# Orchestral piece "Largo IV"



## Silence-is-Golden (Apr 22, 2018)

If you can spare 9 minutes of your time to listen and comment that will be most welcomed.

I still have several areas of attention in this piece myself but it is time for some other ears and perceptions then my own.

Any comment on mix, balance, composition, orchestration is applicable. 

Thanks in advance


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## Paul T McGraw (Apr 22, 2018)

Very Bernard Hermann in feeling and the harmonies remind me of him. I enjoyed the piece, but I did feel it a bit too long for the material included. I think the ending 90 seconds or so is very good. Likewise the beginning. So any cuts should be somewhere in the middle. Cutting material you have slaved over to create is a hard thing to do. But it forces us to really think about what is our strongest and best material. The piece is usually stronger as a result.

It is not the length of 9 minutes. That is a very average length for a movement of classical music. But to keep it that length you need some material offering greater contrast in my opinion.


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## Silence-is-Golden (Apr 23, 2018)

Thanks to all who have listened.

@Paul T McGraw 
I take your comments and and will do a review of the piece, for the sake of learning from any source( that is how I treat it)

That I understand your point of view: does this mean you lost interest to keep listening, or too much similar patterns, figures....?
Are you willing to to expand a bit more what you missed?

Thanks


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## Rob (Apr 25, 2018)

I like it, and it's very well done, I feel though that Paul has a point... too long to be absolute music, not so if it's intended as accompaniment to images. There's no clear melodic material to follow the development of, if there's any... in a well structured piece you witness the transformation of one or two ideas that evolve and show different sides of themselves and blend creating always interesting material. In this case, sounds more like a juxtaposition of nice sonorities, to me of course...


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## JonesyXL (Apr 25, 2018)

Great work. As Rob said it's very well done. You clearly have a lot of skill in orchestration and midi production. The way it's phrased is beautiful, as are the harmonies. 

I'd agree with the points made previously. For me, it lacks cohesion between the sections and most of all I feel it doesn't quite get out of second gear if you know what I mean. Also, the overall volume could do with a boost. Impressive stuff all the same.


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## Silence-is-Golden (Apr 25, 2018)

Thank you Rob and Jonesy.

Welcome comments that offer new directions of study and learning opportunities.
Good stuff to move forward with.


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## Levitanus (Apr 29, 2018)

Very beautiful piece! I write all my feelings tomorrow


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## Circe (Apr 29, 2018)

Beautiful.
What kind of strings did you use it ?.


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## Dave Connor (Apr 29, 2018)

Very, very good. You have natural, inventive musical instincts - what we all hope for.


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## Silence-is-Golden (Apr 30, 2018)

Levitanus said:


> Very beautiful piece! I write all my feelings tomorrow


Thank you Levitanus, much appreciated.

PS: did you write them yet? :D


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## Silence-is-Golden (Apr 30, 2018)

Circe said:


> Beautiful.
> What kind of strings did you use it ?.


Thanks you Circe, the strings are CSS and CSSS

For the rest: BWW and HWBrass


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## Silence-is-Golden (Apr 30, 2018)

Dave Connor said:


> Very, very good. You have natural, inventive musical instincts - what we all hope for.


That is a specific comment that I much appreciate. 
My instincts are indeed what I try to follow, as well as trying to let the music develop as it is happening(which is possibly the same)
F.e. I was very content with the opening melody/theme that started on a major and ended on a minor chord. At the end of the piece I learned that it was nice to reverse this from minor to major. Gives a different feeling to the same melody.

Thank you Dave!


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## Levitanus (May 1, 2018)

Silence-is-Golden said:


> PS: did you write them yet?


I keep the theme opened, but have no found quiet 20 minutes yet...


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## yhomas (May 1, 2018)

Silence-is-Golden said:


> If you can spare 9 minutes of your time to listen and comment that will be most welcomed.
> 
> I still have several areas of attention in this piece myself but it is time for some other ears and perceptions then my own.
> 
> ...




Layperson perspective:

Wow--this track is so lovely, it really draws me in. Very nice calm and pleasant and refreshing overall sound (listening on cheap headphones, but the sound comes through well enough)--tastefully lush. The tempo is unnaturally slow a lot of places IMO. The music is arguably not going anywhere fast enough to really stand on its own, yet it is contemplative enough that I can't say I'm really bored. I can imagine this might go well with picture roughly as is--maybe with some judicious increases in tempo at appropriate areas.

Most of the slow moving mockup is glorious, but some of the more aggressive string dynamic changes, pauses, and flourishes at ~2/5ths through sound too monolithic--not really offensive, but definitely not convincing. The louder solo horn action near the end is quite offensive though--strongly standing out as the weakest part of the mockup (better to just cut it out).

The other problem is that the building sequence climax doesn't ever gain enough momentum and falls flat for me--I waited 9 minutes but never got to the musical payoff I was hoping for. I'm not sure that building intensity with the FF trumpet dynamic is a good idea--even if the samples sounded good. The restrained horns earlier sounded fine before--IMO probably don't go to far outside what they were doing earlier. Instead, build the momentum/tension by other mechanisms (where the offending trumpet currently comes in), maybe going more polyphonic with another strong melody line that erases the pause (and hence doesn't allow the audience a breath); let the tempo sway upward; also, it often works out to bring in a base line change around this point to give a twist on the underlying chords despite the same melody; I can imagine we generally could be doing something more bold with the bass/timpani? here as well. (On the other hand, we can't allow the sense of contemplative restraint and realism to be lost either--because that aspect is so good as it is.) The beautiful woodwind line here has already repeated and firmly established the melody (the audience is locked in), so we can handle (and maybe even might prefer) stronger variation--and with stronger variation, we could ratchet up the tension another notch with one more repetition? (Again, maybe this would end up too unrestrained, but I want to at least get closer to the edge of the cliff.)

Also, maybe this is just my personal taste, but I very much dislike the E-minor to G-sharp chord transitions near the end--they sounds corny to me (in contrast to the rest of the track) and I don't gather the purpose since we are at the very end of 9 minutes trying to resolve things at this point.

Anyway, I think I probably have some decent points, but watch out that any changes don't cause backwards progress--there is so much here that is just so good. Its not just good "for samples"--a lot of this is legitimate music as is (without feeling the need to re-record with real instruments).


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## Silence-is-Golden (May 2, 2018)

yhomas said:


> Layperson perspective:
> 
> Wow--this track is so lovely, it really draws me in. Very nice calm and pleasant and refreshing overall sound (listening on cheap headphones, but the sound comes through well enough)--tastefully lush. The tempo is unnaturally slow a lot of places IMO. The music is arguably not going anywhere fast enough to really stand on its own, yet it is contemplative enough that I can't say I'm really bored. I can imagine this might go well with picture roughly as is--maybe with some judicious increases in tempo at appropriate areas.
> 
> ...


thank you yhomas for your detailed response and listen.

You picked out some of the points that I was also still considering like the tempo. Allthough it is ment as a slow largo piece I may need to try here and there where tempo changes wil work (they are there by the way).

The thing I encounter is that after a certain time of working on a piece of music I have done all I can up to that point in time and the risk of getting in the "old groove" of where the piece was left last time cannot be easily avoided. I think I will lay it to rest for a while now, and later on see how the comments put here can be used to recreate a newer version.

Again: specific comments like you have put them here are good pointers, so much appreciated!


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## Levitanus (May 2, 2018)

Sorry for late answer... There were great holidays came from USSR, and we used them for non-stop writing of new film...

I almost completely faired by this composition. I like themes, arrangement, space. It's pretty to go through its flow. And I really faired of how the style forming. I don't love much Howards Shore 2nd and 3rd films of LOTR, but this exposition, seemed so close to his style, works great, and then transition to the real 20th-century lyric, so beloved from Hindemith and Shostakovych. And it doesn't sound like plagiate from them (like some of my works). Completely amazed! 
Only strings ask something more in mocap, other instruments played extremely good)

Well, pity, but I have no any of time code for details...
The first cadence - I can't understand for myself, is it German, or American setting of strings? It seems, altos playing C5 on the top. Don't want to say it's unplayble, but in largo, not on forte, not with harmonics... A little bit overuse, I feel...

On the left hill of the middle culmination (where strings have trills) I afraid of bassoons. Generally, I like them in heigh diapason, but something is going on, I don't know. Something is wrong not only in performance but in orchestration too.

Then awesome part of strings, when it would be played as well as written )

Am i right, there is live violin before the middle coda? Very intense intonations. The whole part is excellent.

I would like to hear "orgel punkt" (damn my eng terminology) when things are going to the culmination. Fis, taken by basses, one bassoon, and one contrabassoon would give very strong-conceptual and soft-sounding root to it, I think.
And tuba at the very culmination! Where is it?

And then also bass missing, I think on E-moll period would be a little bit more funeral in contrast to strings.

Maybe it's a little bit obsolete, but I would like to hear a 4-6 bars else with just "potatoes" and gentle pizz of low strings and portatos of high woods.

Something like this)

P.S. God bless, buy Berlin Brass


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## yhomas (May 2, 2018)

Silence-is-Golden said:


> thank you yhomas for your detailed response and listen.
> 
> You picked out some of the points that I was also still considering like the tempo. Allthough it is ment as a slow largo piece I may need to try here and there where tempo changes wil work (they are there by the way).
> 
> ...



I have listened several more times and found your composition to be increasingly rewarding with repeated listening. Frankly this is the first time I have gone back to listen to a VI-control "member's compositions" forum track purely for my own enjoyment. 

I would listen to this track just for the pleasing mockup (almost irrespective of the composition), but in this case, I think your composition its self contains some really great music--that I really want more of. But part of the magic of the composition may very well be in the tantalizing aspect--to leave the listener wanting more. 

I'm not at all sure about this, since it is art, after all. So definitely take any criticism with a grain of salt (except regarding the FF trumpet), and I would like to retract my prior comment about the track not "standing up on its own" because even such as it is, the composition already does stand up quite well on its own as serious music to my ears. 

Do you have any composers that you listen to along these lines? I don't normally listen to a lot of classical music (especially post ~1800's).


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## Ben E (May 2, 2018)

Well, I went into this thinking I probably wasn't going to listen to the whole 9 minutes. But I was sucked in and before I knew it the 9 minutes was over. Thank you for this piece of music. Really beautiful.


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## Paul T McGraw (May 3, 2018)

Silence-is-Golden said:


> Thanks to all who have listened.
> 
> @Paul T McGraw
> I take your comments and and will do a review of the piece, for the sake of learning from any source( that is how I treat it)
> ...



Sorry it took so long for me to reply. In my view, and it is just a matter of taste or aesthetics, it is too long for the amount of the material. If you had a contrasting B section, and it contained a real contrast, not just a slightly different orchestration or melody, you could sustain the length. There is no one particular bad section, and I realize you were trying to keep things interesting by changing up orchestration and harmonies. Your emotional climax occurs near the end which is good, so you need to keep everything from that point to the ending. The beginning is also quite striking. So any cuts should occur somewhere in the middle third of the piece. One problem with Orfium is that it does not show elapsed time, so it is difficult to pinpoint exact moments.

I understand you have a particular artistic statement you are making, and you do not want to corrupt that statement. I can hear the Bernard Herman influence, but he was scoring to picture, and you do not have dialogue or picture to help support your artistic statement. A better influence to consider might be Debussy or Ravel. They offer a similar harmonic language and each has several pieces of a similar temperament to your piece.


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## markleake (May 3, 2018)

I loved every minute of this. I have listened a few times to it over the last week or so. It is so relaxing. Very well orchestrated and musical. There are some moment where the strings seem to drop in and out a bit strong, and maybe the ending is a bit abrupt, but these are small criticisms.


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## Silence-is-Golden (May 3, 2018)

Levitanus said:


> Sorry for late answer... There were great holidays came from USSR, and we used them for non-stop writing of new film...
> 
> I almost completely faired by this composition. I like themes, arrangement, space. It's pretty to go through its flow. And I really faired of how the style forming. I don't love much Howards Shore 2nd and 3rd films of LOTR, but this exposition, seemed so close to his style, works great, and then transition to the real 20th-century lyric, so beloved from Hindemith and Shostakovych. And it doesn't sound like plagiate from them (like some of my works). Completely amazed!
> Only strings ask something more in mocap, other instruments played extremely good)
> ...


Thank you for taking the time (and no need to be sorry, you are not oblidged to, so I am thankful for anyone taking the time to comment on fellow composer's music!)

In terms of influences I can see the references you name, but mostly my "influencers" are Dvorzak, Bruch, Holst, Debussy, Ravel (who doesn't ), Rachmaninov, Mussorgsky, Grieg, Vaughn Williams, Arvo Part, Prokojief (esp. peter and the Wolf and his "Classic Symphony") just no name a few 

Your comments on the strings and brass, especially the latter are indeed what was still not sitting well with me either. In terms of brass writing I still need to learn a lot. (if this piece would be played live several of the brass players would give me unhappy looks by the horrid lack of material)

No live viola, it is CSSS viola. It takes some messaging but it can sound quite convincing indeed.

And yes, your comment on the "orgel punkt" (you speak german?) is very apt. At some point I may need to start looking more into this whilst writing and probably cannot avoid working by notation (as well)

I will take many of these comments to heart and find ways to work with them, thanks for taking the time to put all this down!

PS: I am currently somewhat drawn away from OT, so I hope that the release (this year?) of CSBrass may be a good new addition) But I onderstand your suggestion :D


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## Silence-is-Golden (May 3, 2018)

yhomas said:


> I have listened several more times and found your composition to be increasingly rewarding with repeated listening. Frankly this is the first time I have gone back to listen to a VI-control "member's compositions" forum track purely for my own enjoyment.
> 
> I would listen to this track just for the pleasing mockup (almost irrespective of the composition), but in this case, I think your composition its self contains some really great music--that I really want more of. But part of the magic of the composition may very well be in the tantalizing aspect--to leave the listener wanting more.
> 
> ...


For me the reason to put my creations out here is to (hopefully) get specific comments and if they are indeed specific there are usually "trends" and similarities to be drawn from it.

So by all means I take anything serious and see how to make use of to broaden my scope. So the trumpet issue is defenitly taken aboard! Brass is still a vastly unexplored territory for me. And it si clearly "hearable" in the music.

I am real glad to read that you came back to listen for your enjoyment, and apparent want more. Isn't that one of the core notions of music? 

Thanks again very much!


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## Levitanus (May 3, 2018)

Silence-is-Golden said:


> somewhat drawn away from OT


bad decision )
It can be felt like something too complicated, or even buggy, or poor-sounding. But there is only one thing we need to know about OT. It can play anything. And as more complicated is input - as better they play, and focusing is faster.
If You look to my last work, not SCS, not SSS, not CS couldn't do it even together. SWAM could, but sound.... Berlin made it by them own without any work from me)


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## Silence-is-Golden (May 3, 2018)

Ben E said:


> Well, I went into this thinking I probably wasn't going to listen to the whole 9 minutes. But I was sucked in and before I knew it the 9 minutes was over. Thank you for this piece of music. Really beautiful.


Thank you Ben E. Encouraging to read , and much appreciated!


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## Silence-is-Golden (May 3, 2018)

Paul T McGraw said:


> Sorry it took so long for me to reply. In my view, and it is just a matter of taste or aesthetics, it is too long for the amount of the material. If you had a contrasting B section, and it contained a real contrast, not just a slightly different orchestration or melody, you could sustain the length. There is no one particular bad section, and I realize you were trying to keep things interesting by changing up orchestration and harmonies. Your emotional climax occurs near the end which is good, so you need to keep everything from that point to the ending. The beginning is also quite striking. So any cuts should occur somewhere in the middle third of the piece. One problem with Orfium is that it does not show elapsed time, so it is difficult to pinpoint exact moments.
> 
> I understand you have a particular artistic statement you are making, and you do not want to corrupt that statement. I can hear the Bernard Herman influence, but he was scoring to picture, and you do not have dialogue or picture to help support your artistic statement. A better influence to consider might be Debussy or Ravel. They offer a similar harmonic language and each has several pieces of a similar temperament to your piece.


All clear Paul, I am keen on any more comments so your added post is welcome anytime.

For me the major thing I take from your remarks is "contrast, and more "musical material " which may or will go hand in hand with "contrast". And when working on this piece I came to realise increasinly that something along this line was missing (contrast).

By the way, unlike many here I am not an adherer to Bernard Herman's music per se. In fact I have not listened much to his music at all other then via the movies. Debussy and Ravel are of a much more prime influence actually. But yeah, they are of a very, very different league then my own, so like many I take what I can and try to put it to use.
And I do indeed wish to create music which can stand on its own, but as several have said, a lot of our comments is also mixed with preferences and musical affinities anyway.

Nonetheless I will take your comments on board, and see how to work with it.
Thanks again Paul!


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## Silence-is-Golden (May 3, 2018)

markleake said:


> I loved every minute of this. I have listened a few times to it over the last week or so. It is so relaxing. Very well orchestrated and musical. There are some moment where the strings seem to drop in and out a bit strong, and maybe the ending is a bit abrupt, but these are small criticisms.


Hi Mark Leake, thank you also for listening and your appreciation.

After so many small (and big) tweaks I think there will indeed still be places where the strings are to abruptly changing dynamics. Well picked up, because I knew they were still in there somewhere :D
CSS is in that regards quite demanding in my experience. Especially in the lower range of dynamics a small movement can have a great effect.


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## markleake (May 3, 2018)

Silence-is-Golden said:


> CSS is in that regards quite demanding in my experience. Especially in the lower range of dynamics a small movement can have a great effect.


Yes, I find the same thing with CSS. It can take a bit of work at the lower dynamics to get it right.


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