Sollozos

Hi again, ladies and gentlemen!

Hope you've been alright. Since there's been some activity increase (at least from my perception) and very interesting posts lately (like this, this and this...Ah and this) I decided to upload yet another piece. A piece per two weeks seems more or less alright to me.

In this case I'm bringing here a kinda old work (March 2020) that, if you happened to listen to my 5th nocturne for piano solo, resembles it in its main motive. This piece is for woodwinds and piano and its sound has lots of room for improvement, but this is what I had at that time (and considering I'm using the very same software, probably the only things that have improved are my ears and the piano soundfont). As you may already know, I don't usually like to extend myself in unneeded descriptions so I'm leaving you the .pdf and the .mp3 here.

♫ MP3:  (if you don't see anything, it's probably a bug. In that case check scroll down to the bottom of this message)
♫ PDF:  32 - Sollozos.pdf

And that'd be all for now. Hope you find it decent and enjoyable enough. My recommendation would be listening to it with headphones (for this and every piece of mine) and as always, any kind of feedback, criticism, opinion, be it longer or shorter, is and will be always very welcome. Look at this image.

It has nothing to do with anything but I wanted to put it here, hope you don't mind.

Kind regards,
Daniel–Ømicrón.

Hi Daniel!

It's the first chamber piece from you I've listened to! Really looking forward to it!

1 hour ago, Omicronrg9 said:

Since there's been some activity increase (at least from my perception) and very interesting posts lately (like this, this and this...Ah and this) 

I have to click into all the "this" to see what are the pieces, LOL! Luckily one of my piece is in there! 

1 hour ago, Omicronrg9 said:

A piece per two weeks seems more or less alright to me.

That will be really productive!

1 hour ago, Omicronrg9 said:

In this case I'm bringing here a kinda old work (March 2020) that, if you happened to listen to my 5th nocturne for piano solo, resembles it in its main motive

Yes that motive of fifth!

Is that a baroque tuning? I feel like it's more in B minor than the C minor in the score. With the harpsichord it does create a baroque style piece!

I love the color of the piece. It's dark but chic and cool like many of your nocturnes. It's a special color I feel but really can't describe. But it really gives me the feeling that it's composed by you, a unique composer.

The overall structure can be regarded as a three part strucure: The same melody by winds, harpsichord, then together, and at  last a coda. Beautiful melody by flute and oboe! Though I wish clarinet can play the tune too! And the bassoon can provide more contrasting material, instead of just playing plain bass notes! Love the appreggios from harpsichord!

For the harpsichord's presentation of the melody, it's beautiful but I'm thinking adding ornaments like mordent and trill to make it more idiomatic for the harpsichord, especially the long notes and to make the piece even more baroque!

I love the tutti presentation! That's great preparation for it through the previous sections. Will oboe and bassoon also play in the fashion of unison too to provide yet anothet timberal contrast, and having voice exchange with flute and clarinet? That will make the section even more varied!

Great reduction and simplification of the theme to prepare for the ending! The rhythmic and melodic complexity is lessened to provide a signal for audience that the piece is going to end, which makes the ending convincing! I love the phyrgian cadence and picardy third!

There is not any slurs marked for the winds. Are they all intended to play the note one by one or with legato playing? I think slurs should be added to the winds to make it even more beautiful!

My only complaint is that the piece is too short! Overall wonderful piece with great color, and I wish it to be longer! Looking forward to your later posts! I hope I can have your productivity!

P.S. Really lovely picture!

Kind Regards!

Henry

4 hours ago, Omicronrg9 said:

this

👀

4 hours ago, Omicronrg9 said:

It has nothing to do with anything but I wanted to put it here, hope you don't mind.

This sentence made me laugh far too much.

ANYWAY, moving on to the review.

'dark and chic' sums it up really well. It does have a really interesting colour, I think you've done well to create a nice atmosphere. It's kind of soundtracky, feel it could work well as an audiovisual thing.

The wind writing does feel very 'safe.' I'd like to see more extremes of register, melodies in the bassoon, and inverting the instruments so the flute isn't always on the top, creating sharper colours and a more idiomatic work. Listening to some contemporary wind ensemble music will give you an idea of what I mean - Nielsen's wind quintet is a personal favourite. Also, melodies doubled in winds and piano lose a lot of the sparkle they would have if either instrument took them alone.

I wouldn't slow down the ending quite so much - although it would sound much better played by live instruments! Any chance of a performance in the works?

Overall, a great piece. You clearly have a keen ear for distinctive colouring - now you can use more adventurous writing to create spectacular works! Thank you for sharing. 

Great job!  I love the melancholy vibe.  I'll have to repeat what some of the others have already said - namely, the Clarinet's range seems very constricted and limited in this piece.  The very low and very high tessitura of the Clarinet could have been taken advantage of to create even more variety in color.  And even though the Clarinet does get some lower octave doubling of the melody when its the simplified version of it, it would have been great to hear the Clarinet lead the ensemble somewhere.  Also you could have created some canonic imitation/interplay between the different instruments - seems like a missed opportunity.  Thanks for sharing this enjoyable work!

Ah, so this is what the younger Daniel sounds like. Showing us moments of great individuality and character, but rough around the edges. 

It's hard for me to know how you view this piece, whether there are things you understand much better today that you would change, or if you're truly looking for advice on how to improve this (If this is the case, let me know and I'll mention some things). I think you know the weaknesses of this piece, and others have done a good job at pointing out things I would have mentioned, namely in the wind writing.

So, instead I'll take this opportunity to showcase some of the things I really enjoyed with this. 

First, as always, I love the dark brooding atmosphere of this and your musical style. I had to look up what sollozos means, and it means "sobs" according to google. Once knowing this, I looked at this piece through a much different light, like a little teenager Daniel trying to find his way through the world. It made me sad for the young Daniel. Maybe this had a lot of personal feelings emptied onto the staff paper, and maybe that's the reason for being vague in your description. Or maybe the language and chord progression used just makes you think that this is something that could be depicting sobbing. I dunno 😄 Whatever the reason, it worked well for what you were going for.

I was also going to mention form and development, but since we're just being positive right now, and after thinking about it for a bit, I actually like the brief tone poem character this has. Would be could if you wrote a set of short pieces for winds and piano (maybe you already have?) at some point. Maybe each could represent an emotion or a brief look into something normal that most of us would pass by. Plus a 2 minute sob (I really hope the translation is correct :P) seems about the right amount of time.

The character of this piece is great and uniquely you Daniel. I know I've said this to you time and time again, but you have a certain charm in your writing that keeps me coming back for more. It's been fun delving deeper into music of yours that's almost 3 years old. Thanks for sharing!

23 hours ago, Henry Ng said:

I have to click into all the "this" to see what are the pieces, LOL! Luckily one of my piece is in there! 

 Hehe, I believed it was a neat way to share some posts I liked, and it turned out to be a nice bait 😎.

23 hours ago, Henry Ng said:

That will be really productive!

Just to clarify I meant the rate of making posts. My production rate was slower, but last year it has been faster. Nocturnes 1-19 were composed in roughly the span of 3-4 months, with periods of 2 nocturnes per week. It is the lack of free time what slows me down the most I'd say.

On 12/14/2022 at 2:11 PM, Henry Ng said:

Is that a baroque tuning? I feel like it's more in B minor than the C minor in the score.

Oh true, I detuned the whole piece but don't know at which freq, probably A = 420 Hz or A = 405 Hz. I liked how it sounded and I forgot to mention this.

On 12/14/2022 at 2:11 PM, Henry Ng said:

The overall structure can be regarded as a three part strucure: The same melody by winds, harpsichord, then together, and at  last a coda. Beautiful melody by flute and oboe! Though I wish clarinet can play the tune too! And the bassoon can provide more contrasting material, instead of just playing plain bass notes! Love the appreggios from harpsichord!

Quite impressive that you found 3 parts in such small score. The harpsichord you mention should be a piano and sound like it though, but perhaps the soundfont used gives that vibe?

On 12/14/2022 at 2:11 PM, Henry Ng said:

For the harpsichord's presentation of the melody, it's beautiful but I'm thinking adding ornaments like mordent and trill to make it more idiomatic for the harpsichord, especially the long notes and to make the piece even more baroque!

Again sure but it's a piano lol. It was not my intention to make it sound like a harpsichord 😅 nor to sound baroque. Not that It wouldn't be cool, very likely it will but from what I remind this was not my aim (in case there had been any).

On 12/14/2022 at 2:11 PM, Henry Ng said:

I love the tutti presentation! That's great preparation for it through the previous sections. Will oboe and bassoon also play in the fashion of unison too to provide yet anothet timberal contrast, and having voice exchange with flute and clarinet? That will make the section even more varied!

That's a nice idea, a section where 2-4 be more prominent than 1-3 would have been good. I will keep that in mind in case I do something with this in the future (or another piece for the very same instruments). Definitely I should have treated the bassoon better.

On 12/14/2022 at 2:11 PM, Henry Ng said:

There is not any slurs marked for the winds. Are they all intended to play the note one by one or with legato playing?

At the time I made this I was definitely not thinking on this now very clear ambiguity. I should modify the score to include slurs and more articulation wherever needed or at least indicate a general character. I find your comments insightful, Henry. These are things I should have cared about. This is not the only piece I have written for winds that would be as ambiguous as this. What I can definitely say is that it would tend towards a per-phrase legato dolce treatment, never neither marcato nor stacatto anywhere in the score. I must add though that even if I added slurs I would have to manually edit playback to try reflecting them as musescore does not do anything playback-wise when applying them, but I am sure that only this would make the whole piece better and it would definitely sound better in a real interpretation.

On 12/14/2022 at 2:11 PM, Henry Ng said:

My only complaint is that the piece is too short! Overall wonderful piece with great color, and I wish it to be longer! Looking forward to your later posts! I hope I can have your productivity!

This is a complaint I share with you. The majority of my pieces before my first sonatas are short & underdeveloped; I might upload more of those in the near future since I think your and other YC users' comments can be really insightful and they make me reflect on things I didn't pay enough attention to. 

Glad you liked the pic man 🙂. Thank you for your review!



 

20 hours ago, aMusicComposer said:

It's kind of soundtracky, feel it could work well as an audiovisual thing.

It was for some minecraft server cinematic that was in the works but that never came alive if I recall correctly so perhaps this is the reason behind.

20 hours ago, aMusicComposer said:

Any chance of a performance in the works?

Not that I know of, specially cause I never published this. Perhaps I should revise the score, erase the ambiguity and try to convince someone on my local music school. 

20 hours ago, aMusicComposer said:

The wind writing does feel very 'safe.'

It is, I knew very little about woodwinds and even now I know just a lil' more (only about flute possibly). I will check your recommendations anyway, even if I don't modify this score nor I go to the extremes it is always beneficial to know where are the limits in order to reach them at will and incorporate that knowledge to future compositions. I also believe doubled melodies and the fact the piece is in "tutti" for the majority of time it lasts contribute to what you said regarding instruments losing a lot of their sparkle. Not that I would avoid that entirely but it would be better if next time, on a longer piece of this kind, I did not abuse of this.

Thank you for this valuable criticism, I did not expect so many detailed commentary that soon and it was a pleasure to read your opinions. Publishing my works here is definitely a wise choice.

Kind regards,
Daniel–Ømicrón.
 

16 hours ago, PeterthePapercomPoser said:

Great job!  I love the melancholy vibe.  I'll have to repeat what some of the others have already said - namely, the Clarinet's range seems very constricted and limited in this piece.

Yes, I absolutely hate the clarinet you are right but I'd say the bassoon is treated even worse.

16 hours ago, PeterthePapercomPoser said:

Also you could have created some canonic imitation/interplay between the different instruments - seems like a missed opportunity.  Thanks for sharing this enjoyable work!

What are you even saying? I think what you're demanding is just too much to my poor, completely empty mind...Canonical what? Okno.

The idea is pretty neat; I actually don't remind accurately but I may have done this in some other piece. I do have a "fuga tranquila" somewhere but I think it has more or less the same issues than this one, I may upload it to get some feedback too and I am glad that, despite of its flaws, you enjoyed this piece 🙂.

♫♫♫♫♫♫♫♫♫♫♫♫♫♫♫♫♫♫♫♫♫♫♫♫♫♫♫♫♫♫♫♫♫♫♫♫♫♫♫♫♫♫
 

9 hours ago, Thatguy v2.0 said:

It's hard for me to know how you view this piece, whether there are things you understand much better today that you would change, or if you're truly looking for advice on how to improve this (If this is the case, let me know and I'll mention some things). I think you know the weaknesses of this piece, and others have done a good job at pointing out things I would have mentioned, namely in the wind writing.

I may know some weaknesses but nothing guarantees my views will be shared by others, plus I think any feedback will be of use. Even if I didn't touch this score I am sure your feedback would be insightful for next compositions. This is why I mentioned Henry that uploading works of the past seems to be very profitable in that regard. 

9 hours ago, Thatguy v2.0 said:

like a little teenager Daniel trying to find his way through the world.

It was 2020 not 2015 but hey I won't be the one questioning your vision lololol.

9 hours ago, Thatguy v2.0 said:

Would be could if you wrote a set of short pieces for winds and piano (maybe you already have?) at some point.

Oh why not? It sounds like a pretty cool idea. I might even have some concept ideas that could fit. I don't have any established set of pieces for winds & piano. Currently I only have 2 Bagatelles for piano and flute and some other piece for winds and piano but nothing big.

9 hours ago, Thatguy v2.0 said:

Plus a 2 minute sob (I really hope the translation is correct :P)

It is.

9 hours ago, Thatguy v2.0 said:

I know I've said this to you time and time again, but you have a certain charm in your writing that keeps me coming back for more.

It's the magic of the pic I used to decorate, I'm sure, lol. Seriously, thank you for your positive comments. I will definitely upload more works soon —as I said, I'll try something near a bi-weekly interval— and will keep being active over here, specially now that I have this tremendous moderator salary.



Kind regards, Peter & Vince!! 


 

1 hour ago, Omicronrg9 said:

Just to clarify I meant the rate of making posts. My production rate was slower, but last year it has been faster. Nocturnes 1-19 were composed in roughly the span of 3-4 months, with periods of 2 nocturnes per week. It is the lack of free time what slows me down the most I'd say.

2 nocturnes a week is really a "WOW" productivity. The first movement of my string sextet is still only completed two-third.

1 hour ago, Omicronrg9 said:

The harpsichord you mention should be a piano and sound like it though, but perhaps the soundfont used gives that vibe?

1 hour ago, Omicronrg9 said:

Again sure but it's a piano lol. It was not my intention to make it sound like a harpsichord 😅 nor to sound baroque. Not that It wouldn't be cool, very likely it will but from what I remind this was not my aim (in case there had been any).

How can I mishear and see it wrongly?? I've definitely listen to the piece and read the score several times, bur look like my misconception conceals the truth! Sorry for that!!

1 hour ago, Omicronrg9 said:

That's a nice idea, a section where 2-4 be more prominent than 1-3 would have been good. I will keep that in mind in case I do something with this in the future (or another piece for the very same instruments). Definitely I should have treated the bassoon better.

I learn voice exchange only by writing chamber pieces. It definitely demands different writing technique than solo piano piece. Keep writing and there will be progress!

1 hour ago, Omicronrg9 said:

At the time I made this I was definitely not thinking on this now very clear ambiguity. I should modify the score to include slurs and more articulation wherever needed or at least indicate a general character.

If I have any chance to post my string quartet no.1 in C sharp minor here(which is composed by little Henry, LOL), you will find how horrible the score is if I don't polish it (really shameful on that). Actually the score of ( ) is also polished, otherwise you will see a bunch of ugly pedals and messy "flowers"!

1 hour ago, Omicronrg9 said:

I might upload more of those in the near future since I think your and other YC users' comments can be really insightful and they make me reflect on things I didn't pay enough attention to. 

For sure looking forward to it!

27 minutes ago, Omicronrg9 said:

It was 2020 not 2015 but hey I won't be the one questioning your vision lololol.

LOLOL.

27 minutes ago, Omicronrg9 said:

Yes, I absolutely hate the clarinet

NONONONO!!WHYYYYYYY! Then it was really exhausting for you to listen to the clarinet sound in my quintet for 1 hour, LOL!

Henry