Piano Dropped In Mineshaft Sonata # -273.15 In A Flat Minor

I wrote this short sonata on paper almost 25 years ago and just found it while doing a clean-up in my basement. I did the transcript on Logic Pro and then tried to make it sound as if a good pianist was playing it. The notation on Logic is garbage but since my writing is as unbearable as the sketch of Beethoven’s Piano Sonata No. 28, I am quite happy that I was able to even read most of my score. I probably fixed some booboos on the way.

The title is based on the old music joke “What do you get when you drop a piano on a mineshaft? … A flat minor.”  John Cage did similar jokes as you should know ;o)

Ho, and by the way -273.15 C is the absolute zero. It is a mockery as I believe I went a long way in my composition since I wrote this.

Nevertheless, I am sharing it should it be of some interest for the pianist community.

Cheers,

Music and production by: Syrel

Picture: Syrel

The recording:

https://soundcloud.com/user-461764443/piano-dropped-in-mineshaft-sonata-27315-in-a-flat-minor

The score:

I think you maybe understand that it's not the finest piece of music ever composed...

Nonetheless, I have to say I actually quite liked it! I had to give up on the score about halfway through, it's certainly not really readable. I think the main issue with it really is that you have no key signature for a piece in Ab minor, which makes everything cluttered and gives you a tendency to use weird enharmonics.

Score aside, it's quite pleasant to listen to - very much in a pastiche style, but not badly done at all. It's really the architecture and flow that could be most improved upon, though I'd hope that in 25 years your composition prowess has grown enough to command form more strongly.

Anyway, just some thoughts - not quite sure what you were looking for in a review but, as a member of the piano community, it was certainly interesting!

Thanks for being brave enough to share an old piece, it was lovely to listen to it!

Aww man, there is just so much wrong with the score!  LoL Besides the aforementioned lack of a key signature (which - Ab minor is not that uncommon, some people prefer flat key signatures to G# minor for example) there's also the meter.  From what I am hearing the piece should either be in 6/16 or 12/16.  OR you could double all the note values and keep the 6/8 key signature.  But for all these reasons, the score is extremely hard to follow.  Like @aMusicComposer mentioned though, the piece is quite enjoyable!  Thanks for sharing.

Thank you so much for the precious advise regarding this pastiche. I just corrected the key to A-Flat Minor as the title was suggesting ;o) (See updated score). However, Since I am extremely lazy, I kept the 6/8 note value. However, you made me noticed that the quantization in the Score view in Logic was set wrongly to 16. By changing the quantization to 32 some notes are shown as heard. I am not a real musician neither am I a real pianist, I thus rely on others jugement on the playability of the revised score. 

Thank for commenting so constructively.

Cheers,

Is the piece really in A flat minor? I felt it more like in D flat minor. There's struggle between D flat major and minor, which makes the key signature more unreadable with a key signature of 7 flats and B always in double flat. Will it be better written in c sharp minor?

I love the style of the piece. It should be extended and developed more.

An interesting piece!  I like the way you utilize some of the bass lines.

Unfortunately, I do not think that it is possible to play it. Some of the distances are out of range for two hands. But it could probably be manageable if you arrange it into a four hands version. Also some restructuring and development would be desirable.

As far as notation is concerned (and I agree here with Henry), I do not think that A-flat minor is the correct key. To me (i.e. the “minore” sections), sound like C-sharp minor  (or D-flat minor if you like, but with 8 flats, this would be highly unpractical) For the “majore” parts of your piece , I would consider switching to the D-flat major key. Look at Schubert´s Moment Musical nr 4, and you will see what I mean.

I also think that instead of a 6/8 meter it would be more appropriate use 12/16 (or double value notes and keeping 6/8), as suggested by Peter.

.Again, nice work and thanks for posting this piece!

No one here understood the joke.  “What do you get when you drop a piano on a mineshaft? … A flat minor.” 

Of course it is not in A flat. Of course it should have been a four hands score. Of course the time signature is incorrect.

Many scorers seem to focus on the ink, the font and the paper. What happens when you focus too much on the score and not enough on musical inspiration? You become a scorer that perfectly score uninspired music, not a composer, should he be young or old. 

If Iannis Xenakis (which I met in Montreal in 1967) had written his music the conventional way, his music wouldn't have exist. We could say the same of many other modern composers. Even Beethoven had a terrible writing. 

This Young Composer blog focus on scoring, which is good. However, it may be focusing too much on the technicalities of scoring and not enough on the music composing itself. And frankly, would I really put my best score on this blog such that someone can copy my best tricks in his score. Of course not. 

If a composer relies on the score to listen to music and can't use his ears to figure chords, intervals, melodies, articulations, then he is not a real composer. He is just a scorer even when you are a well trainne scorer but still just a scorer.

The ear is like a muscle. You must train it to understand the music well above the score technicalities.

Nevertheless, continue the good work scoring but listen more.

Cheers

Hi @Syrel,

I think you are mixing stuffs here. 
 

7 hours ago, Syrel said:

Many scorers seem to focus on the ink, the font and the paper. What happens when you focus too much on the score and not enough on musical inspiration? You become a scorer that perfectly score uninspired music, not a composer, should he be young or old. 

At least for many of us we are inspired by Austro=German music tradition and will write music with a score. Score is the medium for composers to communicate with the performers and learners. If we have to clearly present our music intentions, we have to perfect our scores. And it’s great to know that many great composers are scorers that perfectly score their uninspired music too.
 

7 hours ago, Syrel said:

No one here understood the joke.  “What do you get when you drop a piano on a mineshaft? … A flat minor.” 

Of course it is not in A flat. Of course it should have been a four hands score. Of course the time signature is incorrect.

Of course no one understands the joke, since if you don’t speak it out, so the joke will only remain in your minds, and of course it make us think it’s more an error than a joke.

7 hours ago, Syrel said:

If Iannis Xenakis (which I met in Montreal in 1967) had written his music the conventional way, his music wouldn't have exist. We could say the same of many other modern composers. Even Beethoven had a terrible writing.

It’s not the problem of whether it’s conventional or not, it’s whether you can clearly present what your musical inspiration. Xenakis didn’t score his piece ina conventional way, but it doesn’t mean that he doesn’t clearly write down what he want his pieces sound like. And mixing Beethoven’s messy handwriting with score is a joke right? Of course it is a joke right? Like in his Hammerklavier only an A sharp or A natural near the recap of his first movement causes an issue.

7 hours ago, Syrel said:

This Young Composer blog focus on scoring, which is good. However, it may be focusing too much on the technicalities of scoring and not enough on the music composing itself. And frankly, would I really put my best score on this blog such that someone can copy my best tricks in his score. Of course not. 

Actually to write the classical music style focusing on the technicalities of scoring will mean to perfect on the music composing itself. And will it be good to copy something they know it’s not clearly notated? Of course not.

7 hours ago, Syrel said:

f a composer relies on the score to listen to music and can't use his ears to figure chords, intervals, melodies, articulations, then he is not a real composer. He is just a scorer even when you are a well trainne scorer but still just a scorer.

Of course composers shouldn’t just rely on score but not their ears for music. But does that mean that you should only rely on the ears but never your eyes? Having scores is in fact the most convenient way to record music down and communicate it with people, and it by no means undermine the importance of aural training. It will work well to just have aural training when composing jazz, pop, world music, but not classical music since it already has a tradition of scoring. Even Cage’s 4”33 needs to be scored clearly to notate his musical intentions, of course our works should do that too.

7 hours ago, Syrel said:

The ear is like a muscle. You must train it to understand the music well above the score technicalities.

Nevertheless, continue the good work scoring but listen more.

It’s fascinating to make listening and scoring like mutually exclusive entities when they are actually not. Listening is so crucial to our music understanding, but it doesn’t mean we should make unclear and wrong scores in order to listen more. In fact if one has good music understanding he shouldn’t notate his scores unclearly if it’s pieces in classical music style. And no one lives in your mind or is a worm in your dummies, so only through a score will people understand your intentions. No one has the obligation to guess your intention unless you are Xenakis or Beethoven.

Henry
 

Hi Syrel

I feel like... maybe we got off on the wrong foot. It's my fault, as my past relationships would side with you on. 😛 

I'm not sure if you remember, but a long while back, you left a scathing review of someone's music here. You basically called them out for their sound samples being mediocre, and proceeded to lecture them on the importance of sound quality. You weren't mean, but rather condescendingly rude, at least in my opinion. Because of that impression you gave me, I said some things to you, and in hindsight I regret it. 

Maybe I thought I was being cheeky and savvy. None of that is true. Instead, I think a misunderstanding happened. 

You see, there is a separate community between those in the academic sectors and the media outlets. And sometimes, there is a misunderstanding because of that. Every time you post something, you mention the score now. You also share about, you know, how it's not great and you're just trying to share what you feel like is required here or something. It's not. You don't have to post a score. Ever. You're using a DAW. Trust me, I've written entire orchestral pieces within Cubase. There was a cool competition I submitted one of them to, and it required a score. I converted the notation file Cubase shat out to pdf and showed them the score. 

Most laughed at me.

"Is this even playable?"

"No one can read this"

Blah blah blah

I was so pissed off. I had just gotten the EWQL Orchestra package, and guess what? You have to use a DAW to execute their sounds. That's fine, TONS of composers write music this way. I got decent at separating midi tracks like instruments on a conductor's staff and made it work to satisfactory results for my skill set at the time. It was fun. But when I clicked "create notation" or whatever it was called, it spat out some illegible nonsense. There was no way to edit the notes on the staff (at least to my knowledge), and I felt embarrassed to submit something so ridiculous looking to a bunch of people whose degrees in music let them feel the need to slander anything not reminiscent of a score bearing the precision of spacecraft. 

I wanted my music to sound as sonically brilliant as possible. No orchestra is ever going to play my music, let's be real. But I've made a decent enough living in my life, and if I can pour my passion of composition into digital samples, well why the hell wouldn't I? Maybe hybridization of notation software and sequencers will someday occur, but right now they're mi... kilometers apart. 

I'm rambling, sorry haha. My point is, you're using a software to execute the actual "sound", the "audio", to be as perfect as possible. And, come on man. Let us be honest with each other. Your music is fantastic. I've been listening to the Rust and Bones soundtrack on repeat for, uh, a while now. It's so good. I won't share which track, but one even made me tear up. The kind where it just wells up in your eyelids, and falls down your cheek when you don't even blink to open the flood gates. Gorgeous in every way.

But when you post your music with the score your DAW gives you, a lot of people here will be quick to point out flaws in it's construction. That's ok. If you're receptive to that, and you have the desire to create well crafted scores to best represent your music and showcase your intentions, well that's awesome! But if not, if I were you, I wouldn't even post it. It'd be so much work to try and fiddle with it, it's not even worth your time. Especially when there are lots of tempo changes, even subtle ones. I remember that being annoying. 

Instead, if you post in the incidental/soundtrack/media section of the forum, most people assume you're using the methods you use to compose and don't really question a score. Keep in mind, because of the mostly what I assume is a student/academic based vantage point of composition this site harbors, you might get requests of a score. How great for you, that your music is so interesting to them that they want to further study your craft. Yes your ears are most important, but the aid of a visual representation of what an orchestra is accomplishing at a foundational level of your music is what people can be curious about. If you value the secrecy of your sonic footprint upon our world and don't wish to share your music's notational construction, that's ok. If you're inputting notes with a midi keyboard into your software, and it sounds as beautiful as the music I hear (let's see... I'm on "Remember" now) but you can't figure out why the score it gives looks so bad, who cares. Your program isn't designed for that. If you mention in the post of your music, "This was written with *insert DAW* and don't have a score", no one will belittle you. That's the reality of great sounding music using virtual instruments. 

And ok I'm rambling again. My whole point stems from what you recently posted. You seemed to be really upset in your comment A YEAR after a few people gave you some great and honest feedback (as well as praise! yay!). Your piano piece sounds great! Maybe it's like a neo-classical approach to your style? You mentioned it's an old piece you found. It sounds like it probably would be, as noted with the form. Was this a study? For fun? These are things that would be interesting to know and talk about. 

I get that your score may not reflect your midi input. Maybe you inputted notes in a 6/8 way, but the score it gave was in 3/4. Or whatever. It's just another reason I wouldn't even bother posting it. Like I said, no one would fault you. There is plenty to comment on your music without being distracted by it 😄 

I read a lot of the "feedback" you get on soundcloud. Reminds me of one of my accounts. It has pretty good attention from a band I was previously in. A lot of people say "great music" or whatever generic low effort version of that they come up with, but probably didn't even listen to the music. They're probably clout chasers, or just post to keep up appearances. Some could possibly be bots. Well, some are for sure bots because of my idiot old roommate/bass player. 

It's really a great way to share your music, but if you're looking for honest feedback, it kinda sucks. That's partly why I always come back to this forum; there are sometimes new faces, but always great advice. It helps to be active as well. A lot of times people are quick to offer advice or critique (maybe just a bit of praise even 🙂) if you give a bit of insight into their work. Sometimes someone's music just blows me away, and even if I feel like I can only share my admiration for their music, I like to share it. It's helped me network inadvertently too lol. 

ANYWAY

Sorry for all the incoherent confusion my post may have spawned. To sum up, I think that your music is riveting and emotional. It's especially very colorful, you have a great sense of dynamics with the instrumentation, as well as a keen intuition for it's story telling. I'm glad I scoured your soundcloud, it was a fun ride! I think that someone with your experience and craftsmanship would do a lot of members here a great justice by giving your hard work a thorough listen. I hope more learn from and enjoy your music as much as I have within this last chunk of time.