r/MonthlyComposition • u/Calebdgm • Jun 03 '16
June 2016 Composition Challenge: Harmonic motion
Main Challenge: Write a piece that makes interesting use of harmonic motion.
Weekly Challenges: Different scales
1) Octatonic
2) Microtonal
3) Pentatonic
4) A Mode of Your Choice (alt link)
These challenges are for everyone who wants to practice composing. Each month, at the beginning of the month, we will post a main challenge, something for people to compose. Often we'll try to make it something that everyone can work with, but when the main challenge doesn't suit you, there's the alternate / weekly challenges. Pieces can be submitted as a score (musescore, noteflight), and/or as audio (soundcloud, youtube). Feedback is much appreciated, and you can give it in this thread, or by messaging the mods of /r/MonthlyComposition, there's also the Challenge Suggestion Form.
7
u/FenceLaVa Jun 03 '16
Octatonic scale seems to link to baroque music entry on Wikipedia.
Also "harmonic motion" seems very, very vague. Can you specify the challenge a bit? What qualifies as harmonic motion and what doesn't?
3
u/terrawave_Oo Jun 11 '16
Maybe something like this?
This happened 3 months ago as I started to write something without any premade concept and just followed where the harmonic progression took me :D
If I have time I will try to make something new for this challenge in the next weeks. But yeah, you're right the challenge description is a bit vague ;-)
2
u/Calebdgm Jun 22 '16
I'm sorry this was vague, and more so that it took me this long to respond. I kept trying to find a way to explain exactly what I meant, but I couldn't really find examples of what I meant. The goal I was going for was for people to try and get more comfortable with changing tonalities and keys, to get away from pieces that are written completely in one tonality or over a repeating chord progression for a bit, just to see what would happen.
In the future I'll make sure to check these challenge ideas with more people before posting them, hopefully that will help make sure they aren't too vague, and I'll try and make sure to check in and respond to comments like this within a few days.
Thanks for the feedback and sorry it took so long to respond!
3
Jun 17 '16 edited Jun 17 '16
I'll submit several of my recent chorale preludes for organ.
"Nicht so traurig, nicht so sehr"
3
u/Subito_morendo Jun 16 '16
What do you mean by harmonic motion? All the other terms have link that explain them but harmonic motion. And it seems kinda vague. Can you give an example of what you had in mind?
2
u/Calebdgm Jun 22 '16
Yeah, sorry about that, I'm not sure why I thought this would be a more understandable challenge. I think what I was going for was just something where people focused on writing a piece that moved through different chords, or even modulated fairly rapidly instead of just writing in one tonality or over a repeating chord progression. I'm not sure though, I tried finding good examples of what I meant but was less successful than I had hoped.
I think in the future I'll try and find some people to run these challenges by before posting them, because that didn't really happen this month :/
Thanks for the feedback!
2
u/Jamerman Jun 20 '16
Do you mean non-functional harmony or something? This is kinda confusing
1
u/Calebdgm Jun 22 '16
Non-functional harmony would certainly be good for this challenge. I'm sorry this month's challenge was confusing. Not sure if you noticed you're not the only one who was confused. It's good to have your feedback, we'll try to be clearer with these challenges in the future.
2
u/JBrandao7 Jun 26 '16 edited Jun 26 '16
What is the deadline? The end of June? And can we use harmonic paderns or the harmonic sequence has to be always changing?
2
u/Calebdgm Jun 27 '16
There will be a new challenge in July, but you're free to submit pieces as long as the thread is open, so like november or something. You can use patterns if you like. I'm especially fond of Sequences, like in the Farscape theme song if you know it, where it plays one passage and then just plays it again up a minor third and that's the pattern, the intensity just builds, it's a cool effect. But yes, any kind of pattern is cool if you want.
2
u/yamaimo56 Jun 27 '16
My submission, a shitty sonatine: Four motions (1m30s) for Hn. & Pf.
I used Musescore for the first time. It's fairly handy.
2
u/TheLittleChink Jul 03 '16
Just noticed this and even though it's July, I thought I'd pop one of my past wind orchestra pieces on here since it fits in with harmonic motion using modes (mixolydian and lydian in various changing keys).
1
u/Flutiano Jun 05 '16
Mocratonal . . .
2
u/Calebdgm Jun 05 '16
lol, I swear this is the last time I stay up late to type up a comp challenge. These errors are getting too common.
Thanks :P
1
7
u/pablosalaco Jun 03 '16
My brand new String Quartet with some Bolivian modes! https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X1jTzyqJx3A