Some music II

[Nikolas]

Ok. The name of the subject hopefully will remind you of another thread. The other thread was about a fugue, and it got me thinking and the result is this thread.

About half a year ago I composed a piece for two violins called "My Fucking Life".

I'm perfectly happy with the compsotion itself and perfectly unhappy with the recording. The violonist are very good but the recording and the lack of rehearsals brought this poor result.

So, this is kind of a "show off". I'm not particularly looking for any critic, although any is more than welcome. What I'm most interested to know is if you like it or not and maybe why...

I'm thinking of making a new recording but this means money to be paid and I don't have a lot. But if I get some encouragement (if you like it let's say...) I would go for it. If not, I would reconsider (but not necessarily change my mind...)

Anyway here it is:
http://rapidshare.de/files/8008706/MyFuckingLife.zip.html

And there is the score in there too, just to follow the music...

Nikolas

[Paper Carnival]

I don't know what to think. The recording is bad indeed. The problem I find is that it's too random. But I like its weirdness, weird music is cool

[Sluggo]

Wow I actually like this a lot. I don't think the recording is that bad and the violinists are quite good. The end does feel a little unsatisfactory though. Perhaps if you brought some of the first section into the second one it would feel a little more justified. The material is very good, I just think the two sections are too segregated.

[Helm]

sound quality is fine.

I like this piece a lot. I like the dynamics and the omnious feeling of the lurking part. Awesomely jagged at the beginning, although the violinist slurs some pizzicato bits a bit too much. Better than if you had to use sampled instruments for this, though. What you have a problem with in the first busy part is that phrases aren't defined enough, they kind of blur through each other, segments sometimes are good. This would need more 'clues' of when a phrase resolves.

I like the lurking part, but the thing is, I was expecting a Gnomus-like Mussorgsky fast abrupt chromatic scale run at the end or something to tie it off. I'd do that, personally, even if it sounds very obvious.

[Nikolas]

Just a note about the recording:

The violonists are indeed very good, maybe two of the best around in London. The recording was done for a workshop inside a picture gallery (this is how it's called). It's a huge place 10 m tall and maybe 200-300 sqm. What bothers me most in this recording is the huge amount of reverb (natural), it has because of the huge space they were playing in. And of course the fact that they could play it much cleaner...

A little info about the composition:

The two sections are in a proportion of 5/8 - 3/8 (the golden section). I was feeling really down when I wrote this (and very dissapointed with my life, and this is why I named it "My Fucking Life"), and this is why there is so sad an ending. No hope. The first part actually is a fugue (trying to have 3 ! voices, with two instruments... well).

Thank you all

[Gregjazz]

I think the reverb goes a long well, giving it a sort of surreal quality. How was this recorded? (I.E. what mics, how many, etc.)

[Nikolas]

The recording was in a huge room, with a crapy mic connected to a mini disk. Plus one of the two violonist were banging his foot on the wooden floor to keep the tempo (it is rather difficult piece regarding to the change of rythm all over the place), and I had to actually EQed it in order to take a little bit of his footing (which I can certainly still hear). Thus the violin songs are a little bit altered as well.

Nah! I hate the recording actually. I have to find two decent violonists and rerecord it in a studio with two mics, one for each one.

Well...

Thank you for listening and commenting though. It is always refreshing to post some music here. The comments are always helpfull and uplifting.

Nikolas

[Gregjazz]

Yeah, definitely rerecord it with better mics... maybe in a studio so that way you can really control the sound better than recording live.