# My Finished Pieces Thread



## Phil loves classical (Feb 8, 2017)

This thread is dedicated to my finished pieces only after months of relistening after fine tuning. The other thread started getting too big and unwieldy with missing links, which I started early in my hobby/ career, which I'll still use for drafts and brainstorms.

My approach is always on melody/harmony, with a focus on counterpoint in both tonal and atonal pieces.

This is probably the piece i spent most time on per bar. The subject is syncopated, in 2 different metres (22 beats total), and I incorporated an anticipation at the end as part of the melody (this part is new and takes getting used to after the last revision).





This one was also one I spent a lot of time on fine tuning. The first tutti after the crescendo gave me trouble for the longest time. It's my closest to the sonata form (Rossianian overtures are sonatas without a development section I've read before) which is part pastiche and mostly parody.





This was my first orchestral piece. The big crescendo was the hardest part. It's probably my most cinematic, with a recurring motif.





This was an early atonal piece. I was too caught up with following the rules of dodecaphony in the first part at the time, but I fixed it up.





This is a light fun piece. The highlight chromatic chords took longer to figure out the right combination that the whole rest of the piece to write.


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## Phil loves classical (Feb 8, 2017)

Cut a few extraneous notes on this invention. Also improved the rhythmic variety by doing that.





This is probably my best orchestrated piece. No change from the last revision.





It seems this one is my most popular piece. No change from last revision.





I lied. This is the final version. Improved articulation to sell the anticipation idea better.


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## mediumaevum (Mar 24, 2011)

Nice countermelodic harmonic progressions. I could use some of that in my own compositions.

But the melodic lines needs more... life.

Here's some more critique, I'd like to share some techniques of what I've learned through the years:

You need to work on the dynamics and expression of the instruments. They sound rather MIDI, I know it is MIDI, but to keep the listeners attention, it is of vital importance that you work on the MIDI-dynamics and expressions using hand-drawn curves for each note and instrument, in your DAW.

Look for MIDI-CC in the manual of your instruments.

For example, the dynamics of bowed strings (ie. violins) is equivalent to the strength of which the bow plays on the violins.

Expression is also a little bit of this, though it deals more with volume.

Each individual note should have a sine-curve for at least the Dynamics. As the piece progress, you might want to make the curves rise or fall even more.

Also of vital importance is the use of pauses. Without pauses, they sound MIDI-like, and programmed. There's no life to it.

The pauses should be placed to enhance emotional impacts of your pieces. Also, you could lengthen some notes at the end of a phrase.

Some reverb (or more reverb if you already have it) could also help, but not too much.

I hope my critique wasn't too harsh, after all I'm just trying to help.


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## Phil loves classical (Feb 8, 2017)

mediumaevum said:


> Nice countermelodic harmonic progressions. I could use some of that in my own compositions.
> 
> But the melodic lines needs more... life.
> 
> ...


Ya, no problem. Personally I have no interest in DAW's at all. So all my music is really just based on the default settings of Musescore, which is what I use. I'm more interested in musical content 'conceptually' itself, which I revise until I feel I get what I want out of it, putting dynamics as I feel it needs to get the point across. So the timing is metronomic as written, but would be open to interpretation in practical performance. Sometimes the dynamics don't come out as well as I feel is written, especially in the strings. i can only choose arco, which adds lots of slow vibrato, or tremolo for faster passages, because the attack on arco is so slow, but which makes the sounds more distant (just the way the sounds were recorded for the program i guess).

Also I'm not going for the music sounding cinematic, in general (I noticed your music is more the cinematic type), which is why I don't tend to linger on notes.


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