This piece is now finished, oh and its about a good 4 minutes too:

http://www.mediafire.com/?n5578obljc1g66m

This particular piece was posted by me about a few months ago, and since then, I haven't really dedicated any of my time to composing, so recently, I have decided that I would finish this piece and post it here in the Composer's Lounge.

The beginning of the piece is the same as it was a few months ago, because I felt that it sounded good and it should be kept. However, right away when the piece starts to wander, I had to change that, and as some of you folks have suggested, I rearranged it to incorporate a melody. The rest of the piece is a variation of the theme, so the melody just repeats itself, but is varied in the last half of the piece.

If you listen carefully, you will notice there are quite a few accented notes, bumps, and bangs in the sound file. Please excuse those, because they are not really meant to be there and they are the result of my piano being screw up, as there a few keys that make banging sounds when you press down on them. I have a 170 Clavinova and this is quite a common problem for this brand of piano, so I am due to fix any of these problems soon.

I like your composition. It reminds me a bit of Debussy. It sounds impressionistic. All that pentatonic scale runs - and you even use hemitonic pentatonics which make a very special sound. Sometimes there are repeating notes and these notes are disproportionately loud. Is this your intention?

Some time ago I did a similar composition for piano. If you like to hear it --> http://www.cisum.info/bild.mp3

OMG This is so awesome! I agree it does sound like Debussy. How on earth did you come up with it?

Sounds like Debussy! This is spectacular! Oh, what I would give to be able to use the Lydian mode and whole tones half as effectively as Debussy did or as you do.

No, those aren't meant to be there. As in my original post, I said that those notes that are disproportionately loud are the result of a few of my keys not working on my piano. However, when I get my piano fixed, I am bound to add a few accents in the right places and some dynamics to this piece to spice things up to make things a bit more overly-sentimental

And your right, this piece was meant to sound melancholy like Debussy would sometimes do to his:)




It took me a little while to come up with it. The music started in my head when I was inspired by Debussy's Arabesque, and because Debussy's melancholy stuff is usually slow to medium speed, something stimulated the thought that if Debussy can make melancholy music slow, why can't I make melancholy music fast? This train of thought eventually led me to making up a piece like this.

There presented a problem though, if I was going to make Debussy's music fast and with a beat, there would have to be many harmonic changes taking place, because without the harmonics the piece would be boring. Debussy's melancholy music is usually diatonic, and since there is hardly many chords in any diatonic system, I had to make up my own ways of smooth modulation to get from one key to the next without having the listener realizing the change. After that, I applied those harmonically to this piece.

Oh, and in the future, I am going to make up an etude with pentatonics like this piece, but more rhythmically inspired by Chopins revolutionary etude. So now that I have the feel for composing fast melancholy Debussy pieces, I can apply this stuff towards making etudes. And absolutely I can apply this stuff to slower pieces.... however this next piece that I'm going to write will be extra colorful!

Debussey melancholy? That's a bit like saying that all music written in a minor key sounds sad. Debussey is to music what pastels and watercolours are to painting.

There are many tricks to enhancing diatonicism. Floating modality is an obvious one in this case, as is, say, floating tonality that uses pivots on the second note of a modern scale. (Eg- C maj, Eb maj, Gb maj., etc.).

Diatonicism doesn't have to be limited. Voicing alone can imply greater complexity than is actually present.

Very nice piece, by the way. You've a good ear for what makes for visual structure in a listener.

I've listened to this piece a few more times, and have to say that it grows on you with each listen (even with those funky notes). I hope you'll repost the final version?