Hi all,
This is my first compositions that was ever notated. I have written some arrangements before and have sung some random melodies in my head that seemed like good idea but never got on paper (or screen) mostly because I thought of them at school when I was bored and had forgotten them by the time I got to the computer.

So, tell me what you think of it. I saved it in both the trumpet trio form and the brass trio form because I could decide which one sounded better.

Since I know how horrible it is waiting for someone to reply (referring to my own thread that still has 0 replies, but 50 views, lol.), I figured I'd be the first to comment yours.

I think the brass / trumpet kind of sounded the same, but that's just because of the midi sounds I guess. I think it needs a bit more instruments to make it come alive... It's a good idea but it seems kind of unfinished. But I can't really think with accompanying parts, since this genre of music isn't my forte...:heh:

So, good job. Make more!

Not bad for your first composition. What I think you really need to work on is how the different parts of the piece relate to each other. Like what ties the beginning to the middle to the end? That sort of thing. And you may want to stay with the brass trio version because I think that low E natural in measure 53 is too low for a trumpet. Of course I don't play the instrument and am probably wrong. Hope to hear more from you! :D

That low E natural is the lowest trumpet note plausible for most things. Some people write a low Eb but that's under special circumstances.
So what do you mean " what ties the beginning to the middle to the end"?

Added more instrumentation and merges some phrases.
So, what do you guys think? Any better than the previous versions?

I'm not to fond of this. There is nothing really memorable about this piece. If I was told to hum the melody after listening to this piece, I wouldn't be able to do it.

What's up with the trombone and the horns playing that eighth note rhythm for so long? I'm sure the instrumentalists wouldn't enjoy playing that.

And how about doubling the Trombone with the Horns? That combination is mighty powerful. As in, you wouldn't be able to clearly hear everything else that was going on.

Also with your trumpets and other brass instruments for that matter. Normally when you have two of the same instrument paying together harmonically with brass instruments, the are not as close as a third in their lower register. Normally the are at least separated by a fifth or a fourth and get closer together harmonically as the brass instrument plays higher in it's register. Read this for more... http://www.northernsounds.com/forum/showthread.php?t=46147

You also did a normally big no no with you're last chord. Normally you should end you piece with the tonic chord of the key you are in. In your piece, you ended with a weak sub dominant chord. You can do that at times, but the way you approached it was not a time to use it.

Keep trying! ^_^

Thanks, PorscheGTIII, for the suggestions. I'll try to fix some of the chord stuff. I understand What You are talking about with the melody. It's funny because I usually come up with good melodies when just messing around and I thought I notated exactly what I made up a while earlier. :lol: I'll put up the revised version later.

Meanwhile here's something else I was working on. This one's kinda different, I wanted to experiment with woodwinds/brass together. There's still some empty spaces I intent to fill later (especially in the clarinet and trombone parts) but I'm curious about how this one sounds.

P.S. I upload in midi because I have Finale2008, something most others don't have. You can drag the midi file into Finale (any recent version) and select "channels to staffs" then open it to view.

I won't address the pieces themselves, but I will bring up a common problem-- chord building. This doesn't apply to orchestration or arranging (God knows all that stuff is complex for anyone, I'll admit it, even for me XD) But anyway, it seems like I never hear a nice full and big chord from your stuff, but more of a weak and extremely thick-textured mess of things. I wouldn't get so complex in your writing this early on; you can move at your own pace, but for goodness sakes, you won't get anywhere (or anywhere fast) when you start giving every instrument proper leading and moving tones all over the place. Just to start out with :

1) Always give the lowest note the tonic bass note. No inversions or counter-point quite yet!

2a) Always give the highest/higher instrument (or instruments, if doubled) the melody.
2b) Always give the instrument right below the melody a harmony; sixths or thirds will do very well. Make sure it sounds good, though.. the dissonances you're creating now aren't the same as the ones Ligeti have made, remember that!

3) Give the inner-voices the chord. This basically explains it, right? Have them hold long tones or an ostinato--just make sure they aren't getting some fancy counter-point.

These 3-ish tips should help you to creating a better sound. I'm not telling you to hold back, (in fact, I'm telling nothing, just advising =)) but I am telling that with composing with the basics of arranging, you will start to get better sounds out of your ideas and will be able to experiment from then on... just remember, one step at a time! Good luck, and you're off to a great start!

the dissonances you're creating now aren't the same as the ones Ligeti have made, remember that!
Who?


1) Always give the lowest note the tonic bass note. No inversions or counter-point quite yet!

2a) Always give the highest/higher instrument (or instruments, if doubled) the melody.
2b) Always give the instrument right below the melody a harmony; sixths or thirds will do very well.

This is a short fanfare I put together a few weeks ago. Are these the kinds of chords you're talking about?

The fanfare didn't work to my ears. It's missing a lot of counter melody and a lot of chords sound like they jar.

Well personally, I don't like counter-melodies in fanfares but I see about the chord thing. I looked at the sheets I wrote again and I, somehow, ignored the lower voices when checking the chords. I don't know why.

Also I tried to fix my #2, rebalanced some of the chords and took out clarinets (I obviously can't write for clarinets yet as I can't get them to fit in the sound right.)

Is it any better now?

Hi, So I've been swamped with homework and music class that I haven't been able to get back to my composing for a while. at least it's winter break now

Anyways, Composition #1 from earlier in this thread no longer exists on my computer and has been replaced with this new #1 which has the very unoriginal name of Sonata in Bb Major No.1 for Brass Quintet, neither exiting nor original but it's there because I had to have a title to send it to the colleges (I'm not applying for composition major, just sending the scores because I'm allowed to and the school with give a little high consideration of admission to those who are favorably rated in an arts submission). I had to send in 2 or 3 pieces, the other was Peaceful Kingdom, in case anyone cares.

Festival Tune was something that I put together recently that I was planning to play with a friend. I wanted to make something that was fun and light that I could play. Unfortunately, it's a little too high to for me to play cleanly on my normal trumpet, too difficult in fingerings for piccolo trumpet, and looses it's characteristic lightness when I move the range down. So I'll leave off the playing for now and just look at this as a composition, short, less than a minute fun

The last one is an arrangement of Metaknight's Revenge that a small group at my school wants to play. Finale did some weird stuff with the midi and some of the parts got meshed together for an unknown reason. So I've uploaded the .MUS file for anyone who has Finale 2008 or newer and the mp3 for those who don't. I really need advice on how to write for drum set to fit the specific drums and cymbals in the original recording (which is at this link --> http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LPPwdlgv2cs 'cause I can't upload any more attachments).

please critique and give suggestions

Heh, the sonata kinda reminds me of "Another One Bites the Dust." I can't really say anything about it, though, because I kept skipping around because of the MIDI sounds. I think it's a personal preference, but I usually can't stand quintets that long. Idk how willing you are to add in a piano. Which college did you send the pieces to?

I liked how animated the festival tune was. :) What if you lower the key and use a piccolo trumpet? Would that impair the lightness/be easier to play?

Heh, the sonata kinda reminds me of "Another One Bites the Dust." I can't really say anything about it, though, because I kept skipping around because of the MIDI sounds. I think it's a personal preference, but I usually can't stand quintets that long. Idk how willing you are to add in a piano. Which college did you send the pieces to?

I liked how animated the festival tune was. :) What if you lower the key and use a piccolo trumpet? Would that impair the lightness/be easier to play?

lol. I'm not good with pianos. I might add piano to my later works, but I need to understand how the music is first, I didn't play much piano before quitting, soI have to study scores just like a conductor has to.

I upload midis because many people don't have Finale 2008 or later, so they can just pull the midi into whatever version finale they have and see it. I'll put up the .MUS file and the mp3 for Sonata if you need. It's run though Garritan on the mp3 and on the .MUS

The college I sent my compositions to was Stanford, I send it as part of their supplement program where you don't have to be looking to major in music to send them extra stuff but they will still consider it in your overall application (as long as they have a form for it).

For the festival tune, I tried everything. Lowering the key brings the piece into the trumpet's lower middle range which is not very light and using the piccolo trumpet brings the piece into the low range which leads to a myriad of fingering difficulties. Raising the key into middle range on the piccolo will make the fingerings easier but pull the piece out of my range again. The only solutions seem to be 1) suck it up and learn to play high notes better on trumpet 2) suck it up and strengthen my third finger for the piccolo trumpet or 3) shell out the money for a good D or Eb trumpet.

I'm a believer of practice going a lot further than money can so I'll practice and leave it off, because my teacher played it on the normal trumpet with no problem (sight reading for the first time). So it's off the the practice room for me.

no one else has anything to say?

okay. Anyways, I tried my hand at writing something for the piano. This started as a melody that I built off the c minor scale (my most comfortable minor scale to play on the piano). By the time I wrote it down, it turned out a little different than my original idea, which was a kind of eerie "in the woods after dark kind of feeling." As I thought about my sketches, I though t it would go better with a woodwind choir. So this became something different.

This is the equivalent of what might be called a first draft (not rough draft) which I put it down on the computer in the past hour or so. The ending is kinda not complete, I'll think of a good way to end it later, tomorrow maybe. And i might also have to scrutinize my chords more carefully cause some stuff just sounds weird. Any comments or critiques on any aspect of the piece is definitely welcome and invited.

Okay,

Whenever people upload both a MIDI, finale file, Mp3 *and* a score of their piece I expect something special; Simply because the composer decided to upload a variety of files for the listener to enjoy, it has to be great. My main problem with this piece is that you went on for 50 bars without going anywhere at all. It has no flavour, no texture and certainly no style.

You went for a simple theme and melody, which is nice in theory. This is something that great composers can pull off. However, this piece is something of a drag. It's the kind of composition which your musically impaired friends will comment on as being "Cool, it sounds so sad and eerie" simply because it's slow in tempo and is played in a minor key.

It's quite clear what you're after, Dragoncloud, I understand where you're coming from more than you know. But throwing out a composition as if it were a shot for a black cat in a dark room is not good enough for you, and you know that.

Personally, I can't really agree that this piece was entirely a shot in the dark. Perhaps my piece form post 1 was since I hadn't written out anything beforehand, but for this I wanted to try to write something for with the piano. I can see what you said about no direction, though, it was intended as background music since that was something that I found was easy enough for me to play to figure out what I could do with piano music.

So i tried to elaborate a little more on it. Now I changed the mood a little and changed the ending to major, bringing the piece to end at a lighter note than is started on. I think that adds direction to the piece, with the tension and resolution my teacher talked about in class a few weeks ago. And I also ran it through GPO just to hear what it would have sounded like.

I'll have to agree with noir on this...this song is very repetitive and boring. :\ The one thing that really annoyed me was the harmony line on the first page or so...it was the same 3 or 4 notes played over and over and over.

Okay, putting the piano flop aside here's something I've recently started on. This will probably be just a small part of a larger endeavor, so I'm looking for feedback before I go on.

You really need to work on your harmonies a lot. Your harmonies seem pretty random in the middle of phrases. Basically, work on how your lines create harmonies, and try not to double the third excessively. The piece felt pretty random and unfocused.

Agreed. It felt random and unfocused. Perhaps taking a look into phrasing would be a good place to start too.

I'm sorry, but I'm not sure I'm clear some of the problems mentioned. I haven't learned much in harmonies besides the basic triad so I'll get to that on google right after this, but what is, specifically, the problem with phrasing?

Well, while I'm was trying to fix the phrasing in my last piece a tune popped into mind. I played it out on my electronic keyboard and imported into Finale. I think the resulted turned out a lot better this time. The first section of it is the more or less a completed version of the theme I was thinking of, chords and all. (I'll try to finish fixing the trumpet phrasing later.)

Then I thought about making a fugue out of this theme. I didn't get too far with this yet but I have a preliminary version of the inverted subject (where the cello is by itself) and one possible variation of the theme (where the other instruments come in again) written out. Again, the chord pattern is incomplete if present at all in these two sections.

So, any comments?

P.S. I just learned about quartal and quintal chords in music history and I'm wondering how to use them as opposed to triads. We just glanced over the topic when Copland showed up in the text so I'm not really clear on them except for the fact that Copland used a lot of them.

I really like the beginning of the melody, but when you start to expand on it, you need to use motifs, whether it be rhythmic, harmonic, or melodic to drive it forward and help it go somewhere. Also, you need to work on your bass line; try to keep more chords in root position unless you are going to move the bass by step (does that make sense?), and you probably won't want your basses to be playing less than a fifth apart when you split them (i.e. the bass split in measure 3 would probably sound too muddled, because it's only a third).

Edit: that last suggestion is true of most instruments when playing below the D in the middle of the bass clef.

Well, I just started this thing and it's my first attempt at this form so I am expanding and variating (sp?) the entire phrase for now and will pull motifs out of it after I figure out which sections sound good.


P.S. What's bass by step?

Well, I attempted to fix the bass line, I got most of them into the tonic but som of them didn't seem to sound right in the tonic (?) So I left them inverted (again, what's bass by step?).

I also added a section in the beginning because my textbook says that the subject is started introduced by one voice in a fugue. Also, attempted counter-subject and motif-izing (I don't think that a real word :sweat: but w/e). Thoughts? Comments?

Note: These are all just possible ideas that would go into the final piece. They are not necessarily in the order they will be and some fragments are still just brainstormed ideas.

I'll comment later, but about moving the bass "by step", I just mean that inversions are usually used to smooth out the bass line; this could be done by keeping the bass note as the same note so that it creates a pedal tone in the bass, or if there are 3 chords, and the bass notes of the first and last chord are a third apart, the middle chord is inverted in order to make the bass notes move by step (as opposed to by leap) between the three chords.

Does that make sense? Sorry, I'm probably not explaining it very well.

So is this any better? I started to try to organize motifs but I feel like I'm just repeating the melody but switching registers in the beginning section.

37 to 64 is a concept melody I'm trying to weave in along with the draft form of the viola part "fighting" for the solo/soli from 77 to 86. From 91 on is unchanged from the last section in my previous version (they are possibilities of motifs and fragments that may or may not end up in the piece).

Edit: Oh, I left a bunch of blank measures because I was thinking of putting sections in those spaces where I could possibly set transitions better.

So I recently got Finale 2009 because I upgraded to Windows 7. I know that most people don't have 2009 so I'll upload an mp3 and a score.

I added and moved around some harmonies and. There's still a small portion near then end I need to add to connect it with the middle. Still haven't given it a name yet though. So any comments? or criticisms?

Glisses at 56 and 77 I didn't like, but besides that the piece was fairly well organized. Only other suggestion is that maybe you should have a very simple (as in mainly playing the root of each chord) bass part underneath the first section just to solidify the harmonic structure underneath the melody which recurs throughout the rest of the piece. I feel like that would help to bring out the organization of the rest of the piece and to draw the listener in a little better.

If you want to make the piece a little more exciting, however, I would suggest you add a slow, contrasting section in the middle preferably with a contrasting theme/melody (perhaps even in the section where you have the break now, and then you can restate the original theme and build to the end).

I can see the influences as a trumpet player coming into play here, even though it's for strings. THIS ISN'T BAD! It's your style, WHICH IS THE OPPOSITE OF BAD! :)

Apart from that, I like how well it flows. Have you listened to Michiru Oshima's "For the East"? Fantastic flow in all the movements. :)

The only thing that sort of made me jump was the "nuke" chord at 2:40. I'm assuming this part is incomplete, but it was maybe a little too sudden? Feel free to disagree/explain :)

Overall, I like how well the piece flows (until 2:40 x_x) and I like how it shows your individual style. GREAT JOB SO FAR :)

"nuke"? interesting way to put it, but yea. that part's unfinished. Ideally that will eventually leading to a contrasting section (which is what deathraider was talking about) and back into the part at the end which is an inverted form of the subject. or I might do something different if it doesn't work out.

anyways do tell, how does this sound like it's from a trumpet player?

Again, all following is not bad :)

I think the melody is very well written for trumpet and parts like bar 16 and the bars leading up to it are a good example of that. It feels royal, which people do associate with brass instruments. Also, maybe because I've seen your youtube videos (which are AWESOME by the way! :)) maybe prior knowledge plays a part in associating this piece, by you, with the trumpet. It's still really good on strings though :)

So I recently got Finale 2009 because I upgraded to Windows 7. I know that most people don't have 2009 so I'll upload an mp3 and a score.

I added and moved around some harmonies and. There's still a small portion near then end I need to add to connect it with the middle. Still haven't given it a name yet though. So any comments? or criticisms?

Fun and lively little piece you got here, hehe. Really like the parts with the imitation and call and response parts, which gives it an almost a round feel (actually that and the overall feel of this at times reminded me of David Diamond's Round for Strings). Occasionally, the harmony/voice gets to be a bit weird, but overall it feels quite consistent with itself, so it's not too offputting.

As with Deathraider, I found myself wanting for a significantly different section, perhaps even earlier than where you have it now. While it's initially neat to hear the your theme passed between the different instruments, it starts to get tiring when you find that just about every section is based on the same theme. Also, you can probably make the texture changes a bit more unpredictable, which right now mostly happen every 2 or 4 bars, and last until the start of the next section. Throwing some uneveness to the method would certainly spice things up some more.

Faults aside, I do have to emphasize that I enjoyed this piece quite a bit - definitely looking forward to see this completed.

Thanks for all you suggestions and critiques. I took the small motif in measure 65 -68 and made it the melody in the middle section with a small counter-melody part when the cello comes in. I think the transition into the inverted melody 1 might be a little rough but I kinda got stumped on how to blend it back in so I'll try to come up with something later.

alos, yay for unimaginative names.

Edit: misnomer. it should be in G minor, not Bb Major

Edit #2: I guess it's not a fugue then either, renaming is done

Why in your answer you went to Gmin and is not transpose to the dominant Key? A perfect 5th higher or 4th lower. Why the answer did not finish the subject you exposed first?

??? sorry, but which measures are you talking about? I'm really horrible in harmonic analysis.

Third measure. The first two measures you was showing the subject. Then at third measure the answer appeared.

Um. Is what I did wrong? I kind of just followed what sounded good to me. I make up random melodies all the time when I'm bored and when one sounds good I write it down and go from there. I really don't write melodies with music theory in mind. I only do that when I'm putting harmonies together. Besides, BbM and gm are relative keys so shouldn't that be a plausible modulation?

The thing is, you named the piece "Fugue #1 in Bb Major". And a Fugue is more like a strict form where you have an exposition, episodes, counter-subjects, stretto, codetta, blah blah. The piece missed many things that make a Fugue.

oh, sorry I just took a basic overview of music history this year and all it said in the book about fugues was a polyphonic composition with imitation, counterpoint, and variation of the subject.

so what would be a more appropriate label for this?

Probably something like "Variations on a theme" or "Imitation"...maybe even "Invention for Strings" or something like that.

I don't know much about theory, but isn't an "invention" a thing or concept that one creates which hasn't been created/written before? I mean, people have been randomly typing in notes ever since notation software were introduced, so you can't really call this an invention can you... unless the word "invention" has another connotation in music theory, of course -

An invention is basically a simple fugue, with two-part counterpoint.

An invention is basically a simple fugue, with two-part counterpoint.

It is not if you're assuming Bach as a major example. Otherwise even the canon is a simple fugue but truth be told, it is not. The invention is an imitative contrapuntal piece. Anyway, I don't really see any motivation for discussing the title of a composition. Each one can choose the title according to his taste and it does not matter if the title refers to a classical tradition or not. There many example of composition called sonata, fugue or scherzo which do not follow the classical tradition.

It is not if you're assuming Bach as a major example.

And I was. I don't, however, think that people should go about using names for specific forms if their piece doesn't fit said form unless they have justification.

The piece is the justification. Can you blame Chopin writing his two sonatas even if they're not sonatas? Schumann said the same thing, but a masterpiece is a masterpiece, no matter what you write in the booklet. ;)

Anyway, I don't really see any motivation for discussing the title of a composition.

Do not discuss it more. :P

I just will say this. Choice whatever you want as tittle. But tittles like this also can be misleading, as it was for me with this piece. I was waiting a fugue and I was looking at the score interested to see a fugue and how he handled it. Then after see the third measures I saw things not right. Plus he named it like that not having the whole knowledge of what a fugue is. As he said in one of his post of what he thought a fugue was.

Anyway~

About the music I think it would help if the piece move to other keys. The piece is near five minutes and is always in the same key. Going to other keys with your theme would help to have it flesh to the listeners. A climax and a Finale would be good in this piece. Your ending is not interesting and just die without creating a high moment in your piece. The theme also keep reminding me of cowboys.

I hope someone else give you a better and deeper comment of your piece, since is 21 pages.

well anyways, I did a little bit of work on it but I'm not sure how to do with the climax or whatever. I think the ending is fine. In my mind I just heard sort of a bouncy little tune. I never expected it to get this long and drawn out. Maybe a shift in focus might clear my mind a little and then I can come back to it later. So anyways, here it is (for what it is).

Well where would you say the climax is? I still don't feel one, but it would help me to help you if you could tell me where you intended it to be.

Really, besides that, there are only little things here and there for you to fix, so just keep listening and fixing things that you notice sound off to you.

Well, I think I've got something down now. After sitting down and taking a break for composing for about a week, I came back to this and tried to come up with some way to address the problems

I added some "color" notes and arpeggios in the contrasting parts to keep the music moving more forward-like, and at the end I decided to let the accel. goes all the way through to the end, where I added a few measure to end the piece with. So, is it any better?

Hmm, the fact that the piece is pretty much entirely diatonic might make it hard to express larger-scale movement, though the bits you've added did help (that accel to Presto in particular). The rit. to the slower section helped some too, though it I expected a bit more of a build-up right before that part (the only real 'release' in the piece it feels).

Well I am still relatively new to composition (only 1 year of experience) so I don't want to venture into modulation and secondary dominants just yet, lest I get lost in the chords and unintended dissonances. I'll take a look at the build up though, and try to see what can be done.

If your new and you show concern getting too complex with modulation and secondary dominants (etc.) I wouldn't go so far as to write a piece this large. It's just not a very smart idea. I listened to this piece with the score, and I found it very long, drawn-out and quite boring. I like the fact that you kept your motifs throughout, but you can only do so much with rhythm alone, especially if you aren't going to change the tempo or the melodies and harmonies even a little bit. Yes, you did slow it down and speed it up, but it had almost no effect. Let's not forget, there are no dynamic changes or markings in the piece.

Since you're new, I would definitely stick to smaller pieces for 1) You can focus better and 2) When it comes to people analyzing your music, it's much easier to pick out and explain things than it is to go through a 21 page score and try to tell you things.

Here's some things I heard throughout: Use of perfect 4ths in harmonic AND melodic lines create for a very empty and synthetic sound. Stick to thirds and Sixths when writing moving parts. Only use Octaves/Unison when appropriate, and if you DO use octaves, make sure your parts are in the respective ranges of the instrument.

I was quite saddened to see the Bass and Cello parts overlapping each other. It's common in orchestration that the Bass and Cello parts are are doubled (with the Bass part sound an octave lower, obviously). There were a few parts, however, that did work when they were playing other parts, but 80% of the time it didn't work. The reason for the doubling is so the music sounds full and "complete."

Rule of thumb: Just remember not to cross parts too often; keep each instrument in it's register and when it comes to parts such as Violin I and Violin, the question of range or difficulty isn't so much the case, but each part has it's "importance" to the music. For me, I write simply and give Violin I the top parts and most of the melody and the Violin II parts a special note used for harmony or will compliment the melody with a sixth, third, etc, etc.

I think I touched on the points I wanted to say. Basically:

Material
Dynamics
Part Writing & Orchestration

Good luck. Waiting to hear more. :)

I was quite saddened to see the Bass and Cello parts overlapping each other. It's common in orchestration that the Bass and Cello parts are are doubled (with the Bass part sound an octave lower, obviously). There were a few parts, however, that did work when they were playing other parts, but 80% of the time it didn't work. The reason for the doubling is so the music sounds full and "complete."

Rule of thumb: Just remember not to cross parts too often; keep each instrument in it's register and when it comes to parts such as Violin I and Violin, the question of range or difficulty isn't so much the case, but each part has it's "importance" to the music. For me, I write simply and give Violin I the top parts and most of the melody and the Violin II parts a special note used for harmony or will compliment the melody with a sixth, third, etc, etc.



I just want to disagree with a few things Mazeppa said according to my personal experience in orchestration:

Those two points aren't necessarily true.

Cello and contrabass doesn't have to always double. In fact, it's so overused that it's boring. A lot of modern composers, or rather, if you trace back to even Berlioz, contrabass gets their own parts distinct from the cello line. It's also not always the reason that it sounds 'full'. Everything sounds 'full' if it's orchestrated well.

As for the first and second violin comment... Second violin could be equally competent for melodies. It doesn't always have to be playing thirds, sixths and harmonies. It's merely what the context of the music needs and what colours the composer wants.

---

Invention for Strings

Since I got to look at the score first, let me talk about my first impressions:

You don't really need the tempo marking on each and every stave of the score. Watch out for collisions and little minute details that make the score easy on the eyes (i.e. bar 78, you have a collision). Remember consistency of your notation (i.e. viola at bar 70, write gliss. above your gliss. line, because you did so in most of the other gliss. lines you did in the piece). You have dynamics, but not enough hairpin. So perhaps to help out your string players, you should provide more details on how you as the composer would approach the piece. But yeah, basically, proofread it over a few times and you'll have a clean score.

More in depth critiques:

(Because I feel like listing things today, I shall do so).

1) Bar 6, your first violin is playing the same note as the top part of the second violin. This situation is called the nota muta. In other words, your first violin is going to suddenly 'disappear' from the texture, which isn't a good thing since you're approaching your piece in a melody-harmony manner. Avoid unisons that suddenly happen and then suddenly go away.

2) I like your bass and cello duet at bar 29, though it's kind of lame with computerized play back setting. If it was live, it would've been much better.

3) Bar 44, the transition was a bit awkward... Perhaps it was too quick. Maybe a bar or two more to let the audience reflect a little.

4) For some of the bigger glissandos, you really need to specify how you want to approach it. On one string? Split between two strings?

5) Bar 73, how many solo violas do you want? If you mean that the viola section is playing alone, then you don't need that soli sign at all.

6) Make your rit. lines obvious; unlike yours that's kind of hiding.

7) I liked your octave/unison part toward the end, but make it stand out. It's the final statement of the piece. Make it important.

8) I also notice that you divided your sections a lot. May I suggest you to not do so much of that? I mean, a lot of the times, I see that the notes the divided part play is already covered somewhere else. So it's really unnecessary to put an extra emphasis on a harmony note. For example, bar 12, celli plays E and G. E is already covered in second violins.

9) I don't know whether if you're a string player or not. However, I think you should try to use more strings techniques in this piece. The fact that it's only single note bowing and plucked is kind of... bland. Everyone does it. How about some double stops, Bartok pizz, and harmonics here and there?

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Overall impression:

Well, it's not a bad piece. I see your logic behind it. However, asides from those things mentioned above that hinders this piece from being a good piece, I also think it's a bit too... mechanical. It's not because of form and repetition, though. It's more along the line of how well you're telling a story through your music. Even if you used strict form, you can still give your piece a plotline. You need an introduction of your characters (i.e. theme/motifs), then you develop your characters, then it reaches a climax, and then it resolves... You get the idea. But make the music go somewhere. That's all. :)

Cello and contrabass doesn't have to always double. In fact, it's so overused that it's boring. A lot of modern composers, or rather, if you trace back to even Berlioz, contrabass gets their own parts distinct from the cello line. It's also not always the reason that it sounds 'full'. Everything sounds 'full' if it's orchestrated well.

As for the first and second violin comment... Second violin could be equally competent for melodies. It doesn't always have to be playing thirds, sixths and harmonies. It's merely what the context of the music needs and what colours the composer wants.

I'm not one for fighting, but some simple justification.

I did not say that they always have to double, merely that it's "common in orchestration." I wouldn't just say that without saying why, and when the parts are double it does sound quite full. It's nice to split the parts up, yes I totally agree, but in Dragoncloud's composition here, it does not work. He's a beginner and wants (and needs) to know the common practice of things and, therefore, should know basic orchestration before he experiments too much.

Secondly, I completely agree with your comments on the violin parts. However, I was merely stating (again) that it's good to do something basic then go on from there. I was just stating what I tend to do, and not proposing that he do something, but maybe think about it. "For me, I write simply and give Violin I..."

Ah! I feel better. :)