Night
by Sarah Cannon
The base of this piece is the guitar and it is built on by the strings. After the mood of the piece is established, the oboe comes in. The piece gets quieter and the oboe drops out at the end.
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Night The base of this piece is the guitar and it is built on by the strings. After the mood of the piece is established, the oboe comes in. The piece gets quieter and the oboe drops out at the end. |
| Feedback Requested: What do you think about the ending and the dynamics? Any feedback would be appreciated! What key should this be in? |
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Sarah's Original Composition
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Sarah:
I really like this piece. It's a very nice and effective work, the central
tone of which is E.
One thing you might consider as you work on this more is to give the guitar and strings more melodic work to do and to occasionally let the oboe perform an accompaniment role. Guitarists and string players are really good at arpeggios. But they're capable of much more than that.
I really like the new rhythmic idea that you introduce in the work's second large third. Maybe you could find ways to combine it with the ideas in the first large part just before you conclude the piece. Any ideas how you could do that?
One technical point about the score as you have it, you should put each separate string line on its own part.
That's all for about now. I'll be back in a few days with a few more thoughts for you after I have had time to really tear your piece apart and learn how it works, okay?
Thanks for sending your piece along. It's very, very, VERY nice, Sarah. Keep up the good work on it. I'll look forward to further developments.
Tim, Mentor
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Tim, Thanks for your comments, I changed the key signature
to E. Although I do agree that the parts are pretty boring for the guitar
and strings, I'm not sure that I'll make them more melodic. I want my
piece to have the background sound that they produce. If you have any
ideas about how I could keep that kind of sound throughout the piece
and give them the melody I'd appreciate it. The oboe can't really sustain
as much as I'd want it to if I were to give it some of the background
parts. What's normal score form? Do you just mean give the strings different
lines, or something else? If my piece is going to be performed sometime
I'll separate the string parts out. I'm also curious to see if the dynamics
worked on your computer. Thanks again for your comments! Sarah |
Hi Sarah,
I really enjoyed listening to your composition. Very nice song form and melody.
The song even sounded almost familiar, making me wonder "Where have I
heard this?" When you can do this with a composition, it's usually a
sign that you're onto a great melody!
I concur with Tim's post that the key of E should well suit the strings -and being a guitarist, I put your piece to the test on my instrument. I found that it played very nicely on my classical guitar and was able to almost instantly play along with the piece. Do you play guitar yourself? It's often difficult to write for guitar if you don't know how the chords will lay out on the fretboard, but you seem to have done a fine job with the part!
The only immediate suggestion I will make is that at measure 37, the guitar seems to suddenly drop out from the arrangement. Perhaps you could write a chord to help support the other instruments at this point?
Once again, good work. Any chance this one will be performed live?
Jeff, Mentor
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Jeff, Thanks for listening and responding to my piece! I listened to my piece without dynamics, and measure 37 really stood out. It sounds better with dynamics (its a quiet measure). However, I did add three quarter notes to make the measure less empty. Yeah, I play the guitar and started this piece by writing the guitar line on the instrument. I don't know if this will be played live but I hope so! I changed the key signature to E and changed measure 37 so the guitar was playing. Thanks again, Sarah Feedback Requested: |
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First Revision of Composition
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Sarah:
Greetings. I have finally had a chance to put a few ideas together about your
piece Night and would like to share them with you.
Normal score order would be:
Oboe
Guitar
Violin 1
Violin 2
Violin 3
In that order. Yes, the violins should be on separate lines but can be grouped together to show that they are three of the same instruments.
Because you occasionally have three pitches being played at the same time in the violins and sometimes just two, you will have to decide what you're going to do with the third violin when there are but two notes to play. One thing you could do, of course, would be to simply leave a rest in whichever violin part is not necessary at the time. The other and, to me at least, more interesting thing to do would be to double one of the pitches.
How do you decide which pitch to double in m. 1, for instance, you might ask? I would recommend doubling the F sharp rather than the A sharp since it (F#) is a note found in the key of E major. The A# is a chromatic pitch in E, such "stranger pitches" are best left undoubled. A general rule of thumb is, when having to double, a note, choose the tonic pitch, the subdominant pitch, or the dominant one if at all possible. Try to avoid doubling the fifth of chords; leading tones (i.e., the seventh degree of the scale, which in your case is D#) are also best left undoubled as well.
Also, rather than just having the first and second fiddles play sustained pitches the whole time, there are a few places where they could borrow the triplet rhythm from the oboe in an antiphonal (i.e., answering back and forth) relationship. This gives the string parts a little more interest and links the parts together a little more strongly than if they were just playing long tones. That is what I meant by trying to give the violins a little more to do. Rhythm, not melody is helping to create a stronger unity between the principal part and the supporting ones.
I hope the preceding has been helpful. Let me know if there's anything that confuses you. Thanks for posting your piece, and keep up the GREAT WORK!
Tim, Mentor
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I gave the strings three different lines, adding octaves when there were only 2 notes in the chord. I also changed the rhythms for the strings in measure 28 to create a call and response thingy. I also changed the ending to make a chord. Sarah Feedback Requested: |
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Second Revision of Composition
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Sarah:
I just heard through your new version once and I must say I am impressed!
Very nice job indeed. I'll respond in more detail later in the week. Til then!
Tim, Mentor
Sarah,
Once again, nice work! I especially appreciate your creative use of dynamics.
On revisiting your piece, it just occurred to me that your music would actually be best represented on paper with a time signature of 6/8. The guitar's rhythms conducts this time signature perfectly and the other instruments follow suit as well. Duplicate your Sibelius or MIDI file, try the new time signature, and let me know what you think!
-Be aware that you'll need to keep measure 37 as a measure of 4/4 (which should work fine), and then return to 6/8 for the tune's bridge as well as the rest of the song. Ask your teacher how to count (or maybe even conduct) in 6/8 so you can follow your music in the new time signature.
Notation issues aside, I believe you've done an awesome job with "Night." You've got a real talent for composition and I hope we all get to hear more of your work online!
Jeff, Mentor
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Jeff, I thought of using the time signature 6/8 before writing the piece but decided not to because that would make the arpeggios sound like triplets, which I didn't want. When you hear the guitar part do you hear the eighth notes as triplets? If so how could I change it (or do you like it)? My teacher thought that changing the time signature to 6/4 would work really well, which it did because each phrase fits into a measure. In measure 24, I changed the time signature to 4/4. I also changed the last chord around. Sarah Feedback Requested: |
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Third Revision of Composition
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Sarah,
Notating in 6/4 certainly helps make your piece easier to read, although I
still feel the guitar's eighth-note rhythms really set the pace for the time
signature. (6/4 implies a quarter-note pulse.) 6/8 time won't change your
rhythms and make them sound like triplets, but will make your piece easier
to read along with, in this guitarist's opinion.
For the last chord, you could try a 1-4-1 cadence. (E to A to E), although I also think it would be neat if you just had the two-bar phrase continue to repeat and fade out. Lots of songs use fade-outs, but we rarely hear this arranging technique employed in MIDI compositions!
Jeff, Mentor
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Jeff, Thanks, Sarah |
Sarah,
In a notation program such as Sibelius, you'll most likely need to use dynamic
markings to accomplish the fade-out effect. What is cool about this particular
program, is that you can go into the "dictionary" (under play/flextime
menu) and create a special dynamic marking, say ppppp (we'll call it 'super-fanstastic-pianissimo'!)
which has a velocity (loudness) value of 0. Use this custom marking at the
end of the last measure. Don't forget that hairpins (see "line"
under the "create" menu) can be used to create gradual fades between
dynamic markings.
Jeff, Mentor
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I'm pretty sure this is my final project. I changed the ending so that it fades out, but the guitar part still has the same ending. I changed the dynamics a little bit around measure 25. Feedback Requested: Sarah |
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Final Version of Composition
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Sarah:
I really like the latest version of your piece. I think it flows very very VERY well now. I am so glad that you found my suggestions helpful.
Tim, Mentor
Sarah,
This is absolutely BEAUTIFUL! Thank you for sharing this with us.
Diane, Mentor
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