Hello, there. This is my first post. I am an amateur composer in Japan. A person who was interested in my composition kindly referred to this forum and suggested to post my music.

Eternal River

Any suggestions or comments will be very much appreciated. Thanks.

Do you also have the sheet music of it?

No. Though I have messy memo for the music even I myself cannot read it now.

Its very suited for film.

snap_apple,

Thank you for your comment. I imagined a story of a reunion of lovers over hundreds of years by a river which runs unchanged.

Very very nice music! Very tranquille and soothing.

If you ever publish this work of yours let me know.

Thank you for your warm comment. When I find time to make sheet music of it, I will certainly post it here.

I'm an 'adult beginner' when it comes to music, so I can't offer any advice - all I will say is I thought that was a fantastic piece of music! I very much enjoy orchestrated 'movie' music, and your piece certainly had me listening hard for the 6 minutes. It was beautiful!

Keep up the great work!!

Euan.

Very pretty, though also a bit sad; I saw it less as a reunion between lovers (which I would've thought would result in a happier melody) but instead as the story of two lovers kept apart by forces beyond their control.

A lot of amazing music is coming out of Japan these days, e.g., anime scores. Your piece sounds like it could also easily fit in that genre.

*chuckles* Now I can't say what I was going to say....

I suppose I'll say this instead: The overall theme sounds almost perfect for a very specific scene in a novel I'm writing. (Actually, it could work very well for two linked scenes.)

However, there are some moments where the orchestration seems a bit 'heavy' and a little overbearing (bad word... "blocky"), given how light and moving the piano part is.

Still, I couldn't help but picture that one scene listening to the piece...so good job! I think you got what you intended out of it....

Euan,

Thank you very much for your kind and warm words. It is very encouraging. Certainly I will be back if I come up with something new.

Sincerely,

Thank you, Monica.

I agree that putting a bit sad music behind even a happy ending is typically Japanese

Some of anime scores are very well written recently so that I am very glad to hear your comment.

Sincerely,

Thank you, Derulux, for your kind comment.

I will once again review the sequence with your comment in mind. I would be much appreciative if you could kindly point out specific or typical "blocky" part of music. Maybe the part where the piano plays big arpeggio? Is the strings too thick?

Sincerely,

I can see why u name the song river because I definitely feel the flow of river at 4:00 of the song. Fantastic technique!
Also, I can hear a second melody on your accompany hand (left), that sounds amazing. (Im learning that technique)

There is one little comment:
At the beginning, dont repeat the theme for more than 2 times.

This song is great and I think some1 will buy your song if you do the music business.

Do you mind teaching me how to make the feeling of river flow. That's one of the techniques I want to learn.

You know, I'd have to listen to it again... but I remember nearly every spot where "all the instruments" came in I felt like it was just too much for what the piece is. It could just be me, though.

(You might want to keep a balance that brings out the piano more in those sections, just so it doesn't "slip away" and disappear...I think that's when you lose the "flowing" sense the most.)

Certainly I notice in some moments the piano is "buried" in other instruments and it might give the sense of losing the "flowing". I have to refine the orchestration.

Thank you very much for your advices.

Sincerely,

4:00 is a combination of arpeggio of piano and melody by strings. Though I am not sure which part you refer to as the "second melody", the strings are playing a quasi-canon. (2nd part chasing the last half of the 1st part melody.)

I have to admit this rather lengthy tune is based on one simple and short melody. So that it is natural to feel it is too repetitive though I tried best to make audience not bored... In the beginning, the idea was repeated twice with the up scale in the end, then a different idea comes in, but it is followed again the idea twice, this second time repetition may be omitted.

Not at all. I think the feeling comes from the arpeggio. The piano plays a fast passage but it is simply repetition of 3 notes, such as a, c, and e. (A moll chord). You can play with both hands, like a, c, e, a, c, e, a, swiftly then you will change your hands position one octave above then repeat the same. I hope it works for you too.

Thank you very much for your comments.

Sincerely,

I'm just an amateur, so you can take this with a grain of salt. It is extrememly pretty and relaxing. Before I read your description of what you were thinking in writing it, I even could imagine standing by a calm, tranquil flowing stream in a forest.
I hear a constant rhythmical arpeggio pattern throughout the piece which is pretty, but have you considered varying that perhaps in the middle of the piece. - Say the arpeggio pattern at the beginning, then something that aids in getting a little more intense in the middle like some harmonic blocked chords in an interesting varied rhythm while in keeping with the smooth flow, and then back to the arppeggio pattern at the end. I kept waiting to here some variation along the way from the arpeggio. I heard a lot of good variety with the other instruments that were brought in. It sounds overall really nice.

I was just curious, what sofware do you use for composing? What did you use for recording? Did you play the piano yourself for the recording? The piano playing sounds wonderful! The recording sounds really good too!

Thank you, sarabande, for your kind words. Yes, some rhythmical variation could be added, I agree. It will give the theme a different expression.

Here is my gear list:

Sequencer: SONAR 2.2 XL
All the sounds were generated by Garritan Personal Orchestra including piano and exported as a .wav file directly from SONAR.
The mp3 encoder was "lame". The recording has been done partially by my playing MIDI keyboard real time and the rest by step note input.

Sincerely,

are u able to do this recording live?

thanks for helping by the way

Do u mean that u compose the song in midi then export it thru a sequencer(is it a hardware or software)?

Not sure how to do this (the ambient feeling)

Hi,
Nice song. It sounded to me YANNISH, Am i correct. Are u influenced by Yanni? but nice sound of strings in the background. Personally I would like to see more variations on the Piano not just repeating same chords as arpeggios but hey for the new Age kinda feeling that u created I guess this is good. Overall good sequencing.

For most part, yes. But some tricky part, I would have to practice intensively

Sincerely,

Yes. All the parts are written in SONAR (i.e. in "midi") and generated by Garritan Personal Orchestra. Used instruments are flute, oboe, clarinet, fagot, french horns, 5 parts of strings and piano. Some reverb were added by a VST plug-in called "Ambience" which comes with Garritan Personal Orchestra.

Sincerely,

Thank you very much, Tonic.

One of my friend said this was "Yannish". At that time I did not know Yanni at all. Actually, Yanni is not popular in Japan. But I think this particular tune of mine has some feeling common with the artist's.

I appreciate your pointing it out about the piano part. I need to more work on more flexible treatment of piano part. The piano part could be more vivid with some more variations and applying different chord implementations.

Thanks again for your kind advice.

Sincerely,

Im somehow trying to get Steinberg grand 2,would that work with sonar?

A friend of mine is using Steinberg Grand 2 on SONAR and he says it works wonderful.

(PS) Another source says when you play MIDI keyboard real time to drive Grand 2 it would be very heavy (longer latency) though the version supports DXi so that SONAR can be a native host to the plug-in.

So that means if i want to have low latency playing grand 2 in real time, i need to get Cakewalk
VST Adapter?

*Note: I will be getting Sonar5
http://www.cakewalk.com/Products/VSTAdapter/default.asp

I just want to make sure

KAM, I do not have direct experience with Grand 2 or SONAR 5. I would recommend you to visit Cakewalk Users Forum and ask for further information.

Sincerely,

I think I figured out how to use grand 2 with CubaseSX, but just cant make the audio sound as great as yours (not enough ambient feeling)