#2

I received more helpful suggestions for my second piano piece. I'm not entirely sold on my harmonic material, I was mostly trying to organize a fragmented rhythmic approach into a cohesive structure. I think I achieved this, and it was said that this piece worked in its short length. That said, there are a few key musical events that could have went on slightly longer to further emphasize what I was trying to do with them:

The first page jumps between 2 ideas, and each idea is often displayed in a slightly altered manner, such as having 1 less beat or 1 more beat in the measure. Other than slight rhythmic variations, the only other changes are in register. Some felt this should be expanded in length a little bit, and in doing so I could add some more interesting notes, since I felt the harmony here got a bit stale after a while.
Later in the piece there is a more open-sounding section, which could easily be expanded some more and would make more sense if it were slightly longer, especially if the first section is expanded.

Piano I

I received very helpful feedback in today's class. My piece was composed in its entirety yesterday (all 20 measures of it..), so it hadn't really settled with me, and I was unsure of what to do with it next.

Several aspects that people liked were pointed out, and in most cases, they felt could be developed a little more. These included:
-play the recurring grace-note melody in LH as opposed to RH.. or just try moving it around in register
-develop the idea of hitting a low register note/chord fortissimo, followed by a long single-note melodic phrase. More specifically, having multiple big bangin' chords/notes before the melodic phrase kicks in... keep the listener wondering when the motive will finally come back!
-develop the 2-voice contrapuntal texture that enters near the end of some of the phrases
-develop the more open-sounding arpeggiated accompanimental figure (holy mouthful) that doesn't appear until the last few measures

I like all these ideas, but above all, what struck me most was when Dr. Ross said that what I had so far felt like a very good "introduction". and I agree.. I like the flow of the material I have so far, I think it sits on certain ideas for just the right amount of time, but it does seem to be setting the listener up for more. The arpeggiated accompaniment figure comes in near the end, and if I wanted it to, could really go on and take the piece to a more concrete and open sounding middle section. So I think I'll do just that... start by developing that figure, see where it takes me, and try to incorporate all the other suggestions within the new material that I will base on the pre-established motives.