Looking to Finalize and Polish My Piece
I am only 19 year old and have not taken a lick of any theory classes so everything I've done is essentially self taught/a good guess. I am minimal theory knowledge that I picked up during choir, but know little when it comes to actual composition. This is the second piece of attempted at writing for a SATB choir, let alone with a flute accompanying a choir and soloist. I've done as much polishing and revision of the actual structure and layout of the piece, but would love to hear from you guys who actually know what they're doing. One of my main concerns is that theres a string of triplets whenever the piece transitions into 4/4 time. If that is the way it is supposed to be, thats fine by me, but I am curious if theres anyway I can have the piece in 6/8 time the whole way through while still keeping the melody and chord alignments. Another concern I have it spacing out the syllables of the lyrics properly. A lot of it is splitting the words over multiple notes and spreading a vowel or syllable across multiple notes. This last bit isn't that important because I have another program to make a rendition of it with, but if there is anyway I can make the notes obey dynamic markings and crescendos and decrescendos, that would be spectacular. Thanks for the help guys!
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| Seasons'_Blessings.mscz | 27.92 KB |
Comments
Hey Lettuce-
Are you saying basically that you started writing the thing in simple time and then realized you preferred a triplet feel and are hoping you can just kind of magically expand the 4/4 into 6/8 and it will rewrite itself?
Ultimately writing scores is about getting the results you want from people who have never seen your charts. If you have no reason to be in 4/4 and the whole piece should be in 6/8, then I'd go ahead and rewrite the whole thing in 6/8.
As for the lyrics being on "multiple notes" this is proper orthography for lyrics. If you want the a certain syllable to be sung over a string of notes you write it once below that string of notes.
Cheers!
-ag
In reply to Hey Lettuce- Are you saying by Andrew Gorny
Thanks for the info on the lyrics! I did my best to break it where it looked natural. As for the triplets, I was just curious if there was another way I could get the same feel and movement without it being triplets. I know for some singers its rather difficult to get a triplet correct. I just want to make sure the piece is written in the easiest way to understand it and perform it adequately.
I don't have any strong opinions on the rhythmic question - whether you use triplets, time changes within compound meter, or any other device, complex rhythms are complex rhythms and will cause problems at first until people "get" it.
Not sure what you mean about spacing of lyrics. The default should be correct most of the time. is there a particular place where you feel it is not? If so, please explain further. One known issue is that a very long syllable that is part of a melisma (more than one note on a single syllable) should extend below the next note(s) but currently doesn't. This is something already improved for MuseScore 3, but that's still quite a ways off.
Also not sure what you mean about crescendo. MuseScore supports playback of crescendo as long as you use dynamic markings before and after so it knows where to start and where to end - same as human musicians would generally want. Only limitation is that due to how MIDI works and how MuseScore uses it, there is no way to cresendo within a single note. Again, if you have a specific place where you are having trouble, please explain further.