/comp/ - Composition General

>>68754802
Ah fuck, I left in an [embed]. Oh well.

What have you been working on lately, /comp/? I'm finally making headway on my string trio, which is good because it needs to be done a week from Monday. I'll post my wip here later today.

>>68755447

I only come to /mu/ about twice a year, see knowing but hip-hop, rap and indie rock and immediately leave so it's nice to see something related to classical music. Are threads like this popular? Are the pieces of music people post any good?

bump

cmon /comp/ i know you can do this

I'm going to school for composition, and currently focusing on orchestrating winds and brass. The more I learn about this specific topic, the more I fall in love with the french horn. That shit is so fucking versatile, I mean, holy shit that range. What are your favorite instrument to write for?

>>68757979
I got stuck in a trade so I never got to go to uni. I wrote a little bit but always got stuck due to my lack of knowledge of theory. I've read a few books on music theory but I'm too lazy without someone prodding me to go that extra mile necessary to really learn. That's why everything I wrote was for a keyboard instrument, it made it easier.

>>68754802
I'm not looking to start a fight with anyone but I'm curious on how limiting it is to use theory in terms of creating groundbreaking music?

I feel like if you follow set rules and guidelines then music becomes less of an art and more of a calculated cookie cutting process where songs follow predictable ups and downs. I actually wrote a very complicated piece on the guitar using only my mind and no theory and I've had really good feedback on it: https://soundcloud.com/the-bamboo-shoots/time-runs-money-funds

Just curious.

>>68759328
I think you misunderstand what theory is. Musical theory is not a set of rules. Musical theory is merely descriptive. A composer wants to do something in a piece of music to achieve an effect. The composer knows what it is he wants to do and how he wants to do it. Later on people analyze what was done to create rules on how to do it based on what the composer did. The important thing to note is that the composer makes a well reasoned, intelligent decision as to what needs to be done. This is why music theorists can come along later to codify it, because it was an intelligent decision on the part of the composer that has uses reason.

tldr music theory is descriptive, not prescriptive.

>>68756572
/comp/ has seen better days, but it's at least weekly. There have been some real gems here and there, I'm thinking of one theme and variations for musical box a long time ago.

made it just in time
bump

>>68761453

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I guess cause no one is posting shit. I'll post my generic sounding track. I say generic beacuse I ended on the I and I think I could have ended with a more interesting or unresolved ending.

https://clyp.it/1jevhgmk

>>68759328
>very complicated
lmao, this is so simple. What's complicated about arhythmic asynchronous layered blues licks

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Ugh. This is a pure piece of shit. I've been working on this for 3 days on about somewhat 2 weeks ago, gave up since as I hated this so much. Anyway here's mine.

>>68762446
This is a nice start, you could make this real nice with some more work on it

Bamp. Going to post something in a minute to try and get some feedback

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I am trying to write a sad as song using a I-iv-IV-V progression. I do not want it to be completely uninteresting musically though. So Here is the progression I have so far (without counting the extensions I threw in everywhere)

DM7-C#m7-Cdom7-Bmin7-Gmaj7-Adom7

What could I do to make this have a more potent impact on this listener? Also how would someone go about creating a vocal melody for this? It's baby's first time doing this sort of thing so I figured here would be the best place to turn to

https://clyp.it/50ctnrq0

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>source readings in music history, compiled by Oliver Strunk
>...the semitone (256/243) being obtained by subtracting the sum of two whole tones (9/8 plus 9/8 equals 81/64) from the fourth (4/3).
>9/8 + 9/8 = 81/64
Well, he's an early 20th century musicologist, not a mathematician.

And yeah, the fact that you move by multiplying and dividing rather than adding and subtracting is a bit counterintuitive, but frequencies are logarithmic after all.

>>68759328
You have no idea what music theory actually is and "not knowing" any theory doesn't mean you are not using it.

what do you guys think of this?
https://clyp.it/ybr3zlkf

it's a 5 guitars arrangement of mr christmas mr lawrence.

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This seems like kind of an advanced topic but, does anyone on /comp/ have any insight into orchestrating musical "sound effects", for lack of a better term? An example of what I mean is at the third measure here in Daphnis et Chloe:
https://youtu.be/sYNlYMvFA5U?t=13m47s

I can't figure out what he's doing with either the harmony or the orchestration, or if this is a common pattern at all for these kinds of sweeps. Anyone here really into Ravel who can help me out?

>>68766194
These kind of sweeps are pretty common to impressionism. As for the harmony I'd say that's an EbDom chord, no number specified because at this level of extension (EbDom15 no 13th?), really all that's defining it as an EbDom as opposed to a Cmin of some variety is that the lowest note is Eb.

As for the orchestration, the score's on IMSLP. This kind of heavy orchestration I've always struggled with hearing myself, so I'll just leave you with a great example of heavy orchestration (although romantic rather than impressionist).
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MWm5GRfK2Fk

>>68767516