Hello, it's me the crazy pianist again.
I've done a lot more work on the piano composition I shared a little while back. It's still not perfect, but wanted to get some more feedback to see if I'm on the right track. Hopefully I'm moving forward to creating a better composition, but I'll let you be the judge of that.
Added a few more sections to try and break it up, but the actual sections I've left quite similar, changed a few notes and rhythms, and endings of sections, also added some tempo changes, rits and accelerando and such. Will probably add more of this as I go on, still learning how to master Sibelius, but hopefully I can use it to its full potential before I have to submit the composition.
My intention is to add in a much calmer introduction section, since I've still got around 30 seconds to play with, but all of the ideas I've had so far have been discarded. Beginnings are the one thing I never seem to be able to do at all. But yes, just keeping in mind the start of this won't be the starting place of the final composition, so it's not going to be as abrupt and in your face.
Rui, I tried using the interrupted cadence for bars 32-33 but I still don't think it sounds as smooth as it could be. Would you have any suggestions as to how to fix this? I definitely don't want to finish on the C# Minor chord, since I begin the next section with that, but nothing I've tried so far is to my satisfaction.
Unity, I have tried to get more of by repeating a couple of sections, though as you suggested Rui, I've added a couple of changes so I am not simply repeating the exact same passage. But let me know what you think, I need all the feedback I can get my hands on.
Enjoy!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ubXe0x5C9dM
It's still a bit over the place but there's significant improvement. The difference is that now, there's several characters present in the composition, which is fantastic. The problem lies in that sometimes, the new character (or change of tone or whatever) is introduced in a really 'strange' manner. Every now and then, this is actually good, because it produces a bit of tension. However too much of it is kinda unnecessary.
E.g. Of course, the diminuendo contributes to bringing the melody back down, but bar 10 feels a bit too much. The chord sequence there feels a bit overdone and keep in mind that your upper note represents the melody, which you want to be a bit more 'fluent' if you're trying to bring in something calmer. Maybe even split it into two bars so that we have a slower change of pace and dynamics?
Not gonna point out too much of 'where where where' this time, and this is because the composition is actually coming together. Critiquing too much here would risk you damaging your composition to incorporate all the feedback. Play it again and just look out for when some things are a bit too much (e.g. I found bar 10 was too rapid at making it calmer)
One good thing that has come (which I'm not sure, if it was there previously) - The key change at bar 30 actually feels in place now; it feels very connected to the previous key.
Bit daring using
two glissandos here.
Maybe start by delaying the resolve into bar 33. Your key changes, but you use the rit. in a way such that it seems to attempt to finish off that section asap. Also you didn't really use a cadence; it can't have been interrupted because it was i-v and not v-VI, but more importantly it doesn't follow cadence principles; it's just a chord progression. (Besides, the interrupted cadence is extremely hard to use; it's probably the least 'smooth' of the four principal cadences.)
For starters, I'd delay the resolve a tad more (definitely no more than 6 bars of delaying). Then, tweak the rit a bit. That ritardando was placed so that the notes that built up the scale pattern were played a bit too slowly. Finally, with the notes, two comments. First is a bit optional; consider if you want a scale pattern, or just an in-between note. E.g. in one of my pieces (obviously different key) the ending was more like G, then Eb (in the octave ABOVE), F# (back to original octave), G. That maybe worth mentioning. Second is in regards to the actual two chords. You can consider writing a chord in first inversion instead, by making the bass note the third rather than the root of the chord. You can also consider stepping it down. Could also take out some of the notes in the chord; you may be surprised, but a chord doesn't have to include ALL the notes in it, if you do it right
I'll be honest, it's smoother than what you think. I feel as though it's more the way that it gets built (the slowing down) that makes it feel weird.