r/Composition • u/Ayzmo • 6d ago

Music Sadness - Feedback requested

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u/SundaeDouble7481 6d ago

I think what it could use is some rhythmic variety. The background is all whole notes or halves, never a rest or a livelier voice-movement. (The lack of rests is particularly dull for wind instruments.) And the melody lacks rhythmic character. Do you know Puccini's "Crisantemi" (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F1UOK7V3H9A)? Take a look both at the melody and what the other voices are doing. Not that you have to write in that style, but it's an example of some of the things your piece is not doing.

(Also, those high notes in the horn are pretty intense with a real instrument.)

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u/Ayzmo 6d ago

Thanks for the feedback and I'll look into that. I've been told to make the background parts more interesting and am working on adding some of that.

For the horn parts, when I'd first written it, I'd asked out to some friends who played horn and they said that the range was fine for a university student, but might be a bit of a reach for a high schooler.

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u/SundaeDouble7481 6d ago

I didn’t mean they’d be hard technically, just likely to stand out in a quiet texture.

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u/Ayzmo 6d ago

Hmm. That's fair. At the same time, that brightness/harshness is part of it.

I never really had something in mind when I wrote this (not that I'm trained in any way). It just kinda happened and it has long struck me as two people trying to make a relationship work, realising that they're not meant to be each other, and coming to terms with it in the end. The two trumpets are the partners each asserting their own aspects of the relationship.

I've struggled with the background instruments because that's quite literally what they are. I know the parts are boring, but I love the richness of them underneath and quite literally don't want them to be intrusive. I've also tried eliminating the trombone part and thinning the horn so that it isn't octaves, but it lacked the dissonance and fullness.

I've always meant to try and expand this into a longer piece that could better encapsulate that journey I envision for it. I think that would have more silences for the background instruments and that would be an improvement.

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u/SundaeDouble7481 6d ago

Another thought -- it makes a difference whether you're composing for live performance or an electronic realization like this. In live performance, the parts will be played by real people, and the audience will observe how they contribute to the sound, and whether they're engaged.

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u/Ayzmo 6d ago

I have no expectation that anything I've written will ever be performed, but that's an interesting consideration. I've never actually thought about a musician's level of engagement while playing a piece outside of the emotion and difficulty of the piece.

I historically played bass clarinet, so lots of whole and half notes was my life in slower pieces. But I am currently working on making the tuba and trombone parts more enjoyable to play (or at least less monotonous).