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Exercise feedback

Discussion in 'Critique & Feedback' started by Matt Varone, Aug 11, 2017.

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  1. #1 Matt Varone, Aug 11, 2017
    Hi everyone,

    Made this little piece as an exercise while fooling around with "the orchestra" VST (great stuff btw, so much fun)

    Wondering if anyone has feedback on the following points:
    * Composition: Does the horizontal development make any sense at all?
    - I have such a hard time with this. Coming up with material and have it be cohesive.

    * Orchestration: Anything that would obviously wouldn't work in real life?



    Thanks so much in advance
    Matt
     
  2. #2 Alexander Schiborr, Aug 11, 2017
    First of all: Cool piece! I guess it depends..there is not much horizontal development in the classic filmmusic approach in your track. I feel that it is more like a continous buildup here with slight modal interchanges sometimes but overall I would say more or less it stays the same. But that is completely fine and does not make your track a bad piece of music. But when you want more horizontal development you need to do more with your motif.
    The good thing is you have a motif, like the first thing from the beginning to 26 seconds. Then you go and modulate a step or somthing up but keep the rest pretty much the same also orchestrationally and that keeps throughout your track.
    But horizontal development works a kind of bit different from what I try learn myself. And there are many many ways what you can do with your motif:
    1. Your motif is very intervallic so why not making a scalewise motion of melody..later on?
    2. Your chords are minor pretty much all the time. Why not trying to make a lighter major variant of your motif and built on that. At 1:13 min you seem to be try something in that direction which I like.
    3. Why only one motif? Create a counter motif to your existing motif which? You could feature something like that in a b-Section.
    4. Also what I understood is, once the listener is familiar with your idea, you can go more out of your normal chord structures and experiment more with tensions in your chords. You have minor very intervallic theme of your motif. Create a happy one, a marching one, a sad one..a wonderous one..there are many ways to create different stages and versions. There it would be good to know how achieve moods in your music. What chord progressions let sound something "wonderours" or "sad" or "evil". A good example would be Mikes The Race Track. There is a lot of what I say here inside.
    5. Work with contrasts! You can achieve contrasts on so many different ways: Dynamic wise (loud / quite), orchestrational choices in texture. You can do it musically with harmony (happy / dark), scalewise motion / intervallic motion etc etc.

    The posibilities are almost endless. I know that is not easy to keep everything in mind. Maybe one thing you should try out before writing a 3 min track: Create a motif and do variations of your motif. Create a tons them. Do that also with 2-3 different motifs, have one for your "hero", one for the evil guy and a princess or something like that.

    Probably or my recommendation: You should look at Mike Masterclass "The Race" as it gives you very good ideas how to do those things.
     
    Paul T McGraw, Matt Varone, Doug Gibson and 1 other person like this.
  3. #3 Matt Varone, Aug 11, 2017
    Last edited: Aug 11, 2017
    Hi Alexander,

    Wow, thanks so much for the feedback! Somehow I had this idea that it would be best to stick to the same motif/melody and vary it slowly across the piece, mostly to maintain cohesiveness and don't have it feel like 3 different pieces stuck into one (which tends to happen to me a lot). I totally see now how this is actually perceived like building up rather than developing horizontally. Definitely going to work on having more motives and making the "feeling" of these vary throughout the piece. I already have the race masterclass, queued to watch it again and put all of this into practice.

    Much appreciated
     
  4. #4 Francesco Bortolussi, Aug 11, 2017
    Some thoughts:
    • My biggest criticism is on the main idea: the motif is very simple (which is not a bad thing), but you never repeat the same melody/passage twice. Every time I thought I knew the idea, you always changed it to something else. If you pay close attention, you state the idea until 0:42, and then at the second pass you change it to a different idea (even if it's similar, it's another melody).
    • The second time through the idea, other than changing it, you put a counterpoint. Not only I would state the melody exactly as you did the first time, but I would also delay the counterpoint for a third pass through the idea, as the audience doesn't really know your melody yet; one time is not enough.
    • The B theme at 1:18 could work if the A theme was more clear, which is not at this point (2 times through the A without any change to the melody is a good rule of thumb). Moreover, at this point the ostinato is starting to overstay its welcome; I would move the accompaniment to another instrument/family, changing the pattern to maybe chords or something else.
    • At 1:48 you re-state the A theme, except you change notes AND rhythm. Another good rule of thumb is that the rhythm should be the last thing that changes in a development (or that doesn't change at all), as people latch onto rhythm a lot more easily than notes. This means that changing notes is not as a dramatic of a change as it is changing rhythm.
    • If we don't take into account that you changed the A theme every pass through the idea, for the coda I would much rather do a big version of the A theme than another idea altogether. Or some orchestrational variation of it.
    My takeaway here is that you were to indecisive to choose ONE pattern, so you threw 20 different (similar) lines into the piece. Choose one melody, or one set of melodies (4 bars) and stick to it; repeat the pattern EXACTLY the same AT LEAST 2 times. And then at your third pass, change only the harmony, or add the counterpoint. It's not a strict "rule" but it's a good rule of thumb.

    The ostinato is another problem: orchestrationally-speaking there is not much development here because the ostinato goes on unchanged for 3 full minutes. It becomes tiring, and its "epicness" becomes boring after the first minute (or even before that, because it's so overused in today's music). Move the chords around the orchestra and clean up the colors. Dropping the ostinato would immediately give your piece a new life in my opinion, and it would give you endless possibilities on carrying the harmony forward.

    And speaking of things not really playable as you imagine it:
    • The ostinato is hard to keep up for players of a string section throughout the whole piece. Imagine yourself being a viola player in your piece. I would be probably get very frustrated after 2 minutes of this.
    • Let the flute player breathe at the beginning, and let the french horn player breathe at the end! There are no breaks, and without them it's also difficult to understand what's the musical line, where it begins-ends. Try to sing your melody as the flute/horn plays it, and you'll naturally breathe where you want to have a break in the melody line.

    I was very honest and very harsh in this post, but it's because I want to see people really improve in this forum. It's all tough love, as Mike would say! :D And remember that I'm just one asshole with an opinion.
     
    Matt Varone likes this.
  5. #5 Matt Varone, Aug 11, 2017
    Last edited: Aug 26, 2017
    Thanks Francesco, so much to take from your feedback.

    Right of the batt I realize that I should have had more clear in my head what was the main motif and make sure that was clear on the piece as well. It clearly wasn't locked for me, so I can't expect it to be any different for the listener. Also that it's hard for me to figure out what counts as development and what as changing the idea altogether, I got that wrong. And lastly, that I suffer two problems Mike mentions often, the slow writing and overwriting.

    I started fooling around on piano and came up with the first melody (played by flute at the beginning), that to me felt more like an introduction, a "simple version" of what was going to come next. So on the second pass I added a few more notes to evolve it and make it more interesting. I thought this actually "counted" as horizontal development as ashamed I am to admit it.

    Then added part B cause I felt it need something new, and then back to a version of the A theme with some changes to keep it fresh. Lastly ending in some sort of build up.

    The counterpoint on the second pass was definitely overwriting, it was later after hearing it many times that I felt there was still room for something more.

    I kept the orchestration/arrangement the same because I honestly wasn't confident on how to change it without being too abrupt or having it sounds like different pieces stuck together. Same as the ostinato, it feel like something to lock in to, so I wasn't sure to let it go. Overall looking back I would say It felt more cohesive for me to keep it the same. Definitely need to work on this. And totally makes sense about the breathing. Now that I hear it again I realize there is no space at all on those lines!

    A lot to think about and practice. Thanks again for your time and advice.
     
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