I am a new composer and just completed my first work and would love comments/feedback. I have uploaded the score and an MP3 to my website:

http://www.synnovation.com/Music/Prelude_in_C_Minor.pdf
http://www.synnovation.com/Music/Prelude_in_C_Minor.mp3

Thanks,
Ed Harris

Ed,

That was amazing!

Can you tell us more about your musical background? Also was there an inspiration behind this piece?

Thanks for the compliment! Here is my background...

I am trained as a mathematician and have been a software developer and entrepreneur for many years but retired a couple of years ago. I am a very skilled amateur musician and have played in community groups for many years. Historically my main instrument is clarinet, but I started playing bassoon about eight years ago and am currently the principal bassoonist in my local community orchestra as well as community band.

In spite of being a skilled performer, I actually had never had a formal music theory training so this Spring I took the full 3-credit Music Theory class at the University of Wisconsin, Madison. I had a great time, learned a lot, and discovered that I really enjoyed composing during the course and seem to have a knack for it. I started composing in March during the course. Technically, the Prelude is actually my fourth completed work. I wrote a theme and variation piece for piano about 6 weeks into the course, completed a bassoon-clarinet duet in early May, and by the end of May had also completed a five movement work – Pentatonic Suite – which is entirely written in the pentatonic scale. At the moment it is a piano piece but was always intended to evolve into a work for band targeted at an advanced high school level. I plan on starting a major revision to that work in the near future now that my composition skills have improved a lot.

I am currently working on a new piece for Piano that will be much more difficult to play than Prelude but it think has a lot of potential. It may evolve beyond a piano work, but that is not clear yet.

Prelude was actually inspired by Rachmaninoff's "Prelude in C# Minor".

That is so funny Ed because my first composition which you can find looking at the link in my signature is also a C minor Prelude , more of a march actually... in C minor and inspired by Rachmaninoff.

Like you Im very new to this stuff but am taking composition/theory lessons from Nikolas "on this site". He either has is just about to have his PhD in composition and also does music for video games but specializes in twentieth century music and I got to hear his music by clicking on his link from his signature too.

Oddly enough I live in Texas and he lives in Greece so we use Skype and Finale to do our lessons. Im sure ifyou are looking to improve your techniques and skills there are many professionals on this site that can help or give private lessons.

Heh... It's actually my fault that I never updated my bio. I got my PhD back in late 2010... I NEED to get my bio updated at some point...

And yes, I find that composition lessons can happen quite easily through skype/MSN/other. Dave is not my first student over the Internet (in composition), but I'll say that his passion probably makes him my favorite thus far! ^_^

Actually, I started taking private composition lessons from a post-Doc from the University of Wisconsin School of Music. His name is Jerry Hui and at least he is for the moment still local. Here is his website: http://jerryhui.com/. I find him very helpful in improving my composition skills.