First classical composistion

  • Thread starter Thread starter dragonworks
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I copied the link from torture for your ears and that one works so I wonder why this one doesnt? I went to the site and copied it from the site and I am pretty sure it works now, works for me?
 
I found it anyways, I just did www.nowhereradio.com and it is right on the front page under new songs.

I did the time, 10 minutes twentyfour seconds to be exact.

Let's see, where to start?

Well, nice try on your first classical piece. You have a reasonable grasp of a form, the use of a motif, decent attempt at an orchestration, nice shot at colors.

Suggestions: Instead of repeating your motif (the first being g-a-b-a-g) over and over, try to develop it and expand upon it. This is what the classical guys do. Try to stretch the motive, play it different rythyms, different keys, etc. Try it upside down even.

Make more contrast of the various sections of your piece. They sound a bit too much the same.

Try a better violin patch, that one doesnt cut it. Also, the tuba stuff seems a bit much.

If you choose to end that way, maybe a slower wind down to niente ( nothing).

Kepp up the good work, Dave the classical geek
 
Streaming fine for me - I'm listening and typing. I'm assuming this is the BIG file that Waldo was referring to.

I'm less than three minutes in and that da da DA da da "riff" is already stuck to my head.

Made it to the 4:00 "calm" section. Approaching 5:00 and sounds like a prelude to something.....yup here's the happy major stuff.

I feel like Howard Cosell...........

Tragedy scene at 6:00? Whoa - now it's downright sad. Someone die?

Ah - past 7:00 and here come the horses and soldiers!

Bum note at 7:56?

8:25 finds us in the Middle East somewhere.

Love those unison passages at 9:50!

And back to the da da DA da da for the ending.



I need a cigarette.

Dragon - did you improvise this?

I'm basically a blues fart, but I really enjoyed this.
 
Yeah I improvised it, no rewrites, straight off the top of my head.
Like I said I have no classical training so I will listen to what David K the classical geek has to say and if I ever try another one I will try to incorporate these things in. Also I am a guitar player and not a keyboard player so I cant play any real fast parts because basically I cant play keyboards very well. Theres probably lots of bum notes? Its a midi piece and I fixed most of the screw ups there but each track was all one take and improvised.
 
Dragon - leave it the way it is. It works - for me anyway.
 
Dragon .. I thought this piece was cool .. the first 5 minutes .. lol


it is a little long hun ...

maybe shorten it up a little ...

even for a broadway or hollywood production this is a little long

I like it alot though ... good work ! Lana
 
Lanac
Do you listen to classical often because it is actually a little short?
 
I guess I have never paid attention to how long they are . lol..

it was not a critisim towards the song .. I listened to it all the way through .. and never tired of it ... did not bore me ...

just lookin at how long it was .. I was like YIKES !!!


I really really like though ... so if that is normal ... then I apologize !!

Lana
 
Now who's jerkin' who's chain? :D
Straight off the top of your little head? Impressive. I concur psmith's story line. I love how classical pieces let you take a ride and make up the plot as fits your interpretation.

I'd save it just the way it is for prosperity if you intend to play with it further.
 
I checked out this piece again. When I start posting, you owe me
20 minutes and 48 seconds of listening time.

Classical music is weird, you gotta listen to it a bunch to make a judgement. On 2nd hearing, I like it much better. The two sections of Waltz music are very cool, no doubt. With a real band playing, it would be very interesting, sounds like early Shostakovich. Not a bad keyboard, the qs8. Thats Alesis, right?

I am curious:

How did you do this?

Quantizing, slow tempo, editing, blah-blah?

Why did you do this? I will assume sudden inspiration?

What kind of classical music do you listen to, or do you?
There are certain classical forms present ( Canon, Recapitulation, theme and variations, Passacaglia,etc). Either you are very observant or you have heard classical music beyond the standard Mozart and Bach.

As I said before, it is a very cool first effort, you should try another one. Write down a plan before you start; Improvising it is fine, but improvise on a master plan with peaks and valleys in the general outline: for example:
Start slow and simple, build slowly, section by section, and increase the orchestration as you go. Come to a Climax, and then back off musically and instrumentally until the conclusion.

Keep in mind that there are not a lot of people who can do what you did, so pat yourself on the back.
 
Im not jerking anyones chain. I am not a keyboard player. I went out and bought the alesis QS8 (which is always getting dissed as cheesy) then I bought musicshop, a 99 dollar sequencer program form opcode and loaded it on my old mac computer and I sat down to see what I could do with it and that is what came out
I started at around 10 am and finished the next day at around 2pm without a break basically.(I guess I really got into it.) I just started with the first section, 1 track, and thought that sounds pretty cool and added the rest of the instrumentation to that and then did the next section, and so on. I had to go into the midi files and fix alot of notes as I went because I am not a keyboard player but I didnt fiddle with the time much, just wrong notes (I loved the midi for that). The second small section I cheated a little, I played the first part and then cut and pasted and changed key as the basis then added on top of that. I hate to say this but the waltz part is actually the chord progression to the chorus of Nantucket Sleighride, if I didnt admit to it no one would probably ever know but I love the progression so much I had to incorporate it, just in a different form, the rest is totally mine.
I listen to classical sometimes, Bethoveen, Listz, Dvorak, I kind of fell in love with it from cartoons when I was a kid. Remember the dissapearing minah bird in the warner bros. cartoon with Listz's Hungarian Rhapsody No. 2 I think in the background and the one where they built the building and it went faster and faster till the end when they shut the door and the whole building collapsed.
I always liked the Moody Blues, Emerson Lake and Plamer, Yes, Strawbs etc. but I dont really listen to classical much.
There was no quantization or tempo change or anything like that.
David I am not familiar with the classical terms you speak of, it just sounded cool.
 
Very cool Dragonworks, you have lot's of talent, keep it up.

YESwatch: 38 hours and counting. I am playing with YES on Friday night. Getting into it now, I was a big fan of them, hope they are still good. Jon Anderson, Steve Howe, Chris Squire and Alan White are gonna be there, although Wakeman is not. Damn.
I will be giving a full report after the show, but I gotta be honest: I cant fucking wait!!
 
DW, you do know that was a compliment wrapped in humor, right? Sure ya do. But just in case.....

Let me dry it up some:
An interesting study in the employment of various instruments derived from midi based software collaborating to present a truly inspiring first work from an artist with no prior schooling in the classical arts.
Takes the listener down stream thru the dark forests emmerging in open fields of lush colour and rejoicing piccillos. A march begins in a canyon of waltz, climbing steadily to a triumphant cresendo in an explosion of large brass and cybmals at the mountain's peak!
An impromptu effort that develops an emmotional agenda of it's own with well used and placed instruments. Bravo!

Put more simply....I dug it and I admire your imagination and creativity. :cool:
 
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Wow... Impressed...

As David already said. You should try more variation on your basic motive. Even distant variations, or a second theme for a 10min piece. Especially the 4 first minutes could use more variations on the theme.

After 4:10 it starts to flow, big mood changes, I like that alot. First dragging rhytm smoothly flowing into a waltz, evolving further. I'm actually really amazed at how you used that same motive in that many moods while hardly varying it at all!!

Using the motive in the accompaniment is also a very common thing to do. You used that alot.

What it could use is a richer harmonic context from time to time. Maybe you really should consider getting a little deeper into this, you have the talent... A book you really should consider is Schoenberg's Fundamentals of Musical Composition. While you might not get all of it, it has a very interesting part on the use of motives and variations. If you can read music, you can understand it.

Also, maybe a little less percussion... Try using horns and pizzicato's to give accents more. At times it felt as if there was a drummer in it. :)

I liked it. I'm still amazed at how you used that same motive in all those moods without varying it! That's one of the things schoenberg suggests as exercise in his book that I thought of as -oh-my- :D
 
I cant read music and really dont have the time to learn. Will work with your suggesstions if I ever do another classical piece though.
My wife keeps pushing me but I am so busy with work, house, kids, rock bands, this site, etc, you know how it goes. I do know basic theory though, you know how to build chords, progressions, scales etc.
 
dragonworks, did you save this as a midi file, and if so, can you send it as a midi file?
 
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