Crown of Thorns

this is my competition piece. As I have previously stated I will not concede and will now be using litigation to try and stop the steal. In all seriousness, congratulations to Joshua and thanks for all your votes peeps!

Nice job!  Where's the score?  LoL

I voted for your piece for 2nd place because I felt there were other pieces that developed the theme more fully.  You definitely had the most unique reharmonization of the theme and overall won my greatest overall impression that the music made on me.  You chose to tell a unique musical story after the presentation of the theme but I didn't really feel like it was really related in any way directly to the theme.  I felt like you could have used the theme more extensively throughout your piece and maybe explain the story behind the title and the lyrics more.  You kinda just wrote a piece that quoted the theme and later was inspired by the theme without directly transforming it.  I love the result however - it is a very cinematic mood that you've created and I loved studying your score to figure out harmonically, how you got that magical sound you're so famous for.  I feel like the harmony in this piece had a certain Thomas Newman kind of vibe.  Nice job!  Also - from what I remember you once again overload the viola section with too many parts and it wasn't clear in the score whether they should be split into 4 individual sections with each section on one note or maybe two sections with two notes each double-stopping.  Thanks for participating!

2 minutes ago, PaperComposer said:

Nice job!  Where's the score?  LoL

oops

18 minutes ago, Left Unexplained said:

As I have previously stated I will not concede and will now be using litigation to try and stop the steal. In all seriousness, congratulations to Joshua and thanks for all your votes peeps!

Hahaha thank you! I really did enjoy your piece as well and it was really done!

5 minutes ago, PaperComposer said:

I voted for your piece for 2nd place because I felt there were other pieces that developed the theme more fully.  You definitely had the most unique reharmonization of the theme and overall won my greatest overall impression that the music made on me.  You chose to tell a unique musical story after the presentation of the theme but I didn't really feel like it was really related in any way directly to the theme.  I felt like you could have used the theme more extensively throughout your piece and maybe explain the story behind the title and the lyrics more.  You kinda just wrote a piece that quoted the theme and later was inspired by the theme without directly transforming it.  I love the result however - it is a very cinematic mood that you've created and I loved studying your score to figure out harmonically, how you got that magical sound you're so famous for.  I feel like the harmony in this piece had a certain Thomas Newman kind of vibe.  Nice job!  Also - from what I remember you once again overload the viola section with too many parts and it wasn't clear in the score whether they should be split into 4 individual sections with each section on one note or maybe two sections with two notes each double-stopping.  Thanks for participating!

well i guess the thing to work on for the next competition is form. thank you for the kind words and the vote

1 minute ago, Left Unexplained said:

well i guess the thing to work on for the next competition is form.

I don't think there's really anything wrong with the form of this piece or that you should adhere more stringently to some kind of pre-set form.  I just think you could have built your piece more extensively using the theme as the basis for all your melodic material.  In a sense more unity to your themes I guess.  But that's my cerebral composer brain looking for order in the chaos ... LoL

2 minutes ago, Left Unexplained said:

thank you for the kind words and the vote

You're welcome and thanks for the music!

7 minutes ago, Joshua Ng said:

Hahaha thank you! I really did enjoy your piece as well and it was really done!

thanks man you too.

I would agree with @PaperComposer, I really did enjoy your work, especially with it's film music style of grandiose and aura that it portrayed. However, I felt that the theme was not developed enough in the piece, especially considering the criteria was specifically judging for how well the theme was developed. That said, I still feel it would make a good standalone piece and I really liked your piece, and I actually voted it first haha. It was a really good effort and I'm now very interested to see your future works as well!