A very short string quartet with a lot of polyrhythms

[herodotus]

Details are in the Auditorium post. Here I will just point out that this is just a general midi rendering of a file that is sadly locked up on an old p.c. that I can't afford to get serviced.

I am posting this because it is germane to another thread elsewhere on the site.

And also because I did spend about 6 months (between 4-6 hours a day back in those lonely days) writing it.

It is 3:16 in length and is in mp3 format encoded at 128 kbps

http://www.audioshots.com/auditorium/vi ... php?t=1202

[McLilith]

I like that piece quite a bit. Thanks for posting that.


McLilith

[lawapa]

Most excellent example

[Lunatique]

I usually judge a piece of music by my emotional reaction to it, and then its creative/technical aspects.

Emotionally, I felt nothing when listening to your piece. There is no story told with a relevant melody. There were no relevant harmonies or countermelodies to support a story. It was just a lot of notes going on and on.

Creatively, a test I put a track through is to start playing it, and then jump to the next section of the track by about 15% at a time. If a track essentially sounds exactly the same with no significant changes in pacing, density, orchestration, melodic direction, harmony structure..etc, then I pretty much don't bother playing the entire track in realtime. Why bother if the whole thing is essentially the first 10 seconds repeated over and over with insignificant changes?

Technically, I don't have anything thoughts, since you said it was done a long time ago with limited means.

[rpc9943]

LOOOOOOOOOOOOOL

[SQ4]

A palindrome like "A man a plan a canal, Panama"?
Well done!

[Spe3D]

LOOOOOOOOOOOOOL

Care to expand on that rpc? its not clear what you are LOL'ing at exactly.

[Spe3D]

This is a very good example imo herodutus, its an enjoyable track to listen to, and constructed very well.

Best regards,

Peter

[Spe3D]

why bother if the whole thing is essentially the first 10 seconds repeated over and over with insignificant changes?

Technically, I don't have anything thoughts, since you said it was done a long time ago with limited means.

Because its not actually an easy thing to pull off well.

And this track is a quartet – friggin amazing it works really – and it does work well.

Best regards,

Spe3d

:O)

[SQ4]

Indeed: composing for stringquartet is quite difficult.

[herodotus]

I usually judge a piece of music by my emotional reaction to it, and then its creative/technical aspects.

Emotionally, I felt nothing when listening to your piece. There is no story told with a relevant melody. There were no relevant harmonies or countermelodies to support a story. It was just a lot of notes going on and on.

Creatively, a test I put a track through is to start playing it, and then jump to the next section of the track by about 15% at a time. If a track essentially sounds exactly the same with no significant changes in pacing, density, orchestration, melodic direction, harmony structure..etc, then I pretty much don't bother playing the entire track in realtime. Why bother if the whole thing is essentially the first 10 seconds repeated over and over with insignificant changes?

Technically, I don't have anything thoughts, since you said it was done a long time ago with limited means.

What a very strange way you have of listening to music.

You obviously spent more time writing this than you did listening to this piece, as it is 3:16 seconds long and you skipped through it.

As such I think you are admirably qualified to be a rock journalist for any American newspaper.

Thanks for listening to those who actually did.

[Hovmod]

What a very strange way you have of listening to music.

You obviously spent more time writing this than you did listening to this piece, as it is 3:16 seconds long and you skipped through it.

As such I think you are admirably qualified to be a rock journalist for any American newspaper.

[respirator]

(Disclaimer: I really don't like sampled orchestral instruments)

This is kind of interesting, but very one dimensional to my ears. The ryhtm is mainly made up of dotted 8ths + 16th syncopations(?) and the harmony and dynamics doesn't change much throughout (this is subjectively, as I didn't analyze and don't have the score - could you post the score). Reminds my (in the approach) of something I did a while back (Palindrome).

Nice though to have something different than the usual stuff in here.

[herodotus]

(Disclaimer: I really don't like sampled orchestral instruments)

This is kind of interesting, but very one dimensional to my ears. The ryhtm is mainly made up of dotted 8ths + 16th syncopations(?) and the harmony and dynamics doesn't change much throughout (this is subjectively, as I didn't analyze and don't have the score - could you post the score). Reminds my (in the approach) of something I did a while back (Palindrome).

Nice though to have something different than the usual stuff in here.

I liked your piece there, was it a canon?

No chance of a score, as the file is locked up on an old p.c.

No dynamics really at all, save for the sparser instrumentation of the canonical sections. This was because the main influence on this was Balinese Gender Wajang, which emphasises contrapuntal interaction between tuned percussion instruments at a fairly constant dynamic and tempo.

The harmony does change quite a bit though. Perhaps my use of one of Messiaen's modes of limited transposition creates the impression of harmonic stasis, but modulation is in fact quite frequent.

And I don't think there are any dotted notes in it at all. If you listen carefully, though you can hear lots of variety in the interaction between the individual lines. It doesn't help that I can't change the panning or anything about this. Perhaps when I finally rescue the .mid file off of my old p.c. I can give it too you in a form that allows these lines to shine out more obviously.

Thanks for listening.

[Lunatique]

You obviously spent more time writing this than you did listening to this piece, as it is 3:16 seconds long and you skipped through it.

No I didn't. I only stated that's how I test a piece of music if it starts to sound exactly the same after repeating itself a few times. When that happends, I'll skip ahead about 10 seconds at a time, stopping and listening for a few seconds. If it's still the same as before, then I skip another 10 seconds, and so on until I reach the end of the song. If a song sounds that repetitive with that little movement both horizontally and vertically in its composition and orchestration, then why would I want to give it more attention than I already gave it? And yes, I did listen to your track from beginning to end, and yes, my impression of it is the same as when I did the initial 10-second skip test.

Look, you can't please everyone everytime. There will always be people out there that might not like your work. It's just a fact of life. It's not an indication of whether you're any good either, as that is subjective. I've met plenty of people that didn't think very highly of acclaimed classical composers, yet they go on and rave about some garagage punk band that could barely keep time as they bash out the same three chords for 10 songs straight. It's all subjective.