# Waltz No. 2



## Samuel Kristopher

This is the second waltz I've ever written, and I'm still very much experimenting with the genre wholly on my own terms. I guess that's an attempt at saying any deviation from the traditional form is excused by the fact that I was pretty much freestyling 

*A foreword on the creation of this piece:* 
This weekend, I had the great fortune of meeting an incredible and lovely young lady from Finland, herself a talented singer with whom I spent a good deal of time talking about all things great and small. I found myself starting to write a piece of music based on the experience and I gave myself 5 hours for the task, and I gladly accepted  . Below is the result of that dare - unpolished but expressive of the immature ideas that I wanted to capture for that moment.

I plan on fine-tuning this piece over time. I would like to add this to my port-folio, so any critique from the lovely ladies and gents that occupy this forum would be much appreciated.






*A commentary on the piece (by no means mandatory reading):*

_-Theme 1-_
From the outset I wanted three themes. The first theme was to represent uncertainty - characterising the (somewhat drunk) context in which I met the girl in question. That was in a bar here in St Petersburg - a noisy but genial enough place. The theme is presented first in F minor, illustrating the melancholy but hopeful state I found myself in when I first met her. This is reinstated by the same theme in the relative key, A-flat major, recreating the surprising but happy meeting.

_-Theme 2-_
This theme gives way to Theme 2, also in A-flat major, a joyous and festive overture to the immediate delight that she imparted on me. She is a lovely, animated, and intelligent girl and one evening/morning was barely enough time to get to know her.

_-Theme 3-_
Theme 3 arrives in D-flat major, in more of a balanced battle between major and minor, whereby I feel both happiness that I've had the miraculous good fortune to meet her, yet tempered with the sombre knowledge that she, by this time, has already returned home, making a future meeting difficult, perhaps even unlikely 

_-Development-_
I decided at that point that I wanted to develop these themes, partly because I felt there was more expressive inspiration that I wanted to explore in the moment, and also because there was still just over two hours on the clock. So post-Theme 3, I started with the darkest and most hopeless feeling, then tried to move further towards gladness, which came quicker than I expected. During this development, I was really just moving with the immediate impulses of the moment.

Out of the blue, a playful yet somewhat ironic waltz came out of blending Theme 1 with some counterpoint, but really I just let go complete at this point and let the music write itself. I literally have no idea what's going on here, and I dunno why, maybe sentiment, but I'm avoiding looking deeply at this section.

_-Conclusion-_
I had, if I remember rightly, about forty minutes left, and I realised I needed to conclude the piece, and I think this is where the piece reaches it's most imperfect. The 1st Theme is reinstated quite confidently, I guess. I wanted to repeat the order of the themes, but Theme 2 didn't come naturally... so I tried the 3rd Theme instead. In any case, I perservered and trusted to feeling.

Especially the quiet Theme 3 transition to a concluding joyous Theme 2 - that transition jars me personally. In saying that, I feel the piece is best ended on Theme 2. It echoes the fact that my personal feelings resulted in hope for our future connection, and also that Theme 2 lends itself quite smoothly to the ultimate cadence.

*P.S. (For Septimal Tritone)*
I never forgot the critique you gave my Piano Sonata, particularly about the bass and having a clear movement in the bass tones and leading into the new sections, and that was on my mind while writing this. I hope I've improved since then, and if you are reading this, please let me know if it's got better! (I don't mean to neglect the others who gave me great feedback for that Sonata, to be sure!)

*P.P.S*
I wrote this post still somewhat inebriated, so I hope this doesn't seem overly rushed or impulsive. More succinctly, I hope I don't wake up and direly regret this whole fiasco!

Anyways, enjoy!


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## prasad94

I don't see what you'd need to fine tune. It's brilliant. A whole lot more than I am capable of.

Btw, was this recorded from an actual piano?


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## prasad94

Don't mean to double post. but could I get a copy of the score? I'd love to study what you've written here! It would go a long way for an amateur composer such as myself


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## Samuel Kristopher

Thanks Prasad! It is with the piano from Sibelius Sounds, a VST pack that comes with Sibelius 7  I did some quick editing to make it sound a little more lifelike than it's vanilla form - as for score - I have to say what I've written is far from being comprehensible as a piece of sheet music (writing for realism in Sibelius is very different from writing for practicality) 

When I have slept and come back from my next work shift I'll get on to a workable sheet music if you'd like!

Thank you for your kind words, anyhow! I really appreciate it!


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## Pugg

I


> don't see what you'd need to fine tune. It's brilliant. A whole lot more than I am capable of.


Hallelujah to this, well done. :tiphat:


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## Samuel Kristopher

Thanks Pugg, I really appreciate it


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## JamieHoldham

Considering my knowledge on a Waltz is extremely limited, I am self taught and not a expert, and the fact this is a great piece, I cant really give any criticism without nitpicking to be honest, overall its great and the greatest quality I think is how smooth it is and the transitions to different keys. Great work


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## Marinera

I agree with the responses above. I really enjoyed listening to the waltz.:tiphat:


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## Samuel Kristopher

Thanks all  I like the waltz form for it's light-heart and easy accessibility, but I think it has lots of room for expressive ideas as well.


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## SeptimalTritone

Hi Samuel,

Thanks for reaching out to me.

This is a definite improvement in your writing: the small scale harmonic motion, at a bar by bar level, is stronger due to said bass motion.

I feel that a sense of larger scale harmonic motion is not there. Do you know the harmonic logic behind classical sonata form, or the harmonic logic behind a Chopin waltz, or scherzo etc.? There is a long range harmonic plan that goes beyond theme 1 here, theme 2 here, development, conclusion.

I in particular was a bit... off-put by the sudden change to A flat major for the first theme group, and then the piece just staying in A flat major to the second theme group. It felt that the F minor at the beginning had no purpose other than to be abruptly left, and that the A flat major went on for too long, ignoring changes of theme. Then the lowering to D flat major felt, again disappointing.

One thing Chopin does in his larger scale works is: as a particular section A or a particular section B goes on, the piece ventures to stronger chromatic instability (although sometimes there is an introductory instability). Sometimes chromatic instability can be a dissonant or stepwise or sequential chromaticism, but sometimes it can be just a sudden shift to a remote harmony. There is an extremely strong contrast between stabilized sections and destabilized sections, and a stratification of instability, and the same general idea is for classical sonata form. In fact, I would say that the greater contrast between stabilization and destabilization (from harmonic rhythm, chromaticism, and bassline motion) is an element that puts Chopin above the classicists. Note how Chopin will have strongly destabilizing sections as transitions, and when themes come back, they are sometimes (at least in larger works) made compactified, and made even more tense.

5 hours to write a piece this long (and therefore required to be substantial) is very short... writing a piece, even whether it be 2 minutes long or 7 minutes long, with careful consideration of harmonic rhythm, destabilization rhythm, and chromatic rhythm takes a longer time.


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## Samuel Kristopher

As ever, I am deeply appreciative of your comments, Septimal! 

Now that you mention it, the A-flat major is very strange - possibly if I'd been spending as much time on this as I have for other pieces, I may have picked that up and changed, but as you say, I inhibited myself with the speed at which I wrote. It was more or less a rapid sketch with an intense but cursory fixer-upper at the end. I just wanted to have it ready to present to her before she woke up (sobby romantic stuff, but there you go lol). 

I'm really interested in your talk about stabilisation and destabilisation though - I guess that'll be the next consideration for future works, while I continue to work on bass movements. With any luck, I'll keep stumbling across these gaps in my knowledge until there aren't any left, right? 

Thanks again!


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## SeptimalTritone

Well, I mean, if one mastered stabilization and destabilization, one would have (slightly exaggerating) mastered all of common practice music, and to some degree, post common practice music. It would be like saying if only I mastered intonation, rhythm, articulation, phrasing, vibrato, and expressivity in string or wind playing, I would have no gaps.

I think that "sobby romantic stuff" is fine, really. Just make the intense feelings for the girl correspond to something with more contrast between stability and instability. And also, more generally, make sure that the music functions grammatically even without the audience knowing the program.

I suggest trying to find Walter Piston's "Counterpoint". This book is strongly helpful because it talks about the aspects of counterpoint that are beyond Bach-style counterpoint, which can provide for stability and instability and explain harmonic rhythm. I would also suggest reading about the form of Chopin's works, through whatever you can find. Charles Rosen's "The Romantic Generation" is one book. You can then use the knowledge gained from reading to analyze works by yourself.


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## prasad94

I completely understand. I use Sibelius 7 too with Sibelius Sounds. It's great for composing. And I understand. I tend to stack both L.H and R.H on the same staff sometimes just for playback. Btw, your piano sounds incredible! How do you accomplish this!?


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## Samuel Kristopher

For a good realistic piano sound, there are a few things you can do:

1) Press "M", drag the top of the mixer up to get the extra options, and change the reverb from default 50% to around 60/70%, depending on your tastes. The legato function doesn't work as well as I'd like, so you have to cheat a little to get a smooth sound between notes. 

2) I'll check again when I open Sibelius next time but in the Play tab, there's a "Playback" section I think and you can click the options setting in the corner to bring up a whole host of options, such as how mechanic/rubato the piece should be played with, and some more detailed audio simulation effects. I tend to choose the Cathedral or Concert Hall simulation for the best effect - I usually set it to play as mechanical as possible as well because I don't like its rubato, and I manually add my own rubato in anyway. 

3) Get nitpicky. Once I'm happy with the piece in its basic form, I listen to it and (if I can) play it a bunch of times to feel what dynamics I want for it - when to crescendo, when to slow down, etc. Then I'll go through and manually add bazillions of these markers and hit "Ctrl+Shift+H" to hide them afterwards. Seriously, like, almost every bar will have some specific tempo settings, even if its just speeding up by 1 or 2 beats per minute. I just use every tool I can to manually make the music do what I want it to. 

4) "Ctrl+Shift+I" Brings up the inspector and there you can edit the functional details of individual notes - change the "velocity" (how hard the player supposedly strikes the note - not the same as volume necessarily), how long the note is sustained, etc. I don't do every single note in this, but if there's a particular part of the piece that I want to focus on, this is a great fine-tuner.


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## Alon

Very enjoyable!


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## Samuel Kristopher

Thanks Alon, appreciate it!


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## Pugg

What's next up your sleeve?


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## Alon

When I woke up today I had this stuck in my head!


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## Samuel Kristopher

> What's next up your sleeve?


Well I wanted to take some of my current sketches and see if I can't pull another Sonata out of them, learning from the prior Sonata's mistakes. However I've had some more waltz tunes pop into my head and they're often so easy to write that I've laid down two short waltzes, and once I get another I'll polish them up and release them here 

Other than that, just the usual doodling. Messing around with a String Quartet in Sibelius, trying to see if I can get an acceptably realistic sound from it. If so I might do something with that.



> When I woke up today I had this stuck in my head!


That's the highest compliment I could ask for!


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