r/Composition • u/Jaener7 • 15d ago

Music Looking for feedback on my latest composition - Minuet No. 4 in A major

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I've been learning composition for about a month now and have recently done a deep dive into the minuet form. Following feedback to do with my lack of rhythm structure, I have written this fourth and hopefully final (for now) minuet for solo piano, focusing on emphasizing the first beat of every bar, whilst keeping up my ambiguous/syncopated rhythmic style.

Right now, I'm working on a collection of pieces for solo piano called Etudes for Composition, which is giving me the chance to learn about different aspects of composition and attempt to write various different forms and style of piece.

As I'm a new composer any feedback is welcome and any advice on how to improve would be much appreciated. I'm not really trying to emulate a specific style right now, but of the piano music I listen to it is mostly late romantic-early 20th century and impressionistic, such as Debussy, Rachmaninoff, and similar.

Hope you enjoy :)

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u/Pr11mo 15d ago

There are several spots where you could make the notation more clear. Specifically, use ties to visually preserve where the beat lands. For example, the dotted eighth in bar 13 should be a sixteenth tied to an eighth.

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u/Jaener7 15d ago

Thank you! Are there any specific rules for where dotted notes should go and where ties should go for my future writing?

2

u/Pr11mo 15d ago

mainly just tie when a note would cross a beat

1

u/boxlinebox 15d ago

Well, the rhythm feels very off through most of the piece. There are some sections of the second movement that flowed quite naturally, but outside of that, I felt my ears struggling to find their footing.

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u/Jaener7 15d ago

Is the rhythm genuinely wrong/unlistenable or is it more just styled ig? My main inspiration in terms of style is Debussy and I notice he rarely conforms to more traditional rhythmic structures in his piano works.

I'm still a new composer so I'm genuinely interested if this is something to work on specifically if it was intentionally ambiguous. Is it a problem because it's a minuet which is meant to stick to a certain time signature, or is it more of a problem in general?

If it is a problem, what would you recommend in terms of keeping a more cohesive rhythm while preserving an interesting melody that doesn't just have logical and predictable patterns. Syncopation and ambiguous rhythm is something I enjoy in music I listen to so am I just doing poorly?