Thinking of Returning to Piano & Concerto Appassionata

[j_joe_townley]

Hello All,

I have been away from the piano for several years but I had a fairly good technique before I quit. It was listening to the Finale of Rachmaninoff's 1st Sonata that is tempting me back. I don't see anything in there that is of impossible difficulty--mostly chords, triplets in place. The most difficult thing would be the sheer energy needed to make it dramatic.

I have been composing in the meantime, but I am getting tired of it frankly and miss piano. My last composition was "Concerto Appassionata Opus 3" for piano & orchestra (8 minutes), a hommage to Rachmaninoff's 2nd Piano Concerto which is my favorite concerto. Would you good folks have a listen and give me your unvarnished opinions about whether I should just give up composing and return to piano, or if there's anything of value in the Concerto.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J-vOOsqe4yw

[ted]

It depends on whether you feel an imperative to create, that is your internal reward comes from the act of creation itself and the consequent satisfaction that you have said something you had to say and said it well. On the other hand, for many artists the whole reason for creation lies in societal consequence, how other people, particularly those considered musically worthy, might regard the work. Your post seems to imply you reside in the latter group, but be careful not to throw the creative baby out with the bathwater of societal neglect. Where does your joy truly lie ? Indeed, does it have to be a case of "either/or" at all ?

I like the Concerto Appassionata very much but I am afraid my opinion counts for little. I am just an old improviser who worked for thirty years at a factory, and who long ago ceased to care what people think about my own music. But even were I a famous musician, music professor or such, I don't see how I could make comments about the "value" of somebody else's creation; not in any universal sense. If you ask Pianoworld you'll probably get ten dozen conclusive opinions from experts, but the underlying questions cannot be answered by experts.

In the end, a drive to create comes from the soul, not from expediency or external influence. If you have something to say then you must say it. This view is admittedly unpopular these days.

[j_joe_townley]

Thank you for your excellent reply, Ted (that'd make a good film "Bill and Ted's Excellent Reply" if we had a Bill). I definitely do not compose to fulfill some inner drive to create and not be heard. The issue I face is, "Does my music have any intrinsic 'attractiveness'? Does it make people say, 'Wow, I really enjoyed listening to that!" If it does, then I'm satisfied and feel I've done my job. If it doesn't, then I feel there's no point in breaking my back leaning over a computer keyboard to click millions of notes onto an electronic blank score and agonizing over whether to use oboes or horns here or there.

Stats on the Concerto Appassionata show that 98% of people who click on it hang around for anywhere from 3 seconds to three minutes. Rarely does anyone stick it through. If I can't hold a listener's attention for more than three minutes then I've failed and the piece, frankly, is worthless. But I just wanted to get some feedback from some more knowledgeable musicians to get an idea of whether or not the piece is attractive enough to finish.

Case in point: 63 people have viewed this thread but you're the only person who replied and very few of the others bothered to click the link, judging from my stats. Those who did had nothing to say, so obviously they weren't very impressed. That's okay. It just shows I have no business trying to create music.

 Again, thanks much for your opinion and for taking the time to reply.

[ted]

I always listen right through to people's posts. I don't always comment these days, but that is just due to a general reduction in my internet activity.

I think you have answered your own question. Music, however it manifests itself in us, should be a constant ecstasy, not an anguished grind. I stopped writing out my piano music for similar reasons.

All the same, I do like the piece and I shall download it via my Zoom to play through my hi-fi again at leisure. 

[j_joe_townley]

Ted, if I may ask one last question; did you find the sound quality to be grating on the ears? One or two people on YouTube commented on this, but my speakers are those small Bose rectangular/trapezoid type and they make it sound like it's coming off a DG CD being played on a $1000 system.

[ted]

I have just listened to the file on my hi-fi played from a USB stick and it sounded pretty good. I still like the music, no worries there. However, admittedly, I am very tolerant when it comes to sound quality, especially if I like the music. For instance, I cannot tell the difference between wav and high quality mp3, among other personal shortcomings. One thing I did notice when I was copying the file was its crewcut appearance in several places.



When this happens to me it usually means I have recorded on too high a volume and clipping has occurred. Maybe that has something to do with what people are talking about ?

[j_joe_townley]

That is really fascinating to look at, Ted. I can see the music in the wave lines and the only place I can see obvious differences is the soft horns against the tremolo strings from 4:30 to 5:45, but this section is not a sound problem for people because it's so soft. Somebody complained about the sound right from the opening brass fanfare so I have my suspicions he/she was listening on their computer's built-in speakers which are usually cheap. I have Bose, those 10" x 4" trapezoid ones that sell for about $100 and I get an excellent sound out of it, but maybe my ears have adapted to lousy sound.

I'm assuming the wav is on top, I don't know why...just a wild guess or something about the waves that my gut tells me doesn't look as good as the one below, which I assume is the mp3.

[ted]

No, they are the two stereo tracks of your piece, Joe. I recorded it on my Zoom H2 from the output socket of my iPad. The Zoom has a visible volume meter, and I made sure it only ever reached around 70%. So the "crew cut" effect actually resides in your recording, and was not generated by my Zoom. My hi-fi is old but good - Pioneer with about 2' by 1' speakers I suppose.



That is a slice of other orchestral music I recorded off youtube using the same technique. As you can see, nothing appears "shaved off".

[ted]

I hadn't really noticed your other works, but I have now, and I like the D minor one too and downloaded that onto my memory stick. The file of the D minor concerto exhibits the same clipping about 7:00 to 10:00 and after 26:00, as you can see from the plot; not nearly as much as in the other piece. Is there some option to do with volume or normalising when you record from your software ?



As you say, it might not be anything to do with why other people don't like the sound, but eliminating clipping has to help the general quality.

I have to say that I like your sort of music. I make up my own mind about what I like, and take notice of no one, especially experts, musicians and pianists, as people on this forum will confirm. Nobody is going to convince me I ought to like raspberries if I like bananas.

[ronde_des_sylphes]

The act of deciding to create music should come from within: not be something subject to approval from outside entities - as long as it rewards the creator.

Anyway, I posted a long, and admittedly highly subjective, critique on pianoworld, which for the sake of discussion I will repeat here.
Beforehand I'll comment a) that I definitely preferred your earlier D min concerto b) that is good research, Ted: it explains a lot of what I feel about the sonic limitations. The waveform is quite clearly clipped - and substantially so.

I listened to the full piece. First impressions: the sound quality suffers from a lack of clarity: individual parts don't seem to come out (or perhaps they aren't very well delineated). That's not my biggest concern. There doesn't seem to be a lot of dialogue between the piano and the orchestra, with the net result that the listener thinks the same thing is happening over and over again. It would not hurt, to have a big statement of the theme in the piano, in chords for example: and without the scalic figures in the background - they really are overused. The other problem is that there don't seem to be a lot of standout points which focus attention. I think these concerns are ultimately exacerbated by the sound, which is very one-dimensional.

Second impressions (quick running commentary):
The very first bars I find the harmony/intervalic superimpositions rather antithetical to the romantic idiom. Not sure if this is me or not, but they don't seem to fit.
0.23: these octaves are far too slow and not bravura enough and lose the impetus of the quasi-cadenza passage beforehand.
0:42: I like the basic idea, but as with the introduction I think a slightly thinner harmonic texture might benefit it: I'm a bit troubled by some of the non-harmonically essential intervals within the texture.
c.1:42: by now I think most listeners will be thinking "this has been saying the same thing for quite a while". I don't think this works on a dramatic level, quite apart from musical or structural.
2:10: No! The octaves have prepared the listener for the piano to do something quite dramatic, and it goes back to doing basically what it was doing before. A big chordal statement (see above) would imo work better.
2:50-3.01: I think this lead-in works quite well.
4:27: There was real impetus in that progession I felt, and then it just stopped! What followed is in places quite touching, but with better organisation, you could achieve both that and get something from 4:21-7's progression.
5:46 decent join imo. The drum roll helps add colour.
Good coda.

I might be quite critical, but at the same time I also appreciate just how much work will have gone into this.

Addendum: giving up is the last thing you should be doing!

[j_joe_townley]

I hadn't really noticed your other works, but I have now, and I like the D minor one too and downloaded that onto my memory stick. The file of the D minor concerto exhibits the same clipping about 7:00 to 10:00 and after 26:00, as you can see from the plot; not nearly as much as in the other piece. Is there some option to do with volume or normalising when you record from your software ?



As you say, it might not be anything to do with why other people don't like the sound, but eliminating clipping has to help the general quality.

I have to say that I like your sort of music. I make up my own mind about what I like, and take notice of no one, especially experts, musicians and pianists, as people on this forum will confirm. Nobody is going to convince me I ought to like raspberries if I like bananas.

Thank you much, Ted. Your help is so greatly appreciated.

The biggest obstacle to good sound in these pieces, I think, lies in the fact that Notion3 provides one master mixer for the entire piece. So if I set the horns at +2 and the trombones at -1 they have to stay that way through out the piece whether it's 2 minutes long or 28 minutes, as the PC#2 is. This makes for a horrible balancing act I have to perform to get the piano dominant but then make it fall back when other instruments need to come to the forefront. There are devices the program provides like f and p and ff and pp etc and < (accent) and cres. things like this to help bring out certain lines but they don't work in all cases. Sometimes when I add a ff to the piano it comes out sounding honky-tonk, the sound is so bad so I have to go back to mf. That is why at 4:16 the piano's entrance sounded so muted when it should have shone---because a ff made the piano sound so clangy. Truthfully, the mixing is an art unto itself and often it takes longer to mix it properly than it does to compose it, taking into consideration having to add all these marking, then erase them and try a different one...and on and on until the right combination of gain and markings is achieved.

[j_joe_townley]

The act of deciding to create music should come from within: not be something subject to approval from outside entities - as long as it rewards the creator.

Anyway, I posted a long, and admittedly highly subjective, critique on pianoworld, which for the sake of discussion I will repeat here.
Beforehand I'll comment a) that I definitely preferred your earlier D min concerto b) that is good research, Ted: it explains a lot of what I feel about the sonic limitations. The waveform is quite clearly clipped - and substantially so.

I listened to the full piece. First impressions: the sound quality suffers from a lack of clarity: individual parts don't seem to come out (or perhaps they aren't very well delineated). That's not my biggest concern. There doesn't seem to be a lot of dialogue between the piano and the orchestra, with the net result that the listener thinks the same thing is happening over and over again. It would not hurt, to have a big statement of the theme in the piano, in chords for example: and without the scalic figures in the background - they really are overused. The other problem is that there don't seem to be a lot of standout points which focus attention. I think these concerns are ultimately exacerbated by the sound, which is very one-dimensional.

Second impressions (quick running commentary):
The very first bars I find the harmony/intervalic superimpositions rather antithetical to the romantic idiom. Not sure if this is me or not, but they don't seem to fit.
0.23: these octaves are far too slow and not bravura enough and lose the impetus of the quasi-cadenza passage beforehand.
0:42: I like the basic idea, but as with the introduction I think a slightly thinner harmonic texture might benefit it: I'm a bit troubled by some of the non-harmonically essential intervals within the texture.
c.1:42: by now I think most listeners will be thinking "this has been saying the same thing for quite a while". I don't think this works on a dramatic level, quite apart from musical or structural.
2:10: No! The octaves have prepared the listener for the piano to do something quite dramatic, and it goes back to doing basically what it was doing before. A big chordal statement (see above) would imo work better.
2:50-3.01: I think this lead-in works quite well.
4:27: There was real impetus in that progession I felt, and then it just stopped! What followed is in places quite touching, but with better organisation, you could achieve both that and get something from 4:21-7's progression.
5:46 decent join imo. The drum roll helps add colour.
Good coda.

I might be quite critical, but at the same time I also appreciate just how much work will have gone into this.

Addendum: giving up is the last thing you should be doing!

Thank you, ronde for reminding me of some very important things that need to be addressed in the piece. I agree with 99% of what you say. For example, someone said the opening sounds like a mix of Prokofiev and Rachmaninoff---now there's two people who should definitely not be mixing. And overall, the piece is not well thought-out or conceived, that's the word I want. I basically had two tunes in my mind and the problem became how to present them most attractively. I'm afraid I got lazy as it was easier to just give the tunes to the orchestra and let the piano do some fill-in. That is a grievous sin for which I don't deserve absolution and partly why I decided to give up composing--I'm just not original and I have nothing new to say. It took 3 concertos to make me come to that realization. If you know my story you know that as a kid I was obsessed with writing piano concertos and once wrote one movement that was horrible dreck before I injured my finger at about 18 YO and gave it all up. So many years later I decide to write the concerto, then another, then another. But I'm not really a composer. I have had no formal training in composition or orchestration. It's all instinct. Sometimes it works for me but most of the time it doesn't. So basically I accomplished what I set out to do. No. 1 was mediocre. No. 2 was the best, as best for me can be. No. 3 was a failure (weak material-weak orchestration) so I stopped. What I am most proud of in everything I did is the 1st movement of the 2nd Concerto, especially the development section and maybe Recap.

[cometear]

It has a very Romantic style opening, which I enjoy. I very much like the arpeggio patterns on the piano which the orchestra holds the melody, very much like Rachmaninoff which I assume was your goal. Did you study a college degree for anything music? Also I'd recommend trying to get into somewhere like Curtis for your composing. I think it is worthy because of it's uniqueness.

[j_menz]

Also I'd recommend trying to get into somewhere like Curtis for your composing. I think it is worthy because of it's uniqueness.

If Curtis is unique, how does one find somewhere like it?

[cometear]

If Curtis is unique, how does one find somewhere like it?

If I may restate what I was saying. "I think your composition is worthy because of the uniqueness it inherits." is more clear.

[j_menz]

If I may restate what I was saying. "I think your composition is worthy because of the uniqueness it inherits." is more clear.

Much. 

Hang around and you'll soon figure out I'm something of a pedant. Just remember:

[cometear]

Much. 

Hang around and you'll soon figure out I'm something of a pedant. Just remember:

Ha ha, I'll be sure to remember that!

[j_joe_townley]

It has a very Romantic style opening, which I enjoy. I very much like the arpeggio patterns on the piano which the orchestra holds the melody, very much like Rachmaninoff which I assume was your goal. Did you study a college degree for anything music? Also I'd recommend trying to get into somewhere like Curtis for your composing. I think it is worthy because of it's uniqueness.

Thanks much, cometear. Very kind of you. Yes, I guess that's how it turned out even though the main theme more or less wrote itself out first and then I had to figure out a way to present it. That's the problem---a huge problem, mind you--of writing in an out-of-date style: choosing how to decorate a long-arching theme of 32 bars (Rach's is 44 for comparison and arpeggiated all the way--of course "nobody does it better, though sometimes I wish I did").

Curtis! Wish I had the chops. But unless a composer is writing for computers and synthesizers these days they might as well throw in the towel. The music industry elite crucifies anyone that composes this kind of music. One conductor asked me seriously about my 2nd Piano Concerto, "Do we really need a Rachmaninoff 5th Concerto?" A compliment dressed in an insult wrapped in a truism, as Churchill might say.