Exercise in Orchestration: Sadness

In my studies of orchestration I've been doing some exercises, today I'm showing my attempt at the emotion "Sorrow/Depressed". I got this from a wheel of emotion that I will continue to use for further exercises. I'd appreciate if anyone could challenge me to showing an emotion on this wheel, this way I do something that doesn't just catch my eye. 

In this exercise I use alot of half steps to create an uneasy feeling hopefully a feeling of "where is the tonic". While the tonic is relatively simple most of the time, I feel like I did successfully create an uneasy feeling. I also use sparse and changing orchestration to keep the listener on their toes. The hardest part about sadness/depressed was differentiating it from other emotions, and I thought if I kept it too tonal that the whole thing might sound more like a different emotion. Do you think I succeeded? Anything you think could've done better.

Hi @Some Guy That writes Music,

I love the beginning with clarinet as it does initiate loneliness and sadness, and I like the more dissonant oboe melody as well. But after that I think the elements and colours are a bit too much or abrupt to appear and disappear for me. I feel like the xylophone in b.20 begins and ends suddenly, and the brass chords after it is also abrupt. I think you may wanna use the bassoons as the buildup after it, but I feel quite confused listening to the tritone, and for me the piece ends quite suddenly as well. Maybe because there isn’t noticeable themes or motives in it, it is harder to follow the music.

6 hours ago, Some Guy That writes Music said:

this exercise I use alot of half steps to create an uneasy feeling hopefully a feeling of "where is the tonic". While the tonic is relatively simple most of the time, I feel like I did successfully create an uneasy feeling.

I don’t feel anything uneasy since I do not perceive this as tonal music at all, and I have no feeling or question on “where is the tonic”!😜

Thx for sharing!

Henry

Hello! 

The piece does a great job at making me feel uneasy. The droopiness of the theme and the downward staccato notes really do it for me. However, while I do feel the emotion of sorrow and depressed, I feel like it leans more to the ones of dread or anxious, especially with the staccato notes. Another mood that I'm feeling is wandering. It does keep me on my toes.

I suppose the short dissonant brass notes is supposed to be a climax. However, the build up made with lone xylophone line accompanied with the double basses and the orchestration of the climax make it hard to feel anything other than dread, terror, or horror.  

I feel like if you want to "tease" the tonic, one way, in my opinion, is to use more traditional chords or cadences and play with expectation, because the context of this feels more like atonality not so much "wandering" where the tonic is.

I do like the build up on bar 37 for the flute solo starting with the lone quarter note bassoon. Very uneasy.

The flute solo on bar 49 I think does the greatest job at conveying the emotion of sorrow.

You did great job with the sparse orchestration! The ending, to me, feels final, with the descending lines of clarinet and bassoon, and the final duo between the double basses and bassoon really nail the punctuation. I also like how you rarely used the double basses and saving it for some important moment. The basses feel very salient in those final bars.

Overall, I feel like I'm trapped in an underground mines with a caved-in way out, your fellow miners have gone insane, and there's a lanky monster nearby (definitely not from a plot of an audio drama series that I've been watching lmao). Thanks for sharing!

Hi @Some Guy That writes Music!

I'm glad you wrote this emotion as (if I remember correctly) I suggested you do this one last time you did a composition based on another emotion.  Perhaps this is a brooding, cerebral type of sadness that I perceive here.  I think, rightfully so, depression is often accompanied by some anxiety or angst.  Or at least is mournful and longing for a world in which things could have been different.  But I don't hear any of that in this rendition of sadness.  Even ignoring the target emotion, there is a lack of intensity to the music and you seem to have reverted to basing your whole composition on a single harmonic idea.  There is chromaticism in this, but it stays the same throughout the piece, without modulating or taking the listener on any kind of journey.  That's at least how I perceive it (and I know that you've showed before that you're capable of much more!)  Thanks for sharing.