# I need constructive criticism - my orchestral music



## HeavyGroovist

My youtube channel consist purely of musescore videos, so check the rest out if you find this of any asthetic value.
I dabble in soundtrack\storytelling esque music, but even though I'm kind of proud of some of what I've made, I can still feel deep inside how much I suck. 
My problems (that I know of and can describe) are:
I don't know how to compose "from the chords up";
I just can't get a solid grasp on the typical classical music harmony\melody\textures - the only thing that has helped me is controlling my urge to use fifths;
I'm not sure how difficult my wind instrument parts actually are to perform.

Send help pls


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## Vasks

It's very difficult to offer a few posts on "harmony". It's quite a big learning topic.

My impression is that you need to know more about instrumentation. The parts are playable but you are not aware of ranges and how using different registers at different places will create more interest. (In other words, your scoring is the same pure grey throughout). Your woodwinds for example are often too low and would never be heard if played by a "real" orchestra.

The second thing that jumps out is inaccurate rhythmic writing. If you handed this music to "real" players there are spots where they would just laugh because you made the rhythm far harder looking than it really is. And finally many of your rhythms are too simplistic for too long a time period. That creates boredom very quickly.


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## Chordalrock

HeavyGroovist said:


> I don't know how to compose "from the chords up";


Melody (or equivalent) first, then come up with the bass line, then fill in chords or inner voices where & how needed. First coming up with the melody is pretty obvious, but the reason I recommend doing the bass next is so that you end up making it more interesting and contrapuntal and due to its importance. At this point you have a two-part texture, which becomes chordal to the extent that you add an additional inner voice. Remember that the bass can double the melody when needed, at these moments you would need two inner voices to have a chord. Keep in mind the bass can change while the inner voice(s) remain the same. Just have flexibility and imagination, the rest comes easy.


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## EddieRUKiddingVarese

Nit bad, sounds a bit like early Zappa Synclavier stuff. Suggest it needs some stronger themes running thru it.


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## Pugg

Putting yourself out there is brave enough, we have enough who doesn't even dare that.

But that aside, and said before by Vasks:



> My impression is that you need to know more about instrumentation.


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## PoorSadDrunk

Vasks said:


> It's very difficult to offer a few posts on "harmony". It's quite a big learning topic.
> 
> My impression is that you need to know more about instrumentation. The parts are playable but you are not aware of ranges and how using different registers at different places will create more interest. (In other words, your scoring is the same pure grey throughout). Your woodwinds for example are often too low and would never be heard if played by a "real" orchestra.
> 
> The second thing that jumps out is inaccurate rhythmic writing. If you handed this music to "real" players there are spots where they would just laugh because you made the rhythm far harder looking than it really is. And finally many of your rhythms are too simplistic for too long a time period. That creates boredom very quickly.


This will be your best advice, HeavyGroovist.

To reiterate, try and think of each line as a voice rather than an instrument. If you have a room full of people all discussing the same subject, a spectator would like to know what the meeting is all about and hear the different perspectives.


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## HeavyGroovist

Vasks said:


> My impression is that you need to know more about instrumentation. The parts are playable but you are not aware of ranges and how using different registers at different places will create more interest. (In other words, your scoring is the same pure grey throughout). Your woodwinds for example are often too low and would never be heard if played by a "real" orchestra.
> 
> The second thing that jumps out is inaccurate rhythmic writing. If you handed this music to "real" players there are spots where they would just laugh because you made the rhythm far harder looking than it really is. And finally many of your rhythms are too simplistic for too long a time period. That creates boredom very quickly.


I admitted the first part myself, but I'm also unsure where to look for the knowledge I need. This and the inaccurate notation both come from me recieving zero musical education and being a pure self-teacher. 
Could you elaborate on the rythm part? I'm less eager to use faster rythms or passages becasue I don't know the instruments well enough yet and most soundfonts just plain suck (string instruments? Yeah, you won't need an attack faster than like a full second, those never play fast!), and I'm trying to get the most out of the software itself, since it's pretty obvious I won't ever have an orchestra to play my crappy old "works" anyway.


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## HeavyGroovist

Chordalrock said:


> Melody (or equivalent) first, then come up with the bass line, then fill in chords or inner voices where & how needed.


That's more or less what I tend to do naturally, but I think that in order for the chord progression to be strong and meaningful it's sometimes good to think about them first. Whether it's true or not, I felt like it's a skill worth having and I don't.


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## EdwardBast

HeavyGroovist said:


> I admitted the first part myself, but I'm also unsure where to look for the knowledge I need. This and the inaccurate notation both come from me recieving zero musical education and being a pure self-teacher.
> *Could you elaborate on the rythm part?* I'm less eager to use faster rythms or passages becasue I don't know the instruments well enough yet and most soundfonts just plain suck (string instruments? Yeah, you won't need an attack faster than like a full second, those never play fast!), and I'm trying to get the most out of the software itself, since it's pretty obvious I won't ever have an orchestra to play my crappy old "works" anyway.


The section with all of the triplets (2:53ff) should be notated in compound meter, 12/8 or 6/8. That way no triplets of any kind would be required.


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## Vasks

I assumed you (as are many other amateur posters here at Today's Composer) were untrained. There's no shame in that. However, I, as a trained musician, am merely pointing out what problems you face should you ever want to share your scores with real players. So long as you only want people to "hear" your pieces, bad rhythmic notation is not an issue. However, if you are going to share your visual score you either must (1) learn how to read so you can notate your rhythms or (2) hire a professional engraver to clean up your score.

I will post a PDF of a few rhythmic corrections later. The first triplet page is rather extensive/involved so please be patient.


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## HeavyGroovist

I do know the basics of music notation, I appreciate your input, but I'm pretty sure there's nothing "wrong" in the scores, maybe just messy and unproffesional.
There's a link in the description where you can download the musescore project file, by the way - it's a free program and it would propably make it easier for you to put changes in the score (assuming you weren't going to use it).


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## Vasks

Hopefully, my explanations will make sense

View attachment rhythm .pdf


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## HeavyGroovist

Vasks said:


> Hopefully, my explanations will make sense


They do, thanks a lot! I never thought about some of these.
Some are just the effect of me being lazy and the program automatically filling the blanks in, which I then forget to check for shenanigans (most of the weird rests are just that), but I do need to pay more attention to outlining the beats better.
Do you agree with Edward Bast on changing the meter instead of using whole bar triplets repeatedly? It doesn't seem easier to read to me at all so I never did it; I'd even have to adjust the tempo if I wanted the pulse to stay the same, not to mention that it's not as unambiguous with a different meter.


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## Vasks

No matter how good a notation program is, there are always some things it will do that are either not quite right or you the composer prefer to have differently. No one should trust it blindly. But unfortunately untrained amateurs have too little knowledge and therefore must yield to the program's choices.

Edward's suggestion is perfectly OK, so long as the dotted quarter note of a 12/8 meter equals what the quarter was in your 4/4 meter; but yes, my way keeps you from having to switch over.


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## Chordalrock

HeavyGroovist said:


> That's more or less what I tend to do naturally, but I think that in order for the chord progression to be strong and meaningful it's sometimes good to think about them first. Whether it's true or not, I felt like it's a skill worth having and I don't.


The harmony is there to give character to your melody, to make it sensible to the listener. A melody isn't sensible without harmony, implied or actual.

There are of course moments when you want to have an interesting chord progression and should just play around with chords to find it, but generally speaking if you are focusing on melody, you need to do the melody first. Once you have the melody, you already have some idea of what the harmony needs to be due to having imagined the melody with a certain kind of implied harmony, though you can of course change or fine tune it later. If you listen to Chopin's waltzes, they aren't exactly interesting in terms of harmonic progressions or even smooth necessarily. Classical music isn't pop and you probably shouldn't think of it in terms of "interesting chord progressions".

Bass is important though, and you want to give it melodic interest where possible. This is something I realised on my own, but I later read in a biography of Rautavaara that he learned to pay attention to the bass as a melodic entity only when studying in USA where his teacher mentioned it. He recounted that event as an important revelation in his life as a composer, so don't take it as a given or something that isn't all that important.


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## HeavyGroovist

Thanks.
I'm a bassist myself, so I try to make things happen in the lower register, but it's hard to make it pop through all the other layers.


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## PoorSadDrunk

HeavyGroovist said:


> Thanks.
> I'm a bassist myself, so I try to make things happen in the lower register, but it's hard to make it pop through all the other layers.


Things are not really going to "pop" out if your consistently keeping them in lower registers. The concede of keeping all voices within a certain register is to create a sort of timbrel cluster effect. This can be very cool at times, but if over done will quickly become dull.

Spread out the layers a little bit. Think of it as a house with dimension. Having a really sweet bachelors pad in the basement is sick, but you woulnd't want an entire home dedicated to the one room. Try using some octaves, 10ths, 13ths in the upper voices... or just write some melodies and keep them on top.

Start simple. Build up.


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## Alon

Great work, I really like the melodies!


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## Chordalrock

The bass doesn't have to be particularly active or even more active than it would be if you were just doing chords. The idea is to make the little bass there is to have melodic interest merely by choosing notes that create that interest, though you can of course make it more complex too when the passage calls for it. Trust the listener to pay attention to all the layers, they don't need to pop out, they just need to be audible.


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## kartikeys

It has some interesting lines. 
I would say keep making. 
Your ear will tell you more.


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## PsychoBunny

Nothing I point out here is “the gospel” and remember that this is very subjective and might not work well with your style. I tend to write rather “authoritatively” or definitively and end up coming off the wrong way in situations like this. (I have high-functioning autism and have difficulty phrasing statements.)

Parts of "Save Yourself" are good. You need a strong modulation of key in there....You never want to go more than 3 minutes without a key change as your hearing tends to decide that if a sound hasn't led to your death after 2 or 3 minutes the ears should label it benign and move on to other sounds. And to help the ears refocus on the music, the key change would work best moving upward, which creates tension.

At around 3"41 you - I think accidentally - indicated to the audience the piece was ending in 8 or 10 measures. Those first two measures when the violins come in really create a strong “here’s the last phrase” feeling.

I think the biggest problem isn’t too hard to solve: it needs a lot more counterpoint and some of the transitions should be longer and more “in your face”. Coming to a sudden stop and then moving to a different idea can be jarring and really doesn’t work more than a couple times per movement. Beethoven actually had this problem, largely in the symphonies. He’ll build up something, then there’s a bunch of crashing, then he stops and moves onto something else.

It was interesting enough that I stuck with it to the end…..which is saying a lot as this modern style is very difficult for me to handle more than a couple minutes. It makes me feel like everything’s off kilter and unfinished.


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## HeavyGroovist

PsychoBunny said:


> It was interesting enough that I stuck with it to the end…..which is saying a lot as this modern style is very difficult for me to handle more than a couple minutes. It makes me feel like everything's off kilter and unfinished.


Thanks for the support. Changing key is a great idea, I never thought about it the way you presented it.
The choppy transitions should get better as I learn to use the instruments, I struggle to find the right combinations that make the listener go "oh, so this is the transition", but don't change the sound dramatically. 
A huge number of composers I tried to listen to have that problem too, so I guess I'm lucky enough to recognize it as such early on.


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## HeavyGroovist

New one. 
It's short(er than usual) but... no, it's just short.
I hope the notation is better at least.


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