This is an orchestral composition I've been working on. I'm just a novice, I like to compose in my spare time.

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The Great Wave off Kanagawa

I thought that was completely amazing! That said, it left me still wanting to hear the chaos and destruction...I was hoping the tsunami would hit shore....and the ending kinda faded away just a touch too soon, in my uneducated opinion. But it was very "seaworthy" and beautiful!!!!!!!!!!

You're right, I'm just not good enough at making those huge climaxes. Something I'll have to work on.

I agree the climax needs more brass, more woodwinds and more happening. There's only one way to get better at writing such things, practice. You might try writing the climax first then writing the rest of the piece, of course you may want to improve the climax once you've completed the rest.

I saw an interview of Phillip Glass in which stated that he learned orchestration by copying a Mahler symphony by hand. Mahler composed excellent climaxes so you might try that approach just to a climactic moment or two. I haven't tried this approach, but may during the week between Xmas and New Years.

I liked the piece itself as far as it went. You captured something essential about the Japanese sound.

Thanks for the comments, Steve.

(Also shamelessly bumping this up hoping for more replies)

That was a seriously good composition and really represented the picture you were basing it on. How is the music played? I can't tell if you got a group of musicians to play it or whether its playing off a program.

This is beautiful, Theowne! May I ask whether you consider certain composers your influence?

I gave up writing for orchestra ages ago. It's really refreshing to hear something like this; it inspires me to get my own hands dirty

Thanks for sharing such a great piece!!

Thanks for the comments, Tar. I think my prime source of influence is Maurice Ravel. I think he was a genius.



Glad to hear you liked it! The piece was rendered with software, though technically they were all "played" - just by one performer, me, at the keyboard, and combined together later.

I had wondered that! The instruments sounded MIDI, but its execution had a natural touch. It must have been a lot of work for you! Did you write everything out properly before recording line by line, or did you record and compose on the go?

Probably somewhere in between. I certainly didn't have every line written out, but I had the general concept of the piece down. But I certainly made changes along the way, which is the benefit of being able to hear your piece as you perform, I guess.

I think this way is easier, actually, because you can just play the parts yourself as you want and combine them, whereas trying to write down an entire orchestral score the way you want seems like a very big task to me.

Hee hee, I keep coming back with questions, sorry about that! I'm jolly interested.



Doesn't that mean having to keep tempo consistency across all parts all the time? That sounds tricky if you want rubato!

Bad choice of words. It's more like "overlaying" than combining. For example, I would play the melody part or whatever I feel the dominant part is first, then replay it into my headphones and record the next part over it, and then the next over that, and etc. Progressively building up the instrumentation.

I appreciate your interest

Hey, this is amazing, Theowne! Your layering: intrepid.

It wasn't a destructive wave, but a magical one.

Thank you, gerg. Your quote sums up my feelings on the original painting as well. Perhaps I'm just a softie, but I see an almost hypnotic beauty, overriding the obvious destructive quality.