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My contribution is a piece for accordion, clarinet, and harp. I wrote it for my wedding and Becky and I got the chance to perform it live with one of the top Canadian harpists, Erica Goodman. This version though, features live accordion, clarinet, and midi harp (long before we knew how to really work with virtual instruments).
Passages for Accordion, Clarinet, and Harp
Sincerely,
Dave
This is a nice melody I had scored for a movie a long time ago, I think has some Brahms-ish qualities:
Scene from Eternal (2004) scored by Guy Bacos (All done with VSL back in 2003)
Later I used this same theme to write a "Theme and Variations" piece, and also did a version for piano and cello which will be performed in 2018, but this is the piano version.
My contribution is a piece for accordion, clarinet, and harp. I wrote it for my wedding and Becky and I got the chance to perform it live with one of the top Canadian harpists, Erica Goodman. This version though, features live accordion, clarinet, and midi harp (long before we knew how to really work with virtual instruments).
Passages for Accordion, Clarinet, and Harp
Sincerely,
Dave
Well it sounds great. A lovely melody. And since I am unused to a clarinet, harp and accordian ensemble, it sounds very fresh and like nothing else I have heard. Marvelous!
This is a nice melody I had scored for a movie a long time ago, I think has some Brahms-ish qualities:
Scene from Eternal (2004) scored by Guy Bacos (All done with VSL back in 2003)
Later I used this same theme to write a "Theme and Variations" piece, and also did a version for piano and cello which will be performed in 2018, but this is the piano version.
This is a beautiful melody, and I much prefer it to the first one you posted. I find the harmony particularly pleasing and an integral part of the appeal of the melody.
Dave that is a great theme and very unique instrumentation also.
Guy I couldn't tell much from the first cue in the film score, but the Romantic Variations is brilliant. You mentioned Tchaikovsky - well this music is on that level, simply beautiful. Very few people can create anything like this... it is Romantic but not a retread - I admire that more than anything.
Here is a another melody -
This is so beautiful William. Great soprano, great melodies, orchestration and production. Fantastic music overall.
Dave...I loved your piece too....nice composition and performance, and very touching to know this was for your wedding.
Without having the delusion that I am 'competing' with the impressive posts in this thread, I felt like digging up an old peice that I wrote for a local film festival many years ago. I like to think that Ive grown much musically since then. The production and quality are nowhere near optimal, you can notice many problems in rendering (this was not made with VSL btw) and compositionally its not quite there yet. But however...my wife thinks this is one of my best melodies, so here is my amateur contribution:
https://soundcloud.com/ankumar333/aiff-theme-anand-final/s-qqyZM
Cheers
Anand
btw being a physicist, I thought I might add a bit of math info regarding the number of possible melodies, which some here might already know about.
Even if we take a diatonic scale with an 8-note melody or theme, choosen out of 12 chromatic notes with no repetitions, the number of possible combinations are 12!/(12-8)! = 19 million. (the ! refers to the factorial function)
That means even without note repetitions there are 19 million possible diatonic melodies. But of course most of these will not sound pleasant. But even if 1/100th of these are good, we have 200,000 melodies. Now imagine if we add 7 note or 6 note or 5 note melodies, allso variations in rhythm.
There is much room for new music!
Anand
A wonderful job, Dave, for a most special occasion. Did you (both) perform the music live at the marriage ceremony?
As an accordionist, I like the sound of the instrument and the detailed playing techniques. Very melancholic melody though for a marriage. 😉
Jos
Here is a another melody -
A well crafted melody. The entire work is brilliant. The art of crafting melody is a balancing act between repeition and change, familiar structured phrase and surprise, and between dissonance and consonance. Great melodies have a nearly perfect (nothing I suppose is totally perfect) balance of these elements.
btw being a physicist, I thought I might add a bit of math info regarding the number of possible melodies, which some here might already know about.
Even if we take a diatonic scale with an 8-note melody or theme, choosen out of 12 chromatic notes with no repetitions, the number of possible combinations are 12!/(12-8)! = 19 million. (the ! refers to the factorial function)
That means even without note repetitions there are 19 million possible diatonic melodies. But of course most of these will not sound pleasant. But even if 1/100th of these are good, we have 200,000 melodies. Now imagine if we add 7 note or 6 note or 5 note melodies, allso variations in rhythm.
There is much room for new music!
Anand
Thank you for sharing this. I was not aware of these numbers. And they do not seem to include a calculation for note durantion (rhythm). I am no mathematician or physicist, so I have no idea how to include duration. Perhaps you could help us. If we also say every one of the 8 notes of the diatonic scale can have a rythmic value of whole note, half note, quarter note, eigth note or sixteenth note, or any of those values as a triplet, how would that alter the calculation?
Hi Paul,
This is a fantastic melodic theme (Princess Anna). I love the way you changed the intimate mood suddenly (at 1:23).
Great music and fine orchestration!
Jos
Thank you so much. I get very little feedback (positive or negative) about my music so your comment is much appreciated. The Pricess Anna theme is part of a larger composition, which is finished, but I just cannot get comfortable with the mix. I keep changing it. Thanks Jos.
Here is a another melody -
I probably listened to this piece a long time ago, but forgot how beautiful it is, it is truly beautiful William. I love how the orchestration isn't overdone, something there reminds me of Puccini, which I'm a huge fan of. One of the nicest piece I've heard here.
btw being a physicist, I thought I might add a bit of math info regarding the number of possible melodies, which some here might already know about.
Even if we take a diatonic scale with an 8-note melody or theme, choosen out of 12 chromatic notes with no repetitions, the number of possible combinations are 12!/(12-8)! = 19 million. (the ! refers to the factorial function)
That means even without note repetitions there are 19 million possible diatonic melodies. But of course most of these will not sound pleasant. But even if 1/100th of these are good, we have 200,000 melodies. Now imagine if we add 7 note or 6 note or 5 note melodies, allso variations in rhythm.
There is much room for new music!
Anand
Thank you for sharing this. I was not aware of these numbers. And they do not seem to include a calculation for note durantion (rhythm). I am no mathematician or physicist, so I have no idea how to include duration. Perhaps you could help us. If we also say every one of the 8 notes of the diatonic scale can have a rythmic value of whole note, half note, quarter note, eigth note or sixteenth note, or any of those values as a triplet, how would that alter the calculation?
Yes I assumed all notes are the same length.
If we want to include whole, 1/4, 1/8, and 1/16th notes, keeping it still an 8 note melody, we now have 12 x 4 = 48 notes to pick from. So now the calculation is 48!/(48-8)! = 15 trillion. (there is a simpler way to look at this. There are empty 8 slots, and we have 48 apples. The first slot can be filled with any of the 48 apples, second with any of the remaining 47, third with 46, and so on. So we have 48*47*46*45*44*43*42*41 ways of filling the 8 slots, which comes to 15 trillion)
So you can make 15 trillion 8-note melodies with chromatic notes and note lenghts from whole to 16th. Of course many of these will be redundant. For example, if all 8 notes are the same duration, changing from quarter to whole is simply like playing the same melody faster! But if I am not wrong that is only the case for 12 x 4 = 48 melodies.
So that still leaves us with 15 trillion - 48 melodies, which makes the same difference as a turtle peeing in the atlantic ocean. Note that I have left out rests. (John cage will pick all 8 as rest notes. so he wont care about this discussion. LOL)
I still believe there will be many redundancies, but if we can use even 1 millionth of these, it leaves us with a biliion combinations.
Not bad to be a composer!
Anand
Hi Anand,
Thank you! That answer first made me laugh, then I sort of went into a daze thinking about it. 15 trillion. Wow. Thanks for the help.
Paul
btw being a physicist, I thought I might add a bit of math info regarding the number of possible melodies, which some here might already know about.
Even if we take a diatonic scale with an 8-note melody or theme, choosen out of 12 chromatic notes with no repetitions, the number of possible combinations are 12!/(12-8)! = 19 million. (the ! refers to the factorial function)
That means even without note repetitions there are 19 million possible diatonic melodies. But of course most of these will not sound pleasant. But even if 1/100th of these are good, we have 200,000 melodies. Now imagine if we add 7 note or 6 note or 5 note melodies, allso variations in rhythm.
There is much room for new music!
Anand
anand, being a physicist myself I have to correct you there 😉: the minimal number of 8-note melodies is 12^8 (taking a melody as an ordered set with repetitions - see guy’s first masterpiece 😃), which is already nearly half a billion. as you point out this does not take into account that notes can have different lengths … as well as different velocities, being played with different articulations, dynamics, vibrato—and changing some of these additional properties you can easily mess up any good melody.
so the odds to find a good melody by chance should be far less than hitting the jackpot. but the amazing examples in this thread (which I enjoyed very much!) show that music is not math and that all these extremely talented people here definitively know what they are doing 😊.
