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New composition: "Le ciel étoilé"

Lots of things to like about this piece! It has a very nice melody and the cello does sound very pleasant and emotive to my ears.

But you're here for the feedback, so let me get to it! I should preface this, as always, by saying that I am just a hobbyist composer. I am not an expert on the technicalities and everything I say is just my opinion. Please take it with a grain of salt.

Several things that you might want to consider:
  • Are the piano and cello playing in the same range often? At time it does sound like this and I wonder if it'd be more effective for the piano to move up or down an octave, because currently they sometimes get in each other's way a little bit.
  • The piano sounds closer than the cello but the cello has the lead. My instinct would be to reverse this and have the piano on more ambient mics will bringing the cello closer. I don't know if that will be "better" in any way, but it may be worth a try?
  • For my ear, the piano was a little too present. I'd pull it back slightly because the piano is clearly accompanying the cello but currently they seem to be going at and equal volume.
  • Not sure if the high strings at around 1:18 are really necessary. They're not very audible and I don't feel they're adding much? The cello and piano are strong enough on their own. You seem to add the strings at points where the piano and cello are already playing fairly loudly so if you do want to keep the strings, you might want to make them a little bit more present and pull back the piano and cello a bit. But that's a matter of taste of course.

Other than that, I really enjoyed the piece! I am looking forward to hearing more future works from you! :)
 
Hi Mickey,

Beautiful melody line! Nice how the cello melody builds up to that high note. The piano accompaniment has a nice and flowing structure. This theme does come back a lot, so some more variation of this theme would make it even more interesting.

I agree with mcalis that the sound-setting and mix can be optimized. The piano sounds to be in front, but is a little dampened (probably the nature of the samples) while the cello sounds as if it comes from the back, but very much takes the lead. On my headphones that sounds a bit unnatural.
 
Thank you for your feedback mcalis and E.Heart!
I love this piano, but it is difficult to integrate into the mix.
Maybe i should play the most on the keyboard range and decrease the volume.

For strings, i felt like that :)
 
Really lovely piece.

The cello sounds beautiful but the bow change on every note (aside from the ports) just doesn't work for me and really draws too much attention to itself. Unfortunately there's nothing you can do about that with the Tina Guo Cello.
 
I'm sorry to say that the re-bowing on the cello drives me away. IMHO it's far more agressive than the rest and doesn't gel with the accompaniment. Also the ending is very boring, maybe throw in a little surprise at the end?
 
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