My first Symphony

I thought I'd post my first symphony on here to see what people thought. 

The piece is finished, so any feedback you give, know that it won't be changed.

Thanks for listening!

47 minutes is a big ask considering feedback will be irrelevant. 

Not sure why you posted it.

8 hours ago, Quinn said:

47 minutes is a big ask considering feedback will be irrelevant. 

Not sure why you posted it.

 

feedback is still relevant to me learning as a composer

plus, I've seen many people on this site post finished works, albeit not 47 minutes.

Short critique - if I give you too much of something or the same thing over and over again, then you'll appreciate it less and less over time. You'll become desensitized to it. To get straight to the point, your use of "power" chords is a bit overwhelming - using the low range of the bass instruments with a P5. I'm primarily talking about the first movement. 

I respect the original ideas, however, I wasn't pulled in by anything you presented. Of course, it's a matter of opinion and we are each entitled to our own.
 

It's astonishing that you put this much effort into your work - I respect that. 47 minutes is a crazy long period of time to sit down and listen to something. I imagine this took a while to write.

Kudos on finishing a long project!

16 hours ago, SuperSaiyanScriabin said:

Short critique - if I give you too much of something or the same thing over and over again, then you'll appreciate it less and less over time. You'll become desensitized to it. To get straight to the point, your use of "power" chords is a bit overwhelming - using the low range of the bass instruments with a P5. I'm primarily talking about the first movement. 

I respect the original ideas, however, I wasn't pulled in by anything you presented. Of course, it's a matter of opinion and we are each entitled to our own.
 

It's astonishing that you put this much work into your work - I respect that. 47 minutes is a crazy long period of time to sit down and listen to something. I imagine this took a while to write.

Kudos on finishing a long project!

 

 

Thanks. I don’t really remember using any power chords let alone too many, since I don’t like vagueness in my harmony. Could you give me a time stamp or something for when there is a perfect fifth?

On 1/19/2022 at 5:10 PM, ComposaBoi said:

feedback is still relevant to me learning as a composer

 

Then please post a score so we can look in more detail what you're doing.

Cheers.

6 hours ago, Quinn said:

Then please post a score so we can look in more detail what you're doing.

Cheers.

 

The scores aren't too polished, so any advice on making the scores look nicer is also appreciated

Well, hats off to you for having the determination to complete a full 4 movement work, and the courage to post it here for comment and feedback. It’s too bad that the first commenter felt free to snipe at your effort without even listening to it; that’s not typically a way to earn respect for one’s opinions.

I did listen to your entire symphony. That said, I’m not going to listen a second time. It’s clearly a beginner’s effort and a learning exercise. My advice would be to call it done (I agree with your decision not to make changes), set it aside, and begin to work with smaller forms to develop your skills. Here are some things I’d suggest you work on:

1. How to craft a melodic line. With a couple of exceptions, your melodies are just little patterns that don’t go anywhere. If your intent is to write in the classical-romantic tradition, you need to figure out what makes a melody and what makes a developable theme.

2. Types of polyphony other than melody-and-accompaniment. The vast majority of your symphony consists of little melodic-like-patterns against a block-chord accompaniment. This just gets tiresome.

3. How to develop a musical idea. A symphonic movement is long because it takes that long for the material to be developed and for the composer to say what needs to be said. Your symphony has, to my ear, about 8 minutes of content stretched out to 47 minutes by repetition. Repetition is NOT development.

4. An awareness of what real instruments, played by real humans, can and can’t do. Your second movement scherzo has some potential, but your tuba player has died of hypoxia before it’s half done. The rest of your brass section expires in the finale. You don’t gain credibility by being that conspicuously unaware.

I don’t want to pile on any more or be discouraging. I also once tried to write a symphony, long before I knew what I was doing. I finished the opening movement and a little bit of a scherzo. The experience taught me that I had a lot to learn about symphonies, but that it was learnable. It’s possible that I know what I’m doing now, but I actually don’t think I’ll ever write one, mainly because the expectations of audiences have changed so much.

I was very impressed with your 2nd movement.  The fact that you can write such lovely and meaningful melody and harmony, that actually has direction and purpose shows you have what it takes to be a composer. 

I would have altered the Bass/Tuba line at some point as I thought it was too much for too long without variation.

There are lots of small, but important details to attend to in your score for next time.

One example would be using both E natural and F flat, at the same time, when of course they are the same note, but presenting them differently causes confusion.

I also notice that even though you use lots of thirds in the melody line, when it comes to important chords at the end of phrases, the 3rd. note of the scale is often missing from the chord. For example, building a chord out of C and F, but with no A or A flat to round it out.

Well Done.

Wow this is BIG, I was just looking at your About me page (very nicely done BTW 😎) and ended up here. I was about to go to have lunch so I may not have enough time to go through all movements but since it's a finished piece I'll just give my opinion superficially. Probably none of this won't serve you at this point though. EDIT: went to have lunch at 3rd movement, lol.

• 1st movement: in compositions like these, I guess one must spend quite a lot of time on polishing the sound just to get a result close to the desired one. You probably have better stuff in that regard, after all more than a year passed since this, but I must say that the majority of this 1st movement didn't disappoint sound-wise, despite of the typical flaws that computer-generated sound usually has like tremolos (unless of course we deal with good libraries and blah blah blah). This first movement transmits to me a surge of heroic energy, and yeah I know this is all subjective, but the structure suggests it somehow, like a long-lasting crescendo overlapped with a sine wave. At least, the first 8 minutes, then I am rather unsure of what direction it takes for a while. Then it just dives into a much calmer mood. I suppose that 16 minutes of movement are hard to maintain without adding more material, but there are parts after the 8th minute that seem out of place, like experiments and ideas isolated from the rest of the piece. In any case, I enjoyed most of it, specially the final return to the main section.

• 2nd movement: just enjoying it and to be honest, much more than the first one. You did a really good job here in my opinion. I expected the end to be somewhat more bombastic though.

• 3rd movement: I am not very convinced with what's presented here, new material with many ideas here and there; some that I like, some that I don't like that much. I think the passage that begins near min 3 is the one I like the most, as well as the scherzo that follows it. I guess there's not much intertwining of voices (and if managed well, orchestral scherzos can be hugely benefited from this but you most likely know that already). 

• 4th movement: best beginning of all four but perhaps overextended, again I'm trying to restrain myself of give criticism to a piece that you probably surpassed a while ago and whose criticism here was more on-point than what I could possibly write here. I will refer myself to what I said in the commentary (specifically, the last lines) of the first movement. I must say that those ideas get more and more interesting, did you use any in further pieces?

Again, I'm glad that I found your "About me" section, I'll make sure of check other pieces of yours some other time. As a recommendation, it may be worth considering to link your "About me" section in your signature so people who might be interested in your pieces can look there.

Kind regards,
Daniel–Ømicrón.