Piano piece draft played in digital piano (need suggestion for turning themes into full pieces)

EDIT: This piece has been finished and can be found in the solo piano section of the forum. 

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Hello everyone, 

I have been playing around with the piano and composing for the first time something by playing it myself first and writing it down on paper later. I am not good at playing piano so there are many mistakes and I had to record parts separately and mix them later, so there are a few issues with the sound when different sections are mixed. Also, my digital piano is not super expensive so I am sorry about the sound quality.

I composed first the main theme, and, since I liked how it turned out, I tried developing it into a longer piece (just a simple piece in binary form). 

However, I always get lost when turning themes or ideas into pieces and have trouble composing pieces with a natural and well-designed form that flows well. For example, in this piece I had the theme ending in a Half cadence in bar 8. If we call this theme "A", I though on doing the following:

A finishing in HC -> A finishing in PC -> Development (in other key) -> A finishing in PC 

However,  even after deciding in a form-design for the piece, I always run into problems, some of them are:

1. The repetition of all main theme A sections always sound too similar and repetitive and I never find good ways of varying them.  
2. When I finally come up with a beginning for a development or contrasting section that I like, I have troubles for making it flow naturally both in its own and also when transitioning to the original theme (most times I can only transition after long dominant arpeggios).
3. Troubles for writing introductions and Codas to frame the piece. 

In the case of this piece, in the end I wrote a development section in the parallel minor and, even though I like the beginning very much, I soon started not knowing where to go and end up finishing with a rushed arpeggiated generic HC  for coming back to the main theme.

I feel form and making the music flow naturally is one of my weakest points when composing. Do you have any advice or suggestion about how to go about it for improving? Also, what are your methods for turning themes and ideas into full pieces? How do you go about deciding on things such writing a contrasting/development section, transitions, designing the form, introductions, codas, etc.?

Thank you!

Hi @JorgeDavid!

I think this is a quaint little barcarolle!  The theme really works and is beautifully simple.  I think every note you wrote here is essential and related to the main theme.  It is so good that there's no shame in repeating it - Beethoven does the same thing in the Fur Elise.  Also, your arpeggiation of the dominant chord happens very naturally and arises from the melody.  As for how to vary your melody - you already made a quite successful variation in the parallel minor!  Other ideas might be to change the tempo and meter to give the same material a totally different feel.  Also - check out this topic:

Thanks for sharing!

On 5/6/2024 at 2:47 AM, PeterthePapercomPoser said:

Hi @JorgeDavid!

I think this is a quaint little barcarolle!  The theme really works and is beautifully simple.  I think every note you wrote here is essential and related to the main theme.  It is so good that there's no shame in repeating it - Beethoven does the same thing in the Fur Elise.  Also, your arpeggiation of the dominant chord happens very naturally and arises from the melody.  As for how to vary your melody - you already made a quite successful variation in the parallel minor!  Other ideas might be to change the tempo and meter to give the same material a totally different feel.  Also - check out this topic:

 

Thanks for sharing!

 

Thank you so much for your comment and encouragement, @PeterthePapercomPoser! 

After reading your comment I learned to appreciate the B section a little better and tried only to make it a little longer instead of changing it almost completely, which was my original plan. I guess the only thing I can do for feeling more comfortable and less self-conscious about the contrasting, development, and variation sections is only to keep on practicing until they come up to me more naturally and learn to trust more my musical decisions. 

I checked the link and I really liked your idea of varying themes and musical ideas only a little (making it stay almost the same) but doing it in a recursive way so, in the end, it results in a totally different musical idea. I will try to use that as a practice for developing pieces in the future.

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I think this is a quaint little barcarolle!

Could it be considered a Barcarolle? I though Barcarolles were mostly in compound meters but I do not know much about the style. My piece is in common time, even though I cannot imagine it without the exact same rubato that I played it with (so sometimes I am even wondering whether I actually notated the tempo incorrectly).

I ask about it because I will post the piece soon as a completed piece in the forum when I solve some audio issues but I have not idea how I could call it. I normally like to call pieces by the style it is in "Minuet in Fmaj, Waltz in Fmaj, etc...". In this case I am not sure what it is and I do not want to call it "Binary form piano piece in Fmaj" 🤣 Do you have any idea in which style/form this piece could be fit? Would Barcarolle be appropriate? 

Thank you for your comment and hope you are doing great! 

I am not familiar enough with naming conventions about the barcarolle.  I just threw that name out there because I thought that Beethoven's Fur Elise was a barcarolle and I considered your piece similar enough to it to warrant a comparison.

Btw - I really liked the way you played it!  It has a very personal touch of rubato.  I wouldn't change how it's notated - it's very individual and not cookie-cutter as @gaspard would say.

4 hours ago, PeterthePapercomPoser said:

I am not familiar enough with naming conventions about the barcarolle.  I just threw that name out there because I thought that Beethoven's Fur Elise was a barcarolle and I considered your piece similar enough to it to warrant a comparison.

Btw - I really liked the way you played it!  It has a very personal touch of rubato.  I wouldn't change how it's notated - it's very individual and not cookie-cutter as @gaspard would say.

I just checked the "Fur Elise" and it is a Bagatelle, not a Barcarolle. It seems we both got mixed-up 🤣. And you are actually right, Bagatelles are normally short piano pieces light and melodic in character so it will suit this piece perfectly! I will probably name it Bagatelle then. 

Thank you so much for the compliments on my playing! I am still learning so my skills are not too good, and I had to record everything in three different sections which I had to mix later 😅 But I find knowing piano helps so much for composing faster and, of course, it sounds much more beautiful that with Sibelius and Noteperformer. I will try hard to keep on learning even though it is harder than I expected :S. 

Thank you!!