piano Fog Nocturne

Hi there. I'm a new user to the forum. Thanks for having me.

Here's a nocturne I wrote earlier in the spring. There's a scorefol.io link as well as a YouTube link.

Cheers!

https://beta.scorefol.io/w/5DO85q8czo7lzAXOSZDZ

Fog Nocturne [score].pdf

What a great impressionistic piece that is. The harmony, melody, pedal and virtuosity are perfectly used to create that foggy atmosphere. What a great talent you have, being so young but talented! You definitely have a poetic spirit to feel and compose!

Maybe it's better to have a key signature with 3 sharps? The G sharp usually appears rather than G natural.

And do you play it yourself? That's amazing technique!

Hi Henry. 

Thank you for the kind words. I'm glad you enjoyed it.

I kept it in B minor to accentuate the use of Dorian throughout the piece. In my mind, Dorian is a brighter minor sound that also sounds whimsical and quirky at times. Changing the key signature to 3 sharps wouldn't be helpful for the player to recognize the use of mode.

Yes that is me haha. Tried my best. I think this was the 3rd attempt to record it.

7 hours ago, AznKnight said:

I kept it in B minor to accentuate the use of Dorian throughout the piece. In my mind, Dorian is a brighter minor sound that also sounds whimsical and quirky at times. Changing the key signature to 3 sharps wouldn't be helpful for the player to recognize the use of mode.

I think changing it to 3 sharps won't affect players' recognition at all. There's modal use in some composer's works, for example the slow movement of Beethoven's String Quartet, op. 132 is in lydian mode, and he didn't use key signature of F major with B natural for the sake of convenience.

2 hours ago, Henry Ng said:

I think changing it to 3 sharps won't affect players' recognition at all. There's modal use in some composer's works, for example the slow movement of Beethoven's String Quartet, op. 132 is in lydian mode, and he didn't use key signature of F major with B natural for the sake of convenience.

 

Hmm now that's interesting. Do you know of any other examples of old composers who have done that? 

I'll still have to stand with my choice. I'm more inclined to stay in B minor as that was the key I was imagining in. I will say though. There's a section that temporarily has F# minor as the modulated key and having 3 sharps would make sense for that.

I guess the conversation could be moved to considerations of key signatures for different modes. I still hold that it'd be easiest for a player to recognize the mode if the key signature was closest to the mode's scale degrees with the pitch centers being the same. Just from looking at the sheet music of my piece, I would think it'd be easier and quicker for a performer to recognize it as dorian compared to it having 3 sharps, which would take more time to recognize imo. 

On 10/2/2022 at 9:37 AM, AznKnight said:

Hmm now that's interesting. Do you know of any other examples of old composers who have done that? 

For example in Beethoven's Missa Solemnis, Carl Orff's Carmina Burana.

But it's completely composer's choice to determine the key signature. Beethoven himself in the slow movement of op.110 wrote a key signature of 6 flats, despite being in A flat minor. Haydn in the fantasia of his op. 76 no.6 quartet didn't use key signature at all at the beginning, despite being in several keys like B major and A flat major.

For me I choose a key signature of 3 sharps only because of the convenience. If it is a just a modal flavoring in short passages, then I will agree with your choice of 2 sharp key signature. But for a persistent modal usage I simply use 3 sharp only due to my laziness to write accidentals😂. And I don't find it hard to recognize the dorian even if it's in 3 sharps, and the score will be more "clean".

21 hours ago, Henry Ng said:

because of the convenience. If it is a just a modal flavoring in short passages, then I will agree with your choice of 2 sharp key signature. But for a persistent modal usage I simply use 3 sharp only due to my laziness to write accidentals😂. And I don't find it hard to recognize the dorian even if it's in 3 sharps, and the score will be more "clean".

You've challenged my perception of key signatures and I have to say, it's made me chew on the topic for the past day or so. All the points you've made have been fair and I thank you for sharing them. 

It's definitely a point worth considering and I'll have to chew on it some more for future pieces. For now, I think I'll stick with the 2 sharp key signature on this piece as my formatting process usually takes a good while haha.

1 hour ago, AznKnight said:

You've challenged my perception of key signatures and I have to say, it's made me chew on the topic for the past day or so.

I think that's really a minor topic, but it is worthwhile to spend some time on it.

1 hour ago, AznKnight said:

All the points you've made have been fair and I thank you for sharing them. 

Thank you! I am just saying my points, but your conception is reasonable too!

1 hour ago, AznKnight said:

For now, I think I'll stick with the 2 sharp key signature on this piece as my formatting process usually takes a good while haha.

You are the composer and you definitely have the final say on it!

This is beautiful, you succeed in creating a pleasant foggy atmosphere, and the various rhythms are very interesting. I also liked the extensive use of the pedal, and great performance as well! Hope to hear more of your pieces in the future

4 hours ago, francoisfj said:

This is beautiful, you succeed in creating a pleasant foggy atmosphere, and the various rhythms are very interesting. I also liked the extensive use of the pedal, and great performance as well! Hope to hear more of your pieces in the future

 

Thank you for the kind words. I hope to put out music as long as I shall live haha.

I really liked this. I'm not one to usually like music without a destination, but I think it captured the mood you were going for very well. And you were the performer, right? Sounded great!

I'd agree about the key signature discussion, if I were writing in B Dorian I'd use 2 sharps, but I think that's more or less just a preference thing. 

This was a very colorful jazzy/impressionistic piece that you should be very proud of. The score looks immaculate and the real performance did this justice I don't think midi could have ever captured. You seem to know quite a bit about piano, always feel free to share your thoughts on others' pieces, they're more likely to check your music out if you build up some rapport with the other members. Welcome!