# What do you think of this?



## Op.123

2 new compositions, I have composed the outer movements of my piano concerto.
After some helpful feedback on one of my previous posts I was wondering what you thought of these.

http://musescore.com/user/81525/scores/99047

Should I carry on with this one? ^

http://musescore.com/user/81525/scores/100412


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## Op.123

New version of 1st mov - http://musescore.com/user/81525/scores/100412

New version of 2nd mov - http://musescore.com/user/81525/scores/98710

New version of 3rd mov - http://musescore.com/user/81525/scores/99047


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## Op.123

Burroughs said:


> New version of 1st mov - http://musescore.com/user/81525/scores/100412
> 
> New version of 2nd mov - http://musescore.com/user/81525/scores/98710
> 
> New version of 3rd mov - http://musescore.com/user/81525/scores/99047


The third movement is still unfinished


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## Air

I love how the opening of your concerto is reminiscent of the beginning of Schumann's Piano Concerto. 

You might want to work on organization. Take one theme or motif and develop it _very gradually_. Choose a key and stick with it instead of jumping around because it makes the piece seem half tonal, half atonal. Granted, the playback is kind of low quality, so I can't really fairly judge the work...


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## Op.123

Air said:


> I love how the opening of your concerto is reminiscent of the beginning of Schumann's Piano Concerto.
> 
> You might want to work on organization. Take one theme or motif and develop it _very gradually_. Choose a key and stick with it instead of jumping around because it makes the piece seem half tonal, half atonal. Granted, the playback is kind of low quality, so I can't really fairly judge the work...


Well, I love the Schumann concerto.
Anyway, Thank you for the feedback.


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## PetrB

Well you need about everything from the very beginning. Your piano part if not unplayable is very anti-oiano and completely uninviting to the most advanced of pianists. Your instrumental 'writing' is not going to sound at all, a flute on its lowest open middle C will not be at all heard where you have it, and those parts for the instruments, too, are not at all friendly to those instruments.

All of that because you have midi, and either a keyboard or can write it directly in. Looks and sounds like a keyboard generated work which was then copied and pasted, parts cut down or slightly altered to become the orchestral accompaniment.

So... first, turn off the computer, get some manuscript paper, work at the keyboard and write it down. Try a simple piano piece, or a simpler less ambitious piece for piano and one instrument, so you get a feel for that instrument and learn how to actually write for it. 

What you have here is more a self-entertaining fantasy that you have written 'a concerto' than anything workable for real players.

We all, unless you are Mozart, for example, write pretty dreadful stuff at the beginning, and it takes writing more and more until it gets better. But that is WRITING, not rapidly laying things down into midi via a keyboard and then spanning that, basically nearly just a doubling, over an orchestral score.

Do NOT give up  But, back to the drafting board, give up on the big ambitions, take the first small steps ("The journey of ten thousand miles begins with the first step.") Write a simple and brief piano piece, beginning, middle, end, then another, then one with flute and piano, same size and length about, try one with piano and violin, piano and 'cello, piano and flute and 'cello, etc. etc.


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## Op.123

PetrB said:


> Well you need about everything from the very beginning. Your piano part if not unplayable is very anti-oiano and completely uninviting to the most advanced of pianists. Your instrumental 'writing' is not going to sound at all, a flute on its lowest open middle C will not be at all heard where you have it, and those parts for the instruments, too, are not at all friendly to those instruments.
> 
> All of that because you have midi, and either a keyboard or can write it directly in. Looks and sounds like a keyboard generated work which was then copied and pasted, parts cut down or slightly altered to become the orchestral accompaniment.
> 
> So... first, turn off the computer, get some manuscript paper, work at the keyboard and write it down. Try a simple piano piece, or a simpler less ambitious piece for piano and one instrument, so you get a feel for that instrument and learn how to actually write for it.
> 
> What you have here is more a self-entertaining fantasy that you have written 'a concerto' than anything workable for real players.
> 
> We all, unless you are Mozart, for example, write pretty dreadful stuff at the beginning, and it takes writing more and more until it gets better. But that is WRITING, not rapidly laying things down into midi via a keyboard and then spanning that, basically nearly just a doubling, over an orchestral score.
> 
> Do NOT give up  But, back to the drafting board, give up on the big ambitions, take the first small steps ("The journey of ten thousand miles begins with the first step.") Write a simple and brief piano piece, beginning, middle, end, then another, then one with flute and piano, same size and length about, try one with piano and violin, piano and 'cello, piano and flute and 'cello, etc. etc.


Thank!
I have written a composition for solo piano. I did used the computer however figured things out on the piano fist.
What do you think - http://musescore.com/user/81525/scores/101623


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## PetrB

This sort of proves out to me what I thought from the get go: you are letting your fingers do the walking _and the talking!_

I.e. your limited piano ability has you grabbing what configurations and patterns are literally "handiest," and you are then after the fact thinking of what they sound like. _That is [email protected]@-Backwards of course_. What is desirable and ideal, and gets the best results, is your inner ear hearing / thinking something and then trying to set that down, then develop the piece from there.

Your rhythm is blocky, the whole first section of one measure then the next and the next with the same configuration, shape, and rhythm gets very dull to the ear very quickly. Sure, a fantasy can sound like an improv, but that whole opening section sounds like you have a brain lock on a motor reflex and are grasping for the idea, or an actual start to the piece.

I think you do sincerely want to investigate harmony, and have a real interest in it, but there is very little of anything I'd call cohesive to any of this.

You need most to _scale down the dimension of your ambition to write something Grand or Important sounding!_ That is sort of typical starting wish, but it is time to set that aside. You don't have the wherewithal to support a grand idea even if you had one right now.

Your challenge is to come up with a musical idea which is more than one harmonic gesture, some harmonic sequence, better still a couple of simultaneous threads which make up a harmony rather than block chord block chord.

A lot of beginners fall into the _Chord Progression / Melody Trap,_ 
That gets undone immediately when you study theory and have to write four-part chorales (ala maniere de Bach  
Sure, those have a melody, but the other three parts have to be treated equally as melody _and_ those make up a harmony at the same time -- technically not exact counterpoint but a fundamental contrapuntal principle nonetheless. (In American parlance -- I hate the phrase -- it is called Voice Leading.)

Look at and listen to Debussy's Prelude No. 6, from book I of his preludes, "Des pas sur la neige." Made up of only a few intervals, and harmonic changes going on, it is a complete and very expressive short piece. Not that anyone should expect you to come up with anything near that now, but because I think you have a very limited idea of what music is and how it can work, and need to expand that horizon to a huge degree.





Get the Bartok Microkosmos, books I and II. Simple pieces, beautifully constructed. Not a bad model at all, and models you are more likely to use in coming up with those better beginner's pieces than where you are now.

Basics, fellow. Baby steps. Learn to walk before you can run, and all those other very truthful cliches.


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## Op.123

PetrB said:


> This sort of proves out to me what I thought from the get go: you are letting your fingers do the walking _and the talking!_
> 
> I.e. your limited piano ability has you grabbing what configurations and patterns are literally "handiest," and you are then after the fact thinking of what they sound like. _That is [email protected]@-Backwards of course_. What is desirable and ideal, and gets the best results, is your inner ear hearing / thinking something and then trying to set that down, then develop the piece from there.
> 
> Your rhythm is blocky, the whole first section of one measure then the next and the next with the same configuration, shape, and rhythm gets very dull to the ear very quickly. Sure, a fantasy can sound like an improv, but that whole opening section sounds like you have a brain lock on a motor reflex and are grasping for the idea, or an actual start to the piece.
> 
> I think you do sincerely want to investigate harmony, and have a real interest in it, but there is very little of anything I'd call cohesive to any of this.
> 
> You need most to _scale down the dimension of your ambition to write something Grand or Important sounding!_ That is sort of typical starting wish, but it is time to set that aside. You don't have the wherewithal to support a grand idea even if you had one right now.
> 
> Your challenge is to come up with a musical idea which is more than one harmonic gesture, some harmonic sequence, better still a couple of simultaneous threads which make up a harmony rather than block chord block chord.
> 
> A lot of beginners fall into the _Chord Progression / Melody Trap,_
> That gets undone immediately when you study theory and have to write four-part chorales (ala maniere de Bach
> Sure, those have a melody, but the other three parts have to be treated equally as melody _and_ those make up a harmony at the same time -- technically not exact counterpoint but a fundamental contrapuntal principle nonetheless. (In American parlance -- I hate the phrase -- it is called Voice Leading.)
> 
> Look at and listen to Debussy's Prelude No. 6, from book I of his preludes, "Des pas sur la neige." Made up of only a few intervals, and harmonic changes going on, it is a complete and very expressive short piece. Not that anyone should expect you to come up with anything near that now, but because I think you have a very limited idea of what music is and how it can work, and need to expand that horizon to a huge degree.
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> Get the Bartok Microkosmos, books I and II. Simple pieces, beautifully constructed. Not a bad model at all, and models you are more likely to use in coming up with those better beginner's pieces than where you are now.
> 
> Basics, fellow. Baby steps. Learn to walk before you can run, and all those other very truthful cliches.


What did you think of the second half


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## PetrB

Burroughs said:


> What did you think of the second half


Consistent with the first... 

P.s. you are not at all alone, nor is this hopeless. A random survey of other works in TC's today's composers will find you in very similar company with others with the same sort of problems they are working to solve or better. It is rather hopeless if you will not believe, after several opinions, that it is best to abandon the current work, and the scale of it, and start afresh, as it were. There is little or nothing to be learned by you from what you have now, or at least those pieces you've presented to us -- while I cannot imagine another piece of yours written lately as being radically different and without these same weaknesses.

All this you must now evaluate for yourself, and that takes a very cold and hard element of detachment... the most important and difficult of that is not being in love with what you've just made to see it and hear it for what it is, and is not.


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## Guest

Jeez PetrB, please make sure you remind me *not* to submit my recently uncompleted 14th Symphony in F# minor (which I am currently busy not writing) to your critical appraisal.


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## PetrB

TalkingHead said:


> Jeez PetrB, please make sure you remind me *not* to submit my *recently uncompleted* 14th Symphony in F# minor (which I am currently busy not writing) to your critical appraisal.


*recently uncompleted*
Love it already ;-)


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## Guest

Well yes, I have plenty more symphonies where that one (my 14th) came from. All uncompleted (or incomplete, if you prefer) and in various keys. I tend to charge more for key signatures involving more than three flats or sharps. Professional, _innit_?


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## PetrB

TalkingHead said:


> Well yes, I have plenty more symphonies where that one (my 14th) came from. All uncompleted (or incomplete, if you prefer) and in various keys. I tend to charge more for key signatures involving more than three flats or sharps. Professional, _innit_?


Of course, one must take into account the time to write more symbols as well as the expense of the additional ink!


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## Mahlerian

TalkingHead said:


> Well yes, I have plenty more symphonies where that one (my 14th) came from. All uncompleted (or incomplete, if you prefer) and in various keys. I tend to charge more for key signatures involving more than three flats or sharps. Professional, _innit_?


How much more does C-flat major cost over B?


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## Guest

Mahlerian said:


> How much more does C-flat major cost over B?


Now that's a special commission and very costly. Are you asking for 'a friend's price'? If you want a piano work I'll give you a discount. It's 25% more for string instruments. If you want a piano trio, that has to be negotiated first.


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## PetrB

zOMG! All those flats... and then double flats. *Oh, the humanity!*


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## Guest

No, hon, the 'cost' element is all about the string players having to adapt their playing to the 'fascist' fixed-tuning of the piano. I mean come on, a semitone is never just a semitone, dig?


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## Mesa

I don't see what the reason for the cost-per-flats system is, they are easy to finger on string instruments. It's the sharps that cut your fingertips up!


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## PetrB

TalkingHead said:


> No, hon, the 'cost' element is all about the string players having to adapt their playing to the 'fascist' fixed-tuning of the piano. I mean come on, a semitone is never just a semitone, dig?


but not adapting to the piano makes for an ensemble sound with very interesting beats, and a fullness of sound because of, no?

Besides we all know a piano is never anywhere near in tune, only compatibly out of tune with itself.


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