hey everyone :), I'm new here. Lately I've been tying to get more into composing to get my mind off things, although I'm not too experienced in it. I'd appreciate any advice or critic on how i can improve ^.^. I have some basic knowledge of music theory and play piano.

'Passage to Styx' was my first attempt for an orchestral piece and I recently finished 'Tomorrow' which is solely for piano and strings.

Passage to Styx:

It's too repetitive in the beginning. There are so much to do to expand your theme. Your transition to the next section was also too sudden. Your orchestration needs quite a lot of work. A lot of unnecessary doublings, clashes, and etc... Almost everywhere. Also, since you used piano as the most prominent instrument, you also didn't consider the dynamic levels, timbres and other considerations of its position of the orchestra.

Tomorrow:

Better than your other piece, though still lacking in quite a few spots, an example is dynamics: you hardly had any. Also, some parts are too dull and repetitive, and cliche.

Not bad for first tries, but of course there are many things you can improve on.

Thanks for comment sir_dotdotdot. Yeh so I need to work on orchestration, should I just remove some parts to stop the doubling/clashes, or use more harmonies?

Anyway i want to focus on 'Tomorrow'. I understand dynamics can be fixed, which parts specifically do you find dull and repetitive? I plan to rewrite and maybe orchestrate this piece again.

Passage to Styx:

I can't begin to tell you how much potential this has. The MIDI doesn't do this piece justice (I know many people keep telling that, but mostly their compositions suck anyhow). I wasn't hoping for the piano solo to return at 1:40... I wanted a big explosion there! The 0:32-0:35 part was awesome, and I really liked when the strings came to play. The mood in this piece is very gray-ish, I felt that there was a kind of storm coming, similiar to Beethoven's pieces, but it just kept going - that was the downside of this composition. I tried to listen to this and at the same time ignoring the MIDI, and picturing this with a real setting. You should ask someone, or even pay someone to pimp this piece up.

Tomorrow:

There are a few portions of this song which are quite nice, but in my opinion this doesn't have the bottled-up energy of your other composition.

I have a little program called "Garritan Personal Orchestra" I could "pimp" this piece up (as Noir said =D) for you if you want. I don't know if you are familiar with that program but it is compatible with Finale and you can make your music sound like it is played by a real symphony orchestra. I agree with Noir in saying that this piece has so much potential. It just needs the right medium to make it shine. Tell me what you think.

Thanks for the offer =], if you had time to do so I'd surely appreciate it. But i write my music with Sibelius 4, I don't have not Finale so not sure if it'll work. ?

Thanks for the offer =], if you had time to do so I'd surely appreciate it. But i write my music with Sibelius 4, I don't have not Finale so not sure if it'll work. ?

It will; it's MIDI, as opposed to .sib. :)

Yeah, it'll work. Spark, you can PM me if you want later to tell me exactly what you want in the score - like dynamics, tempo markings, string variations (arco, short bow), etc... I'd be glad to help. Passage to Styx sounds amazing even for a midi. I can't wait to hear it Garritan-ized lol.

I don't really mind what you do with it Giles, i'm not really familiar with what it'll sound like/what changes can be made to it with Garritan. Maybe I PM you sometime later this week if thats ok.

Anyway I orchestrated previous piece Tomorrow, thinking of adding percussion. Comments?

Hmmm...I think some percussion would work. I'm listening to it, and some marimba or vibraphone would be nice; to give it a much fuller sound. I don't know if it is just the midi, but it sounds like you could have more bass line. Try upping the dynamic of the bass strings and Tuba in the brass. (I thought I heard brass in there, correct me if I'm wrong lol)

As for other percussion like snare, bass drums, etc... I'm not sure if there would be spots where they would fit perfectly. You wouldn't want a snare or bass drum coming out of nowhere lol. But marimba or vibes would definitely work, in my opinion. But that's just me =p

The musical ideas for Tomorrow are fine, however, the orchestration needs quite a lot of embellishments. Many of your instruments are way too clustered together, which led to the unclear presentation of every musical element. Also, because you seem to feature the piano quite a lot, you should realize the fact that with so many instruments playing together, your piano will most likely be overshadowed. You also realized that sometimes in your piece, the not as important elements sound more prominent than your melodies or whatever. You also used some unnecessary doublings that can be avoided.

new piece :)

I think I would like it better without the boring, unchanging piano pedal tone all the way through until the very last part. It gets really tiresome, and then suddenly it's gone and it seems silly. Was that supposed to be an ending? I think your piece needs more motivic material that makes it cohesive (which I do not consider that pedal tone a motive) but which also makes different sections stand out from one another.

Like deathraider said, the piano on the constant chord gets quite annoying, It's just there, but the melody at and a little before 2:00 was the best sound to me, but it could have used more of a build up to have it become more of a surprize when the listener gets there. Good work overall, just try to change up the chord to fit more into it, go into lower and higher octaves, depending on the mood of the section you wish to put out.

Wolfmountain: It was certainly a cool idea. you just need to work on that repeted piano part. And maybe a couple another theme? And maybe the ending(the repeating last couple measures or so) should repeat a couple times before hitting the last notes/chord.

Im not completely sure about the ending. I was either going to repeat parts of the first half or make a new theme but I thought the piece got too long. The piano was meant to be very soft (barely audible) in most parts as to be barely noticeable but i guess that didn't work.



Anyway some new stuff: