nocturne Nocturne Nº5

Hi again!

It's a bit too late here to continue reviewing so I thought it was the perfect time to make a post and go to sleep once and for all :]. I gladly present you my fifth nocturne —finished during the night of March 1st, 2022—, dedicated to a person which I value very highly (and whom indeed got another dedicated nocturne later on). I tend to think my "nocturnes" (I have explained in a prior post why I called them like that I believe) either go in pairs or alone in terms of style, approach or... I don't really know how to describe it. In any case, this one would be paired with the sixth one which I may publish here soon.

Without further ado, here's the video:

Of course here you are the score in PDF: 52 - Nocturno Nº5.pdf
 
It is not particularly difficult (or is it?), but as always I'll prefer not to mention anything and let you judge. As always, any feedback, criticism, big or small commentary, interpretation, whatever you think as long as no cats or dogs are damaged in the process is very welcome here.

If you somehow are interested in other nocturnes and pieces I've uploaded here, I have edited my "About me" page for you to easily navigate through them.
Check it out HERE.

You can also check the prior nocturne uploaded here clicking on here.

As always, thank you in advance guys. I hope you find this one decent enough.

Kind regards,
Daniel–Ømicrón.
 

Well, well, well, well, well, well, 

well, well,

WELL

If it isn't another one of Daniel's infamous nocturnes...

let's dive right in!

So, immediately, and before getting too involved with the piece, I want to comment on your sound samples. What do you use? Your samples are very wet, coming from your reverb. They make everything sound blended too much together, without the crispness the piano can offer. I know you're using heavy pedal throughout a lot of the piece, but turning that back a notch (or several) could really bring out the clarity of your notes. Is this the setting you've used with your other pieces? Maybe I've missed it, but it seemed very prevalent in this one.

As far as musicality, at first I was a bit disheartened with the constant quarter note rhythms of the chords, but as I re-listened, it grew on me, and I think it works. I love your pacing in this, constantly giving us the grim nature of your main theme, but varying it up accordingly. I really love the transition at bar 39, maybe even giving that a rubato type feel would bring out the character a bit more (this deserves a live performance for that). Reinstatement of the theme in a simple way is superb, and I love the key change at bar 51 or so. 

But to me, this piece really starts taking off at bar 69, and something I want to address now. I LOVE the form of this. I love how it evolves and evolves, and continues to develop. It's almost like an impromptu...like an ever evolving improvisation of your main theme. And then a tease of the theme at bar 85 with continued development? 

*chef's kiss*

And then a delayed resolve at bar 97?

DUDE

You had me gripping my seat with anticipation. 

I LOVE LOVE LOVE LOVE LOVE

LOVE

the ending section... How you take us with the rolled chords to the end. Maybe...MAYBE you could have added the descending 16th notes of the original theme to the second to last measure. But overall, wow I'm impressed. 

Is this my favorite Omicron Nocturne? Eh...hard to say. But how you delivered your form was impressive. You put us on an incredible journey, and I think that was thanks to the improvisational element to your form. I've listened to a bunch of your nocturnes (and I'm of course excited to hear the others), and one thing I love about your style is that you're willing to vary up your delivery of your material. Nothing seems formulaic, and each piece stands with a character of it's own. 

You continue to impress me with your music, and no matter what happens in your musical career, count me in as a fan and supporter of your music, as well as your willingness to share your knowledge and opinions with others (the latter could even be more impressive than your music!)

Well done, and thanks for sharing! Count me in as someone who will always offer feedback to your work, even though I'm just pixels halfway across the world to you 😄 

23 hours ago, Omicronrg9 said:

I gladly present you my fifth nocturne

It should really be your fifth nocturne! The interval of fifth is persistent throughtout the piece!! Like Haydn's Quinten Quartet, that's a really good motivic and linking material for the piece! Great variation skills displayed in the piece. I love how you use that fifth interval to link the whole piece. The choice of B flat minor is also great.

I think it's cool to have the quaver beat at the beginning, and later left hand figuration is also varied.

I do find bar 91-94 quite detached, after having pedals all over the piece.

I love the ending so much! The running and falling semiquaver really flows fluently.

Your variation form is really organic, like that of Beethoven's 109 and 111. The intensity is going up and up, rhythmic values become shorter and shorter, and the theme is evolved, cut, superimposed etc. to exhaust it and give new meaning. I myself is not a composer good at variation skill, so definitely I have to learn something from you.

Hope you will keep sharing music here and youtube!

Kind Regards!!

Henry

On 11/29/2022 at 5:03 AM, Henry Ng said:

It should really be your fifth nocturne! The interval of fifth is persistent throughtout the piece!!

Lol I didn't think about this, nice! The motive is more or less based on another piece of mine called "Sollozos", in english "sobs" I guess.

On 11/29/2022 at 5:03 AM, Henry Ng said:

I do find bar 91-94 quite detached, after having pedals all over the piece.

Hmmm perhaps, this is a more or less common practice in me... You know, making stacattos out of nowhere. I will reflect on that.

On 11/29/2022 at 5:03 AM, Henry Ng said:

Hope you will keep sharing music here and youtube!

Same goes to you mate! Thank you as always for your quality feedback.

Kind regards,
Daniel–Ømicrón.







 

On 11/28/2022 at 6:46 AM, Thatguy v2.0 said:

Well, well, well

Lol I can see you like rich text editor.

On 11/28/2022 at 6:46 AM, Thatguy v2.0 said:

So, immediately, and before getting too involved with the piece, I want to comment on your sound samples. What do you use?

Some Dark piano I found on the web. Perhaps this one is wetter than others. Mostly depends on each nocturne, I tried to keep improving along the way. In any case, it is true that this one is extra wet but iirc not every nocturne is like that.

Regarding your 2 next paragraphs, as I may have commented somewhere I am always glad to read any kind of criticism and different perspective of my works since I tend to have a very particular way to understand them. I hardly ever analyse them like I would do with other works of many other composers and your comments always make me re-read the score to listen precisely the points you make.
 

On 11/28/2022 at 6:46 AM, Thatguy v2.0 said:

But to me, this piece really starts taking off at bar 69, and something I want to address now. I LOVE the form of this. I love how it evolves and evolves, and continues to develop.

Nice! This nocturne was not much of a headache to me, I had it pretty clear but I honestly didn't think much about structure, not as I did with 11+ I guess. In this case, ideas came without forcing them.

On 11/28/2022 at 6:46 AM, Thatguy v2.0 said:

Is this my favorite Omicron Nocturne? Eh...hard to say. But how you delivered your form was impressive. You put us on an incredible journey, and I think that was thanks to the improvisational element to your form. I've listened to a bunch of your nocturnes (and I'm of course excited to hear the others), and one thing I love about your style is that you're willing to vary up your delivery of your material. Nothing seems formulaic, and each piece stands with a character of it's own. 

It's even hard to say for m...Nah, mine is twentieth by far, but dunno if I eventually publish them all I may make some kind of poll haha.

I am glad to read your words here, specially the last phrase. Perhaps my "deficient" classical background has to do with my not very formulaic approach to pieces. We'll see if this is maintained next episode lol.
 

On 11/28/2022 at 6:46 AM, Thatguy v2.0 said:

You continue to impress me with your music, and no matter what happens in your musical career, count me in as a fan and supporter of your music, as well as your willingness to share your knowledge and opinions with others (the latter could even be more impressive than your music!)

Well, as long as I don't end up under a bridge with no way to write music I'll keep doing it as well as providing feedback to users in YC 😎. Again, thank you so much for your feedback, I'll remind your words today. It's gonna be a long one and my rest was scarce, but this has motivated me enough!!

Kind regards,
Daniel–Ømicrón.

 

Nice score with some nice motifs enjoyed listening to your full score!

All in all, I think this is a good listen.

Compositionally, let's see if we can tear apart some good critique for you.

Your chief material is really contained within the first bar. Looking at the score, I think that's a safe statement to make. The melody is very reminiscent of Chopin's funeral march -which is an awesome piece. Ironically, you also utilized a melodic device greatly used by Mozart. 

I like the variation of this material in measures 21-24. I think this is very inventive. I would've taken the idea at 25 and used that via sequencing and counterpoint as a modulatory passage -but I think your treatment works. My only beef is returning to the original source material at bar 29. I'm not sure that gets the intended effect. 

The modulation at bar 37 -38 sounds (and looks) a bit rough (which I believe is why you went to the scalar passage afterwards to 'clean up the air'.) The return to the opening material works, but I think you missed an opportunity here to inject a new idea into the piece. This would've been an awesome place for a little bit of contrast. However, I think sticking with the original material works -given you don't beat it to death.

Ironically, it looks like you attempt the same modulation again -but this time a little bit cleaner. Kudos! I'm definitely starting to get the idea of your love of brevity. I think some development lessons might be a good thing for you. Stating the theme in its entirety works -but the two connected cells are ripe for exploration and development. By bar 63, It become clear that there's not going to be much of that. 

And that's the story until the end -with the exception of the wonderfully playful passage at m. 91-94. The left hand finally has a little more interesting passage -despite the incessant full statement of the main material. 

What I'd like to see is a little more thematic exploration. Break the material up and work with it in its parts. You can still apply the melissma (did I spell that correctly?) and add the flourishing touches of arpeggiation and ostinato -while taking the material into new directions. I hope that makes sense?

All in all, I think you're moving in the right direction with this -and it was quite an enjoyable work to pick thru. I see a lot of promise in it. 

Thanks for sharing!

17 hours ago, hw1234 said:

Nice score with some nice motifs enjoyed listening to your full score!

Oh hey thanks HW! 👍

 

5 hours ago, jawoodruff said:

Compositionally, let's see if we can tear apart some good critique for you.

There's a decent amount of things to reply here so sorry if I leave something behind. First of all by looking at measures you pointed out I detected plain scoring errors that I'll correct when I do a final review for printing.

5 hours ago, jawoodruff said:

Your chief material is really contained within the first bar. Looking at the score, I think that's a safe statement to make.

Yeah, I'd say Nocs. 5 and 6 are both made from a single or two melodic ideas just as 10 and 11 are based in a single harmonic idea. Not that I was thinking into doing that intentionally but that's how it ended up. Most nocturnes (of mine) are entirely based on a single-idea (with stains of other material that isn't predominant) that is likely presented at the beginning.
In this case we may agree M1 and M25 are the two important bricks, likely.
 

5 hours ago, jawoodruff said:

I like the variation of this material in measures 21-24. I think this is very inventive. I would've taken the idea at 25 and used that via sequencing and counterpoint as a modulatory passage -but I think your treatment works. My only beef is returning to the original source material at bar 29. I'm not sure that gets the intended effect. 

I don't remind if there was some intended effect, possibly not, I don't usually compose with anything in mind apart from the sole music so possibly my past myself just went straight to that development as it was what was in his head. Perhaps it would've been different today or in 2015, who knows.

6 hours ago, jawoodruff said:

The modulation at bar 37 -38 sounds (and looks) a bit rough (which I believe is why you went to the scalar passage afterwards to 'clean up the air'.) The return to the opening material works, but I think you missed an opportunity here to inject a new idea into the piece. This would've been an awesome place for a little bit of contrast. However, I think sticking with the original material works -given you don't beat it to death.

I don't know, apart from the scoring mistake or "imprecision" at M36 I don't see that sounding rough to me unless you mean it has tension. Much less "looking" rough since it shares more or less the structure of M33-34 but rall. so I don't see the issue.

Regarding adding new material there: based on my experience here receiving and reading reviews, the equilibrium/consensus when it comes to how much material you add and the perception of when a certain material gets overused doesn't converge between users, but depending on the piece some may consider there's too much, too little, and a full grey scale between those poles thus I'm pretty sure there won't be agreement excepting on very extreme cases. In this particular one, I see (now, perhaps not at the time I composed this) how I could have introduced new material in various places or developed some underused passages more but for one or another reason that's the way it got done.

6 hours ago, jawoodruff said:

I think some development lessons might be a good thing for you.

What are those? Not that I have time to take anymore lessons but I'm curious. Also I'm not certainly good at sticking with certain rules what and what not to do if it's something like this. I've had some lessons of that in a course called "musical creativity" that was about everything but the title. But hey they taught me to use Sibelius, which I never used again (and at that time I was already a "frequent customer" of Musescore 2 anyway). 

You may not agree with me here, but I believe the process of making these nocturnes has been a nice development lesson on their own. They're far from perfect (whatever that be in this context) but it's the first time I compose at a rate (normally one or two per week from 1-21) I was satisfied with, plus when I got each one done, I always felt like I learned something. That doesn't mean that NocX is better than NocX-1, not for me at least, but still, I think I should keep going like this. 
 

6 hours ago, jawoodruff said:

And that's the story until the end -with the exception of the wonderfully playful passage at m. 91-94. The left hand finally has a little more interesting passage -despite the incessant full statement of the main material. 

91-94? Oh that's unexpected, I found more distinguishable the section starting at M69. I can already tell you will likely not like my 4th Sonata 1st movement...

6 hours ago, jawoodruff said:

What I'd like to see is a little more thematic exploration. Break the material up and work with it in its parts. You can still apply the melissma (did I spell that correctly?) and add the flourishing touches of arpeggiation and ostinato -while taking the material into new directions. I hope that makes sense?

It does! Perhaps I have done that already somewhere in my next nocturnes...? I will be glad if you come over my next posts whenever I publish'em as long as it doesn't get tiresome or boring. They may get "weirder", and some are in my opinion worse than this one so, excuse me in advance lol. 

I don't know about the word "melissma" in English. In Spanish we have "melisma" but I am not completely sure we are talking about the very same thing here.


My sincere thanks for this review, every thorough feedback I receive makes me think... Specially if it's as specific as yours.

Kind regards,
Daniel–Ømicrón.


 

In terms of development, there are a few tricks and tips you can exploit.

1. Diminution: This technique involves taking the material and elongating the note values -making them longer. You can also make them shorter. 

2. Intervals: Your motivic material is comprised at the base level of intervals. Take these intervals and you can transpose them, invert them, play them backgrounds, upside down, mirror them... apply chromatic alteration... etc. This is one of the most fundamental development techniqes.

3. Sequencing: Sequencing can apply to the whole line or it can apply to segments of the line. You use this to the whole line quite a bit -but perhaps you can expand your motivic cells thru this to create a 'developed' texture out them?

4. Rhythmic: Applying different rhythmic underpinnings to your material can exponentially increase the developmental pulse of the work. This is a hallmark of theme and variations form -and, ironically, what would become of sonata-allegro development sections post-Beethoven.

That's just a few basic tools you have at your disposal.

I consider piano literature to be a prime ground for experimentation. The instrument has a great deal of timbral diversity to it that it allows for great ease. You can be gentle and rough with it.... emotive and mechanical. So, I fully understand your view that these pieces are where you can grow your abilities as a composer -something that I do myself, and I applaud you for doing it also!

Keep up the amazing work. I look forward to your next piece!

22 minutes ago, Omicronrg9 said:

It does! Perhaps I have done that already somewhere in my next nocturnes...? I will be glad if you come over my next posts whenever I publish'em as long as it doesn't get tiresome or boring. They may get "weirder", and some are in my opinion worse than this one so, excuse me in advance lol. 

I don't know about the word "melissma" in English. In Spanish we have "melisma" but I am not completely sure we are talking about the very same thing here.

@jawoodruff Does "melisma" means keeping the flow and pacing fluently? I always find Daniel's piece has a special kind of current and flow which is amazing. I think Daniel's approach is effective in the sense of creating immediate effect, while your approach is motivic and thematic. That's so varied in our approaches to composing!

Just now, Henry Ng said:

@jawoodruff Does "melisma" means keeping the flow and pacing fluently? I always find Daniel's piece has a special kind of current and flow which is amazing. I think Daniel's approach is effective in the sense of creating immediate effect, while your approach is motivic and thematic. That's so varied in our approaches to composing!

 

Melisma are basically like 16th note runs of material that may or may not be based off your motivic material. I.E. RUNS

11 minutes ago, jawoodruff said:

In terms of development, there are a few tricks and tips you can exploit.

Yes I do recognize these elements you've presented! I was taught this several years ago in that mentioned class and we even did exercises, but I guess that I don't apply them straight-forwardly in this nocturne nor in other pieces (?). Possibly the issue might lie in that I hardly ever tend to analyse my own works in those terms (or any) and thus I don't usually think about that. I probably should, more often at least. It might be good if I did a certain piece trying to apply those concepts one by one or something, consciously. That'd be worth doing. 

Thank you dude!

 

5 minutes ago, jawoodruff said:

Melisma are basically like 16th note runs of material that may or may not be based off your motivic material. I.E. RUNS

Here (in Spanish) melisma is when you sing more than one note in the same syllabe iirc. But I get what you mean now.

3 minutes ago, Omicronrg9 said:

Here (in Spanish) melisma is when you sing more than one note in the same syllabe iirc. But I get what you mean now.

 

Actually English is the same too! But I get that meaning too🤣

Intro is very, very good, you hook the listener in right away with the main theme. Your key changing definitely helps keep the listener engaged. Was your use of parallel 5ths a conscious choice? Not sure how I feel about those, however, I think parallel 5ths with sustain would make my ears happier. That's just my preference though!

Very strong ending too. I almost felt like you changed styles from a somewhat modern classical-esque style nocturne to a neo romantic ending. Very good stuff there.

Some other critiques though would be your audio. When you get to the forte section it is really too loud, and that's when you start to hear the shortcomings of your samples. I also feel like your non sustain sections sound too synthesized. The sustain samples are much better though, but this is a common problem with piano unfortunately.

But overall it is a fun piece to listen to, and most importantly, consistent!

On 12/9/2022 at 7:37 AM, chopin said:

Was your use of parallel 5ths a conscious choice?

Hey Mike, thanks for the review! Regarding that question I'm sorry, cannot remember. Strangely enough there seems to be a handful of "5s" that I didn't notice previously haha.

On 12/9/2022 at 7:37 AM, chopin said:

When you get to the forte section it is really too loud, and that's when you start to hear the shortcomings of your samples. I also feel like your non sustain sections sound too synthesized.

Sadly there's nothing much more I can do with free soundfonts and MS3. I guess that next step would be exporting the score in a DAW (or learning it myself which in this case might be feasible in the future) and work with better tools sound-wise. 

On 12/9/2022 at 7:37 AM, chopin said:

But overall it is a fun piece to listen to, and most importantly, consistent!

Thanks again, I am glad you found it like that, consistency is something I've been thinking on strongly when advancing in the making of this entire book of nocturnes.

Kind regards,
Daniel–Ømicrón.