Hi everyone,

Here are the five pieces from my debut album "Piano Sketches" released in September 2009, I hope you enjoy them.

http://music.innerversion.com/track/cam ... ano-sketch
http://music.innerversion.com/track/mid ... ano-sketch
http://music.innerversion.com/track/us- ... ano-sketch
http://music.innerversion.com/track/egy ... ano-sketch
http://music.innerversion.com/track/egy ... ano-sketch

And the five pieces (one more is in development) from my second album "Reflections":

http://music.innerversion.com/track/ref ... 1-tomorrow
http://music.innerversion.com/track/ref ... bird-tales
http://music.innerversion.com/track/ref ... -blue-rose
http://music.innerversion.com/track/ref ... -pink-rose
http://music.innerversion.com/track/ref ... il-flowers

Hello
I cannot comment very intelligently because I am not a composer, but pianistically I enjoyed these as beautiful mood pieces with some very lovely moments of emotion.

For the first one, you might try your editing program to eliminate the tiny noise (whoosh of wind sound) before your very first note. It would be nice to hear the first note ring out with only silence preceding it.

Thank-you so much for sharing these!
Nicole Muller
Canada

Odd - the fade in from silence is the exact effect I used on the source WAV file before converting it to MP3. Please can you try downloading the file again to see if the same issue arises? I'm looking at the source WAV and MP3 versions in a wave editor and can't seem to see or hear any noise before the first note - maybe I need to upload the mp3 again.

Thank you for the nice comments though

Chris

Hi Chris

I listened again and can still hear it, but if no one else has noticed it, it is likely just a glitch with my audio player.

Am curious to hear what the composers on this site think of the two pieces. Good work!

As a non-composer I can't really gauge where these pieces stand as compositions, whether they have some plan or structure one would normally expect in a composition, or they are more like extended (written-out ?) improvisations. Certainly they sound great, are packed with beautiful sounds, good ideas, and pianistic writing. Not least, they are superbly executed. Is it digital or acoustic ? The sound is demonstration-standard, I think.

I enjoyed the Cambric Clouds more than the Night Rain, even if it seems to go on a little bit. The Night Rain sounds a bit more like generalized new-Age, with less distinctive ideas than the othr piece.

Thank you - the pieces have been recorded using Pianoteq, using various customised presets.

I actually went with a fairly artificial-sounding Pianoteq 2.0 preset for Midnight Rain as it seemed to match the piece the best, whereas Cambric Clouds (and the other pieces) use customised Pianoteq 3.0 presets which have a warmer and fuller sound.

Here is the third piece from the album as well:

http://music.innerversion.com/track/us- ... ano-sketch

Nice piece ! There is some beautiful music in here.

Thank you - and the first piece from my upcoming album "Reflections":

http://music.innerversion.com/track/ref ... 1-tomorrow

A beautiful piece again. My only criticism is that it's more than twice too long. To my mind, it should have ended at about 3:22. After this point, it starts to wander around quite aimlessly. Still producing nice sounds, but I believe that is not enough.

Well perhaps give it a few more listens before deeming it "aimless" - the ending of the piece has a reprise of both the starting theme and one of the themes in the middle section.

Yes I noticed that, and it was a point in its favour. Seems like too little, too late to me though.
Indeed it could be that repeated listening (I listened only twice) could reveal more structure and purpose to the proceedings in between. The problem is that if something does not grab you instantly, you are not likely to listen a couple of times.

Well, all I can say is that the piece has been very carefully constructed over a period of 3+ months

Also, I'm not sure about whether "instant catchiness" is great quality to have, many of my favourite compositions of all time took me several listens to get into (including Rach 2 & 3, Goldberg Variations and a few Debussy pieces)

Judging from the feedback and response to my own pieces, Midnight Rain seems to be the most accessible / "instantly catchy" by a considerable margin, but it's not a piece I play any more (and probably my least favourite out of the six pieces I've written).

I used to hate Gaspard de la Nuit.

it took me one hundred listenings to understand Scarbo.

"Inner Version (Us Prisoners)"
This is an interesting piece. You have made good use of your thematic material. You create wonderful harmonic colors.

Your initial thematic statement is well laid out. It is presented as a unit that, though it comes to a sense of resolution, it is not a strong resolution and therefore invites a continuation. Your placement of the climactic points are well thought out. The only problem to me with the climactic points is that they are somewhat at the same level and the final one at 3:36 does not quite reach the heights that the build up to it seem to indicate. At that point in this piece I want to feel breathless and suspended in air.

On the whole, I find it a convincing piece.

"Reflections #1 (Tomorrow)"

This piece has some very interesting and intriguing ideas. Harmonically, you use a romantic/impressionistic pallette that works well. But I do have to agree with Chris that it becomes too long for the material that you have and the way that it is put together. (So far, I've given it about 7 hearings).

The biggest problem is the location of the climactic points and their resolutions. In this piece, you have an incomplete climax at c 1:17, then at 1:51 - 2:09 another marginally stronger climax, and finally a fairly complete climax at 3:03. It comes down from there and by 3:22 you have a complete resolution of the tensions. This is very close to the plan that you use in "Inner Vision (Us Prisoners)", which is only a little longer than the 3:22 that we mention here. Consequently, in this piece there is really no where left to go after 3:22. To hold a piece of music together for 9 minutes, the proportions of the climactic points need to be spread out over that time.

From 3:22 to 8:58, it seems like a collection of disjoint ideas, none which seem to grow out of the initial material. These ideas are not particularly contrasting nor develpmental -- there are fragments that have some sense of develpment but it is not fulfilled. You do provide several interesting harmonic colors. Between 5:00 and 6:00 there is some sense of moving toward a climactic point, but it is never reached. This could be why I am not really getting that much sense of the reprise at the end.

I have enjoyed your other compositions, but for me this one does not quite measure up.

Scott