Over the winter break I finally decided to take a shot at this. Like I said in the title this is my first composition, I've used muse score a little bit before but I'm sure there's still dozens of little screw ups you could find in here. I've also had no formal training so I'd be curious to see what you folks with it think of something like this.

Score: https://musescore.com/user/70236931/scores/22497340

For feedback here are some specific questions I have:

- Are there any sections that felt annoying or maybe boring to you?

- How should I better handle swells and transitions?

- Any awkward moments? How would you fix them?

- Is it too muddy at some points?

- Any crucial mistakes that scream amateur?

Any other comments at all are of course appreciated. I feel like I could continue working on this for 50 more hours but for the sake of my own growth I feel like I need to just move on.

I'm in no way qualified to call myself a composer or even experienced at piano / music theory (technically I know the basics, but never practiced them).

Still, I attempted to transcribe orchestral pieces since I thought this would give me a rough idea about how melodies are structured, and I could reverse engineer music theory applied in there.

While doing so I quickly left Cubase behind after I got the chords (or at least what I believed to be the chords), since I learned a piano arrangement of orchestral pieces consists of much more than just doing an exact copy of the chords used.

I found it to be much more comfortable to just write down the notes as letters (a,b (h in German),c,d,e,f,g). Proper sheet music just takes much too long to write down, and I consider it impractical for sketching up something...

Even the Key Editor (Piano Roll) within Cubase I found very awkward to work with, since I'd constantly scroll left or right to compare bars / segments within my transcription.

How do you note down stuff?

Directly within a DAW?

Or straight as sheet music?

Hi, so I am basically a beginner. I currently would like to compose music for the piano, as I have been playing it for 7+ years, and have admired the works of the great composers such as Chopin, Bach, Beethoven, Rach, Scriabin, Mozart etc.

I've had a few goes at composition, but they haven't turned out the best. I wrote 3 very poor preludes. Except for 1 which was decent. And 1 nocturne (which wasn't really a nocturne and more like a broken waltz).

I understand decently complex music theory, such as modes, chord progressions, intervals, keys, modulation, forms etc.

What are some resources, and exercises I should do to get started on making some decent compositions.

Also, how should I analyze existing music in order to help myself learn composition?

piece made in 2 weeks so what do you think

https://musescore.com/user/46216997/scores/22475692

I have been a musician for years, and I can almost auto harmonize to a rhythm. However, I have 10 songs wrote oout with notes but no sheet music. I have recordings of each of them, but I don’t know how to write it all down. Would someone be willing to help?

Hello, premier post pour moi ici! J'ai récemment mis en ligne une compo style rock Fr / électro nommée "dans la lune". J'essaye de recueillir des avis objectifs sur ma musique, j'ai passé pas mal de temps sur l'enregistrement / mix et Mastering tout cela en auto production (ça m'as pris beaucoup de temps car je voulais avoir le meilleur son possible). je partage les liens spotify et deezer. Ps : il y a aussi deux autre compos plus anciennes dispos. Merci pour vos avis :) .

https://open.spotify.com/intl-fr/album/1g2kf0Cg78xtDC0AKOwtuJ

 https://www.deezer.com/fr/album/684112171

This piece is really interesting I think, it has a lot of ideas but all of them are not so structured. First of all my goal is combining styles together so it creates interesting fusion. But I really need to learn composition to structure my ideas. Anyway despite on all minuses I think this piece has the right to be heard)

https://youtu.be/bSls4FbNaWA?si=hdcqJoFqh7XrNNvt

A few weeks ago I posted a borderline aleatoric orchestral piece called 'Hajimaru Houkai' on Reddit, which was when I learned about the tone-poem subgenre (which in and of itself is really nothing more than cinematic scoring):

https://youtube.com/watch?v=h7fDp5iJIVM

Now, this piece is quite irregular / experimental imo, with improvised piano segments scattered throughout a rhythmic and clearly composed violin ensemble.

I've been tempted to create a piano arrangement for some time and already began transcribing the chords as well as I managed to... But I really wonder if one could arrange a piano version in a way that doesn't sound messed up.

The violins carry most of their impact through swelling, which I already experimented with and believe the best solution is to use an appregio going over at least two, or rather three octaves, to slowly build up the chords.

This might work, but I really failed to make out a clear progression. It seems like the string chords seem to not repeat at all, and I'm already halfway through everything (excluding the violin solo near the end, which I'm 99% sure I'll have to imitate something similar for, since I already tried transcribing it and basically broke down in the process of deciphering the actual chords used).

Not sure if these swelling parts use a through composed progression, but it really seems to me like that. The moment the drums kick in I was half expecting them to start over, perhaps an octave lower, but as far as I'm able to tell currently (transcribing low pitched chords is much more difficult) they don't.

The improvised piano parts are easy enough to transcribe, for the intro at the very beginning I could also use AnthemScore which provided a useable output.

But these are also my major concern right now... Wouldn't they sound kinda crappy on piano if I insert them between the "swelling appregios" just like that?

Has anyone ever composed something similar / experiences?

As it stands now, in the end my only 'regularity' in the rhythm would stem from the bass clef (depicting drums / the synths at the beginning, albeit these are difficult to arrange) and the appregios I use for the swelling violins.

This has to somehow support and carry the improvised piano segments throughout the entire piece...

Would you say it's worth giving it a shot?

Thanks!

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Quiz time! With a prize! In this devilish Christmas piano medley I have hidden 5 well-known tunes by Chopin, Mozart, Mussorgsky, Holst, and that most prolific yet reclusive of writers, A. N. Onymous. Four are quite easy to spot I think, one is harder.

How many can your well-trained ear discern? Let me know in the comments to the video. If anyone gets all five I’ll send you a free copy of the sheet music to download, and a few other piano pieces of mine too. If no one gets all five, the person with the most correct answers will win the prize. Good luck!

I'm writing a song about anxiety, the fast pace of everyday life, and the importance of slowing down.

For this, I am considering starting with a very fast BPM, creating an almost hardcore/punk vibe, and then gradually decreasing it until it transitions into an atmospheric ambient sound with shoegaze and dub influences.

Could you help me with good references for inspiration?

On tweak i need help

I'm thinking about songs I have listened to over the years that share short licks or phrases with comedic meanings, and wondering if these have names they're known by.

There's "Shave and a haircut, two bits" which has words so I guess that's its name. But there are others.

This release by Weird Al has "Shave and a haircut" immediately followed by some other cliche at about 3:50 on this video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y0ZoX4dBvwk - to me, this suggests "that's the end of the song" - it's essentially something like G G G D E C ... then maybe a sustained note. (This was also at the end of the "You Can't Do that on Television" theme.) To me, this almost signifies a "ta-da, we did it" in a comedic way.

Then there's one that's used at about 47 seconds in, the middle of this children's song, with the lyrics "Flap-a-doodle doo, Flap a doodle-dee. Fall on your face with me.” The notes are something like B A# B C# B, B A# B C# B,  BBB C# D D# - sometimes only the last bit of it gets used. Sometimes when it's done, everyone present shouts "hey!"

https://youtu.be/FxGquT17G6c?si=SCLdwUC4l-nqznyT

Another one I encountered is a 5-note cliche that signifies “there’s more to this song.” You can find that at about 43:28 or so into this video of The Midnight Special with Andy Kaufman. (A performance by “Tony Clifton”)

https://youtu.be/sINO2NgxVEQ?si=FnDin549WXomD2N8&t=2608

(It’s like an E D# E C# A)

Do these cliches have names? I’d like to learn the history of these musical cliches but I don’t know how to look them up. I hear them a lot.

I feel like I have heard these thousands of times, but aside from “Shave and a Haircut,” I have no idea what to call them.

https://reddit.com/link/1hcm1kv/video/26y83a00ff6e1/player

An original synth-pop composition with both 80s and, strangely enough, even some medieval vibes.

https://youtu.be/9DWcovUeXa8

Current creating a piece called "The Swarm" and wanted to know how to replicate that kind of sound

Hi everyone. I thought I'd post this here for those interested. Over on /r/Counterpoint, we are beginning a series walking through species counterpoint. Here's the first thread. Please join us if you'd like to try your hand at the exercises and get some feedback.