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This is my first composition with staffpad and I would love some feedback if you have a second . Overall I think it turned out pretty well; honestly I think I would count this as a personal best from a film/epic music perspective, although it's still in the kiddie pool relative to others on this forum. Still, it made me pretty happy to see it come together. Thanks!
 

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  • We Are Who We Decide To Be.mp3
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This is my first composition with staffpad and I would love some feedback if you have a second . Overall I think it turned out pretty well; honestly I think I would count this as a personal best from a film/epic music perspective, although it's still in the kiddie pool relative to others on this forum. Still, it made me pretty happy to see it come together. Thanks!
Denny - very nice! What you have written feels sensible and flows smoothly. It is a bit short, but that is OK. I see pieces like this as exercises to something larger. I like your choices of sounds/patches. My main comment is.. after the nice calm intro and pretty cello line, GO BIG! Don't hold back with the energy in the second half of this one-minute journey. Life is short.

Requested Feedback:
- 0:20 wind chimes enter at a good volume but get louder after the bar for some reason and is a little distracting
- 0:32 suggest more of a buildup (i.e. crescendoing timpani 8th notes, string 16th note scale run-up(s)
- 0:36 Nice horn unison line and sound. The backing orchestra should probably go bigger to support with Perc hits (piatti), more driving strings, WW flourishes and/or ostinatos.
- 0:53 Nice addition of the choir. Build even more energy, possibly with more rhythmic complexities in the different strings parts and more percussion (snare?)
- 1:05 a bigger cresc. into the end
- Ending Go to 11, particularly with the percussion (snares, bass drum, piatti)

This detail with the extra instruments and colors is what takes time but will give it that much more interest and energy.

These are my thoughts if I was writing this and perhaps not the vision you have. Either way, I hope my feedback helps. Glad to see you enjoying StaffPad.

Brandon
MusicByBrandonWalker.com
 
This is my first composition with staffpad and I would love some feedback if you have a second . Overall I think it turned out pretty well; honestly I think I would count this as a personal best from a film/epic music perspective, although it's still in the kiddie pool relative to others on this forum. Still, it made me pretty happy to see it come together. Thanks!
Beautiful! I love the first half with the piano and cello! Just as Brandon I think the second half could go much bolder with a stronger buildup, more intense strings and brass, woodwind flourishes and percussion! And if possible, make it longer. You have such a strong theme going there that it really deserves a few rounds of starting soft, building up, going strong, calming down, and then totally exploding again in the end. Great stuff Denny!
 
Thank you @mybadmemory and @brandowalk!! I am very grateful for the support and nice words, but also for the specific feedback to make it better. I will go back and see if I can stretch it out and add some depth to it. Thanks for taking the time to listen to it!

Denny
 
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You have such a strong theme going there that it really deserves a few rounds of starting soft, building up, going strong, calming down, and then totally exploding again in the end.
I love this idea, just need to think about how to do it. Would some kind of bridge/B section serve to bring in some fresh air so it doesn’t sound like I am just oscillating back and forth between small and large variations of the same thing?

Edit: in partial answer to my own question, I was listening to Brandon’s chart above and could see how various transitions, restatements, partial cadences etc help keep you in that thematic space without just being 8 bars big, 8 bars small, over and over. Now my work is cut out for me…
:)
 
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Can you talk about the structure? What path is the music following? Thanks!
It's a fugue actually. Statement and answer. I just wanted to do the statement then answer. 3 part fugue at this time but it's hard to hear the third part in the bass/tuba/contrabassoon
 


This is the first piece I've ever really 'composed', other than a small amount of messing around in DAWs that never really came to completion. I had a vision of this being a dramatic media piece, with some arbitrary motifs that could be used in related pieces throughout (thus the lack of title). Took me over a year to return to it and fix it up (mixing, cleaning up the score, etc) to finally share with someone, this seems like as good of a place as any to share.
Any feedback is welcome and encouraged (especially about the composition itself, but also any mixing/leveling issues that maybe I don't have an ear for yet).
 
Any feedback is welcome and encouraged (especially about the composition itself, but also any mixing/leveling issues that maybe I don't have an ear for yet).
Congrats on finishing your piece! Being a beginner myself, I can appreciate that alone is a big deal by itself! In terms of composition, my feedback would be that I found it a little hard to follow what is meant to be the foreground and what is meant to be the middle and background elements. It feels, to my ears, like there is a lot of stuff competing for attention, elements coming and going frequently, which makes it hard to follow the main melody and structure. Might be better to just settle into an accompaniment pattern for a while, reduce the amount of change happening, so the listener can focus on the melody before you move on to some other variation? That's just my two cents.
 
Congrats on finishing your piece! Being a beginner myself, I can appreciate that alone is a big deal by itself! In terms of composition, my feedback would be that I found it a little hard to follow what is meant to be the foreground and what is meant to be the middle and background elements. It feels, to my ears, like there is a lot of stuff competing for attention, elements coming and going frequently, which makes it hard to follow the main melody and structure. Might be better to just settle into an accompaniment pattern for a while, reduce the amount of change happening, so the listener can focus on the melody before you move on to some other variation? That's just my two cents.
Thank you for the feedback! In retrospect, I think I wanted a lot of ideas in a central theme that I could extract to use in variations, but admittedly there has to be some editing and focus if I want to write with clarity, especially with as tall of a score as this one. I'll keep this in mind for future work! Perhaps dialing back towards smaller arrangements with fewer instruments would benefit me for the time being.
 
Merry Christmas everyone 🎄🌟🎺🎵🎶


Very nice. I’m curious, after you wrote it, how much time did you spend tweaking it (dynamics etc.,) to get it to sound to your satisfaction?

Also, was writing it (input recognition etc.,) basically the same as using a pencil? The same ease and flow of pencil and paper?
 
Very nice. I’m curious, after you wrote it, how much time did you spend tweaking it (dynamics etc.,) to get it to sound to your satisfaction?

Also, was writing it (input recognition etc.,) basically the same as using a pencil? The same ease and flow of pencil and paper?
My handwritting is quite poor both on paper and Staffpad so copy and past is my good friend:).
I did use some time adjust the expression lane and for percussion also volume. Berlin perc has only few dynamic layers, so using the volume lane helps. Also I find the written mf a bit to loud, so I adjust the expression lane for al mf.
I did also use some time in Logic with plugins but have made a Staffpad/Logic template, so I have something to start up with quickly. This Christmas fantasy I tried to master to fit -14 LUFS(new for me), It toke some time. Actually I dont like this -14 LUFS, it sounds to loud for me.

For the composition I started with a piano sketch's, first piano and then notated in Staffpad. The instrumentation didnt take that long, I copied parts from the piano sketch.

Piano sketch (did pratice some time on it).
 
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