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Posted

Now, I'm not talking about the harmony of the transition being abrupt, I'm good at even making distant modulations smoothly by using chromatic and/or shared diatonic chords. No, I'm talking about the rhythm of the transition. You see, I'm composing an octave etude and within an hour of starting, I'm already 2/3 finished with the notes, which is just record speed for me. That's great that I am composing a piece that fast. It may be an outlier and stay an outlier, but you know what, I'm fine with that.

I improvised 3 different musical ideas yesterday, each with a different texture achieved with octaves. That's part of why I am composing this piece so fast. Here are said musical ideas:

Idea 1: Octave grace note arpeggios over a sparse bass

Idea 2: Counterpoint between the hands in F minor

Idea 3: Dense, staccato, motivic approach to what would be a C minor cadence, but which only fully completes in C minor at the end of the etude

And a PDF showing each of the 3 as originally improvised on the piano yesterday:

Octave Etude Ideas.pdf

While I am not concerned about the move from Idea 1 to an improvised melody or from an improvised melody to Idea 3, the move from Idea 3 to Idea 2 seems rhythmically abrupt, maybe a bit too abrupt? Just jumping into Idea 2 in it's original form though didn't seem to work well, so I tried to slow down the right hand to quarter notes for the first entrance of Idea 2 and then later have it go at the originally improvised speed of eighth notes for the second entrance. I wonder if it is that octave C that starts the syncopation in the right hand that is making it sound abrupt to me.

Do you think the transition to the F minor idea is too abrupt and I should maybe get rid of the octave C in Bar 36? Or do you think it's not too abrupt and I can leave it rhythmically as it is? I would appreciate your feedback on it.

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Posted (edited)

Frankly, I see no problem at all. In fact it makes a refreshing change. If anything as a syncopated passage it could possibly be shorter, cutting back at bar 44?

The rhythmic interruption in the LH at bar 46 sounded more out of place. Also the switch in direction in bar 56 came as a surprise - the basic contrary motion is fine and works well going on, but changing the high-low order of notes in each 1/8 note pair seemed to interrupt the flow. (R.H.) Hi-lo-hi-lo-Lo-hi-lo-hi if you see what I mean.

(Going to be an interesting study. When you get to apply dynamics, some of those octaves p and pp will need quite some control.)

 

Edited by Quinn
typo

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