Waltz in D Major for flute and piano

Hello everyone!

Here is a waltz for flute and piano that I recently composed. There are three main sections and the whole piece follows the form ABCB'A after a really brief introduction. B acts as a short bridge between the two main parts, A and C, which follow a more strict waltz rhythmic pattern. Roughtly, the tonality during the segments are: A: Dmaj  |  B: Dmaj to Amin |  C : Amin to Amaj  |  B': Dmaj  |  A: Dmaj. 

It is my first piece in this style and I am not sure how to translate the four part writing theory I have been studying to a melody and piano accompaniment texture. I tried my best but there are probably many mistakes. Any advice or feedback is appreciated!

Hope you enjoy it and thanks for listening!

Hi JorgeDavid.  I mostly liked the simplicity of your melodic ideas in this.  Sometimes however you complicate the harmony unnecessarily and some of the chromatic passing harmonies seem contrived.  Measure 32 is quite a surprising minor chord.  I guess you're trying to prepare your way to the A minor section but I don't think that's necessary seeing as how A minor is just the minor V chord in D.  But that's just my opinion.  Thanks for the music!

Hi Jorge, That's a very nice melody, but I agree at some points the harmony is a bit over complicated and it block a bit the natural flow of the piece and makes the harmonic movement less comprehensive. I would reconsider some of the harmonies, because by moving from DM to Am you already create some contrast and no need to go any further in my opinion.  

Nice work though! Thanks for sharing!

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Hi JorgeDavid.  I mostly liked the simplicity of your melodic ideas in this.  Sometimes however you complicate the harmony unnecessarily and some of the chromatic passing harmonies seem contrived.  Measure 32 is quite a surprising minor chord.  I guess you're trying to prepare your way to the A minor section but I don't think that's necessary seeing as how A minor is just the minor V chord in D.  But that's just my opinion.  Thanks for the music!

Thanks for the comment, PaperComposer! 🙂 You are right, I tend to overcomplicate the harmony and, once done, It is hard for me to hear it differently, which is problematic :S. I also feel that in some parts of the song I should try to simplify the harmony but I still did not find a result that satisfies me, I guess it's just a matter of time and effort 🙂 . Regarding the D minor chord, it came actually first, and then, after that D minor chord, I decided to modulate to Am (which normally I wouldn't have done, being more natural to just go to the relative minor Bm or to the dominant Amaj). I wanted to create a surprising sonority at that point and that is how I happened to reach the Dmin, but maybe it sounds too strong. I will experiment with a deceptive cadence to vi which might sound smoother and create a similar surprising effect!

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Hi Jorge, That's a very nice melody, but I agree at some points the harmony is a bit over complicated and it block a bit the natural flow of the piece and makes the harmonic movement less comprehensive. I would reconsider some of the harmonies, because by moving from DM to Am you already create some contrast and no need to go any further in my opinion.  

Nice work though! Thanks for sharing!

Thank you so much Guillem82! 🙂 You are right in that moving to the dominant minor is already quite a strong contrast (specially considering the harmonic simplicity of the first part) so the song might benefit from having relatively non-complicated harmony also over the second section. I will try to beautifully simplify the harmony over the Am and Amaj section! 🙂

Nice melody.

My opinion is different. Welcome to those changes in harmony.... Why has the music sound always the same? Write the music you want to, because we are not in the 18th century.

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Nice melody.

Thank you Luis! I am glad you liked it! 🙂 

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My opinion is different. Welcome to those changes in harmony.... Why has the music sound always the same? Write the music you want to, because we are not in the 18th century.

hahahaha, that's an interesting point of view! I agree with you but at the same time I think it is important to understand the basics first before trying to get into more complex harmonies, one step a a time. I am not sure I am good at going one step at a time, though... I tried extending the thematic material and making the harmonies more straightforward and I feel I ended up with a more complex piece than before 😅.

Thanks for your comment!

I enjoyed listening to that, thank you!

Could stipulate what has been said about harmony but I think you got the message. 😉

I'd say maybe study some other similar pieces to try and discover other possibilities texture-wise. Having some unity in this regard is good, especially to maintain the waltz-feel, but it could become much more lively by creating different textures. (and also by working in some breaks in the piano part)

Example:

The bit at 58 is effective. The only thing harmony wise I thought didn't work was the G# in the bass in m. 78,  but maybe that's because you've doubled the right hand line in the left hand - take it out of the left hand and it might better?

Good flute writing, no complaints there. 

The piano part is unrealistic at times and unplayable at times:

- why is the whole piano part in the left hand through the whole first page? The pianist will play this with 2 hands so you may as well write with 2 hands. Starting on Page 2 that's totally ok, a pianist can manage that, except for beat 3 of m. 32, where you've got a huge span in the left hand, this comes up a couple times and you could just divide parts up between hands.

- mm. 36-41: multiple voices in your notation software will be your friend here.

- page 3 does the same thing as page 1

- mm 71-78, some bass notes here can be moved up an octave or left out for the pianist to get the left hand. 

I'd take a deeper look into measure 78 and figure out what notes you don't need there, it becomes suddenly and unnecessarily thick in texture for 2 beats (for example, beat three has 3As and 2 F#s), and in 79 you could voice the top 3 voices in the right hand and the octave in the left.

Also I'm gonna point out your metronome markings often don't exist on a physical metronome, which is something that never gets talked about. You've got, off the top of my head, a 75, 85, 95. These numbers don't exist on standard metronomes, so your performers will have to choose the closest marking, so you might as well use those tempos in the first place. This advice will make your score look a lot nicer, and I think your piece has the quality that deserves a good score.

Well done.

Mitchell

@JorgeDavid I just listened to your youtube video (which I think is an update to the original I listened to).  I think you've fixed what I thought was the problem transitioning into the A minor section.  It's much smoother now.  Great job!

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I'd say maybe study some other similar pieces to try and discover other possibilities texture-wise. Having some unity in this regard is good, especially to maintain the waltz-feel, but it could become much more lively by creating different textures. (and also by working in some breaks in the piano part)

Thank you for your comment DirkH, and I am glad you liked i! :). You are totally right! I was kind of afraid of trying new textures so I went for the easy steady-rhythmic one. I am quite beginnerso  I I still have problems for changing textures. As far as I know, I don't even choose the textures I use, they pretty much choose me as I am forced to go with the texture that comes to my internal ear 😅 But your advice encouraged me to try to add some different texture to the piece so I made the third section a contrapunctus based texture between flute and the bass voice of the piano :D. I will start analyzing textures from pieces from now on! (The Shostakovich waltzes were really nice, by the way 🙂 ).

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Well done.

Mitchell

Thank you Mitchell! I have updated the piece and I think you will see most of the problems solved 🙂 (I am no expert on Sibelius and this is directly exported as a video, so there are still some mistakes which I still do not know how to get rid of, however, the look of the piece as a whole is way way better, thank you!) Also, thanks for all the piano (I have been learning piano only for a year so I need to check the fingerings really slowly, which I had not done for this piece yet) and the metronome lessons, I have no access to the musical world so I do not think I have ever seen a standard metronome 😅

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@JorgeDavid I just listened to your youtube video (which I think is an update to the original I listened to).  I think you've fixed what I thought was the problem transitioning into the A minor section.  It's much smoother now.  Great job!

Yes! 🙂 As soon as you told me I could not stop listening to that transition without feeling as if two different pieces of music had been put together, rather than one continuous flow of a single piece of music. I tried with Bminor but the feeling was the same so, in the end, I just decided to modulate to Am completely right before the section. Prior to that I had always wondered why composers were so obsessed with "smooth" modulations but now I finally experienced it firsthand hahaha. Thank you so much for pointing it out!