fun fact : I discovered the C E G F# motif accidentally by messing around. And originally, i was gonna make it more dissonance, like putting in C major chord on top of F# major chord while playing in fortissimo. I guess that appeared in bar 52, but more quiet. 

Thanks for the response!

5 minutes ago, TCGCoolio said:

You are welcome! Perhaps the waltz didn't matched the piece, but I felt like there's no connection between the quick run before the waltz and the part after the waltz. So I just put a quick break before the craziness happens again.

I thought of working the coda after working on bar 147, like it would be perfect to speed it up then slow it down, and its not like the usual V-I chord progression.

And fun fact : I discovered the C E G F# motif accidentally by messing around. And originally, i was gonna make it more dissonance, like putting in C major chord on top of F# major chord while playing in fortissimo. I guess that appeared in bar 52, but more quiet. 

Thanks for the response!

I think it's awesome that you're experimenting! Your profile says you're only 15-16, and you've already come this far! I expect you'll do great things musically.

Keep up the good work.