Tricks or Tips to improve

Hi, Samuel!

Just my own thoughts on this - it feels like there's actually a pretty good piece in there. At the moment, there are a few things that take away from how it comes across, to my ear.

First, the melody could use a trimming - there's too many notes. Not that you can't have melodies with lots of notes, but you need for there to be a reason for every note to have a place. Here, there's some clear ideas, and then filagrees and ornaments on top that make it confusing - is that run up idea important, or the kind of upper mordent (the twiddle upwards thing), or...well, there are lots of them, and it keeps the theme from having a strong identity.

Really thinking about that theme would probably solve the second problem - at the moment it sounds made up at the keyboard, rather than written down and played to sound made up by the instrumentalists, if that makes sense. There's improvising, and then there's sounding like you're improvising at the keyboard, and especially string sections will never sound like the latter. Sitting down and making decisions and then bringing those decisions out when you play will solve that one.

There's an orchestral same-ness to the sound - strings are the soul of the orchestra, sure, but those strings are doing a heck of a lot of heavy lifting in your piece, and so the theme is a bit character-less. It's meant to be emotional, but what kind? What kind of emotion, in what place? Those tenuto-like articulations throughout the first theme give the melody a sort of 'restrained' character - if that's what you're going for, why not try to make everything about the piece reflect that? If you're going for period drama 'I love you, Mr. Darcy, but this can never be' stuff, then giving the accompaniment job to mid-range bassoons is going to make much clearer the sickly, swooning in corsets, unrequited vibe. Or - whatever it is that most clearly says what it is that the theme is meant to say.

Hope that's more helpful than rambling

 

I believe what Brian means by that has nothing to do with the library, but the actual idea in the composition - each instrument is unique in the types of lines instrumentalists play on it and in this case it would seem you took the transcription of a keyboard improvisation and told the string players to perform it.