Sharing my Music

Started by chrissheltonmusic, January 27, 2017, 06:11:03 PM

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chrissheltonmusic

Hello all,

I thought I would share the first movement of a piece I wrote for string quartet.  Let me know what you think!  :)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l64aX1BqsHQ

~Chris

Crudblud

A competent imitation of Bartók, which is fine, but I'm wondering if you could share a composition that is more your own.

I like your guitar performance videos, by the way.

chrissheltonmusic

Hi.  Thanks for the comment.  I certainly plan on sharing more of my music, especially the more recent compositions that will show more of what my own compositional style has become over the years.  I am in the process of getting more pieces recorded.  Thanks for listening to the guitar works I have chosen to play as well.  All feedback is much appreciated. 

Monsieur Croche

#3
Mid 1940's to early 1950's Hungarian Rave party ;-)

Very well done... I realize it is a piece of yours from 'a long time ago.'  While it was long ago, and this movement very well-done (a given, and congrats), these are some things I think best to move away from or avoid.

Coupla tings: 

~~~Even well-imitating a style while your piece still being original is, imo, strictly of use in school,  while training, and about no where else;  the point of it, whether it is modal counterpoint, 18th century counterpoint, or those model pieces along the way in each semester/era of theory, is to get inside the harmonic hierarchy of the era, and see how past composers made things work.  In this movement, you did just that. 
~~~The ultimate goal is to have a tool kit and a familiarity with the tools to invent and solve your own musical problems, and come up with your own particular, 'idiosyncratic' if you will, vocabulary and sound.

~~~The other ting... you did mix meters, but imo, when you have one of the more identifiable and 'catchy' odd number meters, casting too many bars of that in a row starts to sound like a kind of dance music best left to much shorter forms or durations.  Bartok's six dances in Bulgarian Rhythm work, in part, because the are each relatively brief;  a handful, if not the lot of them, would fit into the span of the duration of your SQ movement.  (Bernstein's Chichester Psalms, for the most part relentlessly in seven, with its sub-groupings holding static throughout so much of the work (2/2/3), becomes kitchy vs. catchy after only a few measures, and more than a little ironically, a rhythm that supposedly swings, rocks, keeps the listener off-balance, instead becomes a dully predictable bar line, boxy and square.)


Best regards
~ I'm all for personal expression; it just has to express something to me. ~

(poco) Sforzando

The above are all fair comments. At the start it's definitely interesting, but I would also add that the prevalence of similar metrical patterns becomes fatiguing after a while. Why not interrupt the music with something far less active, long sustained notes for example. And you're giving too much activity to violin 1. Only in a few places do the lower instruments take over to provide greater contrapuntal interest. Still if it was from "a long time ago," it's pretty good.
"I don't know what sforzando means, though it clearly means something."

relm1

I enjoyed it.  Congratulations on a fine performance.  Some feedback, I think the violin one is too prominent so it feels like a violin 1 work with accompaniment rather than a string quartet but that might have been your intent so take that feedback with a grain of salt.  Also, the accompaniment rhythm in the second half needs more variation because it eventually feels too repetitive.  Very nice job.