Q. I'm looking for criticisms on my harmony and my modulation to the dominant (It sounds funny and I don't know how to fix it). Attached is a pic of all the music because I can't attach a .pdf. This is about grade 4/5 so it's good sight reading practise for anyone that wants it. Any other comments would be helpful too... Thanks!
Link:
http://i218.photobucket.com/albums/cc189/DaraJava/Untitled-1.jpg
P.S. Sorry but some bars got smushed towards the end. Blame Finale!
Why is everyone attacking maninkia? Please stop using my question as a forum to have petty battles. Thank you.
Also, i. jones, your links don't work. Could you re-post them please? Thanks.
A. Some random jottings from a former lecturer in composition....
(i) Your modulation to the Dominant sounded queer merely because you sat on a chord in its second inversion, a weak sound almost always!
(ii) You chose to write in the style of C.P.E.Bach (A style about 250 years old now). Any sensitive listener would hear this, and subconsciously demand that you followed the practices of this long-gone era. You didn't.
(a)There are several very naked consecutives, and there are at least two obvious and weak similar motion passages to an octave or to a fifth. When there is never more than 2 notes sounding simultaneusly, this is awfully exposed.
(b) On more than one occasion you give us harmony with no third or 7th, merely a perfect interval (4th, 5th, or 8th). This provides no harmonic 'grit' whatsoever.
(c) Apart from my comment on the reason your modulation sounded amateurish, there is, from memory, two other occasions when you use the 2nd inversion of your accompanyment chord. In the thin texture you have chosen, this almost always sounds a little weak.
2. The work seems to start again every 4 bars. Did you mean it to?
3. Although you have a well-developed melodic sense, and you use dissonance quite nicely, I felt there was a need for the movement to be 'about' something. It seemed to be a pretty piece of almost nothing. Is there a theme? Already,I have forgotten it, if there was!
The above seems quite harsh, no doubt? There are far more good things than bad in your first attempt to write music, and I wish you well in your future writing.
Do you think the 18th Century Alberti bass is viable in the 21st Century? I don't. Srely there is nothing new to say in that idiom, and, with the development of the modern piano, the need for this style of writing is long gone!
A tinkling little piece of pretty salon writing is not to be scoffed at. I'm sorry if you think that's what I was doing. I was trying to encourage you to write more forcefully, to attempt to 'say' something in your future efforts.
Already, you use Finale really well!
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Title : What do you think of my first sonata?
Description : Q. I'm looking for criticisms on my harmony and my modulation to the dominant (It sounds funny and I don't know how to fix it). Att...