Piano Solo Compositions - Advice

[ffthomaz]

Hello all,

I have been following this forum for the past months but never have registered before.
First of all, sorry if this isn’t the place to post such a topic or to ask such questions.

I am portuguese, and I started learning piano from age 5 to age 13/14 in the conservatory. Although I never stopped with music (jt is my life, even though I am mastered in sciences), I never really developed my piano techniques or music theory after that age. I have however composed a lot (not for piano solo; for bands; I even composed music for a musical, but all extremely simple, which I’m not saying it’s bad or inferior, but after a while it sounded too similar and limiting to me) and learned a lot by myself creating these songs, melodies and listening and playing other instruments like guitar or saxophone. Piano was, above all, still my passion, and after getting my master and earning my first salaries I bought in end of February a Kawai CN34 Digital Piano.

My goal and what really drives me is creation. Whether in sciences or art, such as writing, composing or drawing. I decided that I wanted to try myself to compose piano solo pieces. I had (have) a lack of technique, music theory, experience and even lack of known classic piano repertoire. After ‘re-learning’ to play, mainly alongside Chopin’s nocturnes, I decided to compose my first pieces. I don’t know why, but I thought that it would be ‘nice’ to practice by creating 24 little pieces one in each piano scale (at the moment when I thought of it, I was not aware that so many composers have done that, in the form of Preludes or Etudes or…).

Its a long journey and I’m enjoying a lot writing and getting pieces, even small, together. I have now almost finished the first draft of all 24. I hope to have these first drafts finished by mid-November.

I know this is going to sound ‘weird’, but the thing is, what do I do with them? I mean, what I want is, in first hand, feedback and criticism. They are not great, there are clear flaws, but I wanted to know if I’m going somewhere in the right path. The main second issue is that it is even hard for me to criticize these pieces, because 1) My technique and piano musicality is way below what is required for most of the pieces; a large quantity of them I cannot even in a sloppy way, play and 2) My Kawai sounds OK, but it is by no means a piano, and even for composing I found the sound very limiting.

Should I try to play the ones I know and place them on Youtube or other media file sharing? Should I upload the scores on IMSLP, or should I register the pieces if I don’t want ‘em to be copied? Do you think that there might be anyone anywhere that would like to take a look at the scores, learn the pieces and criticize or even send me a recording for me to listen?

Of course that my goal is to learn my pieces and play them as I heard them in my heart. I know that it was quite ‘crazy’ to attempt writing pieces, and with difficulty far above of what I’m capable of achieving with my hands. But now that they’re done, they’re done, and I would like to learn even more with them than what I’ve learned, and with some luck, there might someone who likes some of the pieces and feels what I felt when thinking of them.

Thank you very much all

[yadeehoo]

Placements in movie trailers, commercials, video games...?

If you're better composer than interpret, then write your music in Midi, and arrange it the way it sounds good to you.

Don't ask any one for criticism before you have finished pieces, once you're really proud of it and think you did your best, post them online.

I also wrote pieces I can't play yet, so, I'm studying them like any other composition from another composer