Polychordal Deep Space

Hey Alex, your piece is really great and I'm far, far away to have your writing skill. However I think the mellow theme at 1'30 doesn't fit well with the rest of the piece. It's perfectly introduced but it took me out of the journey. Am I the only one to feel that ?

 

Feels very Williams-like, going through different parts of an adventure! I'm curious if you did a piano sketch of this before hand, or went straight to orchestration.

 

So....... what did you learn from this ? Any take aways on what YOU feel worked or did not ? Give you any ideas for next areas to focus your practice on ?

Bravo, and I hope you are feeling much better.

PS
When I have a bit more time I can give you some detailed thoughts........ if you think it would be of interest.

PSS. Do you know what Kaufland is ? I fucking loved that place ..... crates of beer as soon as you walk in (fuck veggies)
So much nicer than the very small Aldi I stayed next to for a summer. I must be hungry !

 

I'll give feedback soon. Just want to have the chance to write it out properly.

Yeah... I am a yank so... I liked Aldi, and I have seen some nice, large stores, but the one I had on the outskirts of Berlin was about 4 isles.

I liked it, but something a but weird about it. I think it was the mental internal dialogue of looking at the items ..... Ok Cereal..... some apples... 99$ TV, cheap shitty snorkel mask.... ..wtf ? I was always wondering how did I get from this to this ?

You know the old stupid joke: How is American Beer like making love in a canoe ? Both are fucking close to water.

 

Hey. I am going to start "dripping" in my comments in like 5 minutes intervals during brakes. I keep on meaning to write these, and I simply am not going to have a large chunk of time in the next week or two........ so..... I will "micro-post" Hang-in there and hopefully something will be helpful (or not)
__________________________________________________________________________________________________________________
***
My only request to anyone not named Alexander or Mike V. : If I post anything that you either agree or disagree with, or want to ask questions about etc., please simply begin a new thread and I will comment over there. This way all comments stay on Alexander's work, and I won't think you are a dick, so I will be happy to lively discussion over there.
_________________________________________________________________________________________________________________

Ok.... since you are pretty advanced with your craft, some of these concepts might be a little abstract at first. They have really helped me however.

The opening up to about 51 seconds sounds great. I am going to post some ideas on how you can expand that opening, and also look at 51 - to about 1:18. IMO, this is the first real structural flaw in the piece. ....... but this has to be continued (sorry....gotta run)

 

I'll get to it properly above, but the short answer is how you "control repetition". The contrast is nice, and the idea sounds good.
It has nothing to do with harmony, orchestration or anything like that. I personally call it "hide your tracks".

more soon

 

I have been meaning to write more on this forever. Apologies if this video makes no sense what so ever.
It's one of those things where I have a lot to say, .....but not really with time.

Basically, one composer --- and there are others - I would suggest checking out is Bernard Hermann. Only for his use of repetition and what I call "Hidding your Tracks"

I am trying to say in this video, that "patterns" and preset moods have been apart of film music from the start. The 1st example is from a piano book that was sold @1915-1920 that had a bunch of "moods" for piano players to play. My point is, if you "cover your tracks" (meaning at least hide your tricks) it will be much more interesting. * I don't always mean wether you have lifted a melody or not. The first two examples are just that when melodies are lifted, without a masking .....well simply we see your tracks.

The Vaughn Williams example is something BH wrote an article about. He quoted this piece and passage. He felt is summed up the entire mood of the work with just a few notes, and praised this.

I then used 451 as being "not a great example". We can see how mono and blocky it is. However it still develops. Why ? There still is a sense of high point, journey or something transcending the pattern.

Last: Psycho. Here is classic B.h

He only has 4 modules for the entire work. He gets so much out of it, and great example of "hiding his tracks" I put a color around each unique module.

The harmonic language is not important. I am including these as devices of "varied repetition"

Hope it makes some sense

 

Thanks for this! Aptly timed, quite useful for what I'm working on right now (trying to salvage old pieces devoid of structure).

I wish Mike would do a class on Hermann.

 

Overall it's a nice track! I'll give more in depth feedback when I have more time for it but the one thing that stick out to me and that I can't "unhear" is that you have the strings playing sus/leg at 0:10 instead of short, detached notes. The samples really fall apart in that area, but more importantly, I think you lose the energy you had established in the first ten seconds. I'd reach for short notes on the strings from 0:10 to 0:14.

When you posted this as an orchestration challenge, I did get started on it, but never got around to finish it. I'm just putting this up so you can hear what I mean (between 0:12 and 0:16 on my piece corresponds to 0:10 -> 0:14 on yours). Completely ignore the rest (especially the end). It's unfinished and not representative of anything. It's just that I had already exported this file and it's easier for me to let you hear what I mean than to try and explain it through text.

https://drive.google.com/open?id=1HLgHs3lLw6i1uL2pIRAnCZbjNADU5Np5

I'll try to give more in-depth feedback later