Today I checked the forum and I was really surprised. I honestly did not expect to receive so many replies! To apologise for being so late, I'll try to answer as many questions as possible.
Tom, thank you for the detailed feedback. The slower version was a "happy accident", so to speak: usually I'm very careful when composing a piece and I try to get the right balance between emotional impact and cohesiveness. If you allow me to make a bad joke, I'd say 49,9% the former and 50,1% the latter. However, this time I decided to experiment with a more improvisational approach, and I "discovered" the slower version while I was analyzing the composition after the fact, in particular while I was listening to the lydian variation of the main theme at the beginning. Probably some parts suffer a bit from being played so slowly, but in the end I decided to include the alternative version nonetheless, mainly because it suggest a very different atmosphere.
About the question at the end, well the answer is simple: I'm not a virtuoso pianist at all! Everything you listened to on my Soundcloud is programmed in the exact same way, that is with mouse only. I admit that sometimes editing every single note can be frustrating, but it is always compensated by the satisfaction of seeing the composition and the performance slowly taking shape as a whole and enhancing each other. These are, in my opinion, the three most important tips I can share (also, this is just my personal view on the subject):
- When choosing the velocities for a group of notes, separate them into different voices, then treat those voices as melodic instruments. Generally speaking, don't be afraid of using very low velocities in the accompaniment compared to the melody, and intermediate velocity in the bassline. Even at fortissimo, velocity from 100 onwards should be used carefully because they have a huge impact that can easily become overwhelming. Lastly, if a line contains a section of repeated notes and is not playing a crescendo, it's better to lower progressively the velocity of all the repeated notes;
- This piece is based on pedal so it doesn't apply here, but for example for fugato phrasing it's extremely important to account for note lenght (thankfully, the Synchron series has some of the best release trails I've ever heard in a piano Vst). It may seem redundant at first, but differentiating between legato, semi-legato, tenuto, staccato and staccatissimo makes all the difference in the world for counterpoint clarity especially, and helps the listener distinguishing between different voices;
- Last but not least, the most important touch for realism: tempo automation. I split tempo automation in three different layers: random fluctuations (sort of a "noise", if you will), accelerando/ritardando and rubato. The first two are pretty much self explanatory, but rubato is a bit tricky and requires special attention. I prefer to think of rubato in terms of subtracting and I never add in previous section to compensate - usually, all the automations for rubato are done in the last 1/8th or 1/16th of a melodic phrase, depending on the context.
Finally, thank you for checking my other compositions. I'm glad you found them interesting, it keeps me motivated to do my best and to find new ways to improve.
