25 Preludes in Progress

I have been composing a set of 25 Preludes over the past couple of weeks and I figured now is as good of a time as any to share what I have so far of my Preludes. Note, they are all incomplete as of right now and one of them is no more than a melody right now. Some are more in line with the Classical era style and others are more in line with the Romantic era style. I've been using a random number generator to decide on which Prelude to work on each day and these Preludes are inspired partly by those of Chopin and Rachmaninoff and partly by my own Perfect Pitch that contributes a significant portion to me feeling different characters in each key. These are some questions I have about each one:

Prelude in A "Skipping"

• After I properly offset the harmony so that it matches with the metric shift in the melody, should I put accent marks on beat 1 to make it sound even more off kilter?
• Should I have a 3/4 section?
• Should I have a swing section or does the dotted rhythm in the Alberti Bass get close enough(I'm thinking the latter, but no harm in getting a second opinion)

Prelude in Ab minor "Cosmic"

• Should I use more augmented chords(like augmented chords with different roots) and perhaps have a phrase that is harmonized completely or almost completely with augmented chords? After all, the augmented chord is almost as versatile as its diminished counterpart, so this could equally be a cosmically mysterious piece(that's the emotional character I get from Ab minor is cosmically mysterious, interstellar space, and I think the augmented triad helps to add to that mystery) and a piece to show the versatility of a chord I don't find very often, the augmented chord.

Prelude in Ab "Lullaby"

• How should I harmonize this melody? I've been told to "go with the natural counterpoint to the melody as your harmonization", but like what does that mean? Aren't there multiple equally natural counterpoints to any given melody? Like okay, I know the first bar has to be tonic, but what about the rest of the phrase? Should I just go by what beat 1 entails or what?

Prelude in C minor "Spectral"

• Is the bass too dense?(I suspect not given that it is piano solo and without the pedal, but it doesn't hurt to ask)
• Am I using the diminished seventh too much? Am I foreshadowing the fearful variation too much by going with the diminished seventh as my dominant chord(might sound a bit absurd, but the fearful variation is going to have a lot of diminished in it as well as register extremes so am I just giving up the game too early by using the diminished seventh in the very first phrase of the initial theme?)

Prelude in C# "Heavenly Dream"

• Should I introduce triplets earlier on or am I good here?
• Grace notes, should I add grace notes to the right hand part of the rhythmic exchange that's going on(I don't use grace notes a lot, but this seems like it needs them for some reason)?

Prelude in D "Regal"

• Should I take the top note of the left hand out of the G major chords in the section starting in Bar 11? It seems to be making Bar 13 unnecessarily dissonant(second between A and G, both melodically as in the passing motion in the right hand and harmonically on beat 3 of Bar 13, it's the harmonic second that I am questioning) and Bar 14 an impossibility(same G in both hands)
• Is the way I structure the bass of the waltz that is the D major Prelude good, going bass note, third, full chord for beats 1, 2, and 3?

Prelude in Eb "Blooming"

• Is the dominant over a tonic pedal effective? For some reason it seems much weaker than the subdominant over that same tonic pedal and I am wanting to start with a tonic pedal point and expand out, like a flower going from a bud to full bloom.
• Would including the chordal seventh instead of the chordal fifth make the dominant harmony over a tonic pedal more effective?

Prelude in F minor "Death"

• Is the bass too sparse? I know I'm going for a funerial feeling here so the octaves in the bass is a good idea, especially with how low they are that even when the melody is in the bass register, it's still an octave above the bass octave. But it's not the distance I'm concerned about, it's the length of the notes. On the one hand, whole notes seems kind of ideal for the deep bass of the piano. On the other hand, the tempo is so slow, would it be better to have the bass in half notes instead?

Prelude in G "Warmth"

• Is the melody too close to the bass? Should I bring it up an octave? It was this low when I improvised on the piano and I thought it sounded fine, but maybe that's because I know my piano's response to the melody being close to the bass with the sustain pedal. Who's to say that whoever plays this will hear it as clearly as I do in the original improvisation?

And here are the Preludes, all 9 of them so far:

I don't understand the reason why you make this kind of questions?

• Os the bass too dense?
• Should I introduce triplets earlier on or am I good here?
• and a long etc

It' surprising because I think you're looking after emotional impact with your music, however your concerns seem to be technical or formal. Of course, different techniques will lead to different emotions, but it's not mathematics. 

My process goes on the contrary. I think of what I want to express and I use anything at hand, no matter what it is.

I am indeed going after emotional impact with these preludes, and I am using what I can to help get that across(like the Ab minor prelude and the augmented chord or the F minor prelude and its low octaves), but it doesn't make it absurd to ask things like "Is the bass too dense? Should I put accent marks on beat 1" etc. because certain things can make or break a piece. A dense bass is one of those things that can make or break. And from my experience, it has more often been the latter when I have a dense bass, so you can probably understand that when I noticed the dense bass in the C minor Prelude, I was a bit concerned.

Balance is the way, for me. 

Hey Caters

Great starts so far, and seems like quite the ambitious project! It's tough for me to comment though, as it seems like you have your themes down, but I'm interested in where you take this. Instead, I'll address some overall impressions I had:

- Take advantage of the enormous range of the piano. Maybe for Cosmic or Heavenly Dream, you explore the higher registers to give those pieces a bit more character. The Death prelude was good with the more somber bass, but in general I'd think about that as you continue. 

- Why C# and Abm when it could be written as Db and G#m? Just curious, I've always written those keys with less accidentals, but that's just me.

- Maybe think about different tempos too. The Skipping prelude was very idiomatic, but other might benefit from a variance in tempo.

- Do you have thoughts in how you're going to develop each piece? For instance, at least two had the tried and true alberti bass. Maybe take different compositional approaches with those pieces with similar rhythms (perhaps one could be more contrapuntal and another uses motivic development of that rhythm).

- Cosmic had a really cool augmented section which I know you mentioned. That was the thing that really captivated me and caught my attention. I'd develop that further. As you said, you can pretty much do anything with those symmetrical chords, take us to space with that one :P

- Death was cool, but an idea that popped in my head was to develop the intervals in the bass. I like the root to m6 movement, but I'd go darker too. Root to b5, maybe to m2, etc. Take the listener far from home!

Overall great stuff, and thanks for sharing. It might be easier to update this one with each prelude, as the whole bunch might be difficult to get the attention they deserve. Keep us all updated!

8 minutes ago, Thatguy v2.0 said:

Hey Caters

Great starts so far, and seems like quite the ambitious project! It's tough for me to comment though, as it seems like you have your themes down, but I'm interested in where you take this. Instead, I'll address some overall impressions I had:

- Take advantage of the enormous range of the piano. Maybe for Cosmic or Heavenly Dream, you explore the higher registers to give those pieces a bit more character. The Death prelude was good with the more somber bass, but in general I'd think about that as you continue.

I was thinking of doing that, having more of the higher register in those preludes. And the C minor prelude, being an Emotional Theme and Variations is going to have register extremes too in some of the variations.

10 minutes ago, Thatguy v2.0 said:

- Why C# and Abm when it could be written as Db and G#m? Just curious, I've always written those keys with less accidentals, but that's just me.

Ab minor just seems more intuitive to me than G# minor, so I write it as Ab minor. And as for the C#, well, I feel an emotional and character difference between C# major being more heavenly and Db major being more passionate. I know enharmonically, they are 2 different sides of the same key, but I feel a difference between them just like I do with other keys.

13 minutes ago, Thatguy v2.0 said:

- Maybe think about different tempos too. The Skipping prelude was very idiomatic, but other might benefit from a variance in tempo.

Yeah, I have so far been sticking to a sort of moderate tempo with a few exceptions as that's kind of my default when composing is a moderate tempo, especially the slow side of moderate.

15 minutes ago, Thatguy v2.0 said:

- Do you have thoughts in how you're going to develop each piece? For instance, at least two had the tried and true alberti bass. Maybe take different compositional approaches with those pieces with similar rhythms (perhaps one could be more contrapuntal and another uses motivic development of that rhythm).

I do have thoughts on what I am going to do with each piece based on the emotional characters I feel in each key, C minor being the entire spectrum, G major being warm etc. Some are more thought out than others, like the C minor and E minor, I already knew what I was going to do emotionally for them before I even decided to work on the 25 Preludes. I knew C minor was going to end up as an Emotional Theme and Variations and E minor was going to be more meandering. F# major, not really thought out until recently when I did a fully pentatonic improvisation and recorded it on my iPad.

16 minutes ago, Thatguy v2.0 said:

- Cosmic had a really cool augmented section which I know you mentioned. That was the thing that really captivated me and caught my attention. I'd develop that further. As you said, you can pretty much do anything with those symmetrical chords, take us to space with that one 😛

So you think I should use augmented chords with different roots for that one, alright, that's something that I was thinking of doing anyway and showing the versatility of the augmented chord, showing that it can do just as much as its way more common diminished seventh brethren while providing a more ambient atmosphere instead of the crushing and collapsing that is the diminished seventh.

20 minutes ago, Thatguy v2.0 said:

- Death was cool, but an idea that popped in my head was to develop the intervals in the bass. I like the root to m6 movement, but I'd go darker too. Root to b5, maybe to m2, etc. Take the listener far from home!

Alright, I'll definitely consider that. Those definitely fit with a minor key and a somber tone, b5 from Locrian and m2 from Phrygian.