Elegy

Just wanted to share this simple piece I wrote for piano.

I don't know if it's any good; but thought I'd post it anyway.

The influences are Sondheim and Chopin, with a bit of Bach thrown in for good measure!

Your score looks atrocious!  Even though you're in 4/4, very often you put whole notes on the 3rd beat of the bar and expect it to be understood that they last until the next middle of the next bar.  Usually you'd put a half note on beat 3 tied to another half note in the next bar - very basic stuff (I thought) in any notation program (even free ones like Musescore).  And that usually should just be automatic without you having to give a second thought to it, the program formatting and displaying the notes correctly as a default.

The music is actually not bad - some interesting harmonic and melodic choices you make that kept my attention throughout.  You manage to create some thematic/motivic associations that are catchy and prevent the piece from sounding aimless and meandering.  I like how you base the piece around two distantly related chromatic mediants (E minor and G minor) - that always sounds cool.

Regarding the meter - most of the time the piece actually seems to be more in 3/2 or 6/4 rather than 4/4 especially when that waltz-like accompaniment comes in.

Great job overall!  Btw - what program did you use to make that hideous looking score?  LoL  Thanks for sharing and keep composing!

Peter

It does sound good in my opinion, but well the score and notation overall, as Peter said above, is pretty much messed up; I also want to become aware of the software you used.  By the way I stumbled upon this, perhaps it would make more sense to notate the (D#-E-A-G)_4 here in the left hand or as a separate voice as obviously it cannot be played as-is only with the R.H. under normal circumstances.

Kind regards!!

Many thanks for listening, and for the kind words!
I don't know that much about composition theory, and have been trying to write from instinct really.

Sorry about the score. It was an after thought, included as an edit to my original post.
Just wanted to put something up for you to look at.
I did notice those defects, and there are some missing rests as well.

I made the piece on my iPad.
Used Music Studio for the composition, and Midi Sheet Music to produce the score.
Also tried Newzik; but that produced a four stave score, and was missing some of the natural accidentals for some reason.
I wonder if there's a better app you can recommend?

I think the piece would sound more expressive with some rubato, and wondered how you would handle that within Midi composition software?

Didn't think that much about the time signature, but you definitely have a point!

Would be interested to know whether the piece evokes any particular emotions?
Was originally aiming for something melancholy; but I'm not sure it turned out that way.

3 hours ago, Alex Weidmann said:

I wonder if there's a better app you can recommend?

Yeah - you can download Musescore for free!

3 hours ago, Alex Weidmann said:

I think the piece would sound more expressive with some rubato, and wondered how you would handle that within Midi composition software?

There's no program out there which will do rubato by itself if you just write "rubato" into the score, as far as I am aware.  You have to write a bunch of hidden tempo changes yourself to make it seem like rubato (at least that's what I do in Musescore).

4 hours ago, Alex Weidmann said:

Would be interested to know whether the piece evokes any particular emotions?
Was originally aiming for something melancholy; but I'm not sure it turned out that way.

I think you achieved that goal.  For having been written without any knowledge of theory and from just instinct I think you did a great job!