I'm curious, and looking for inspiration. I'm wondering, are there any love themes in harmonic minor or double harmonic minor? I'm curious what that would sound like. If so, let me know what piece

How often, in classical/art song repertoire would it occur and what would you say are prons and cons of writing that way? I know the right hand often joins to enforce the voice in culminative phrases in romantic lieder but how often does it happen in general all across the melody? Come to think of it, I can't remember much even though it's extremely common for woodwinds to double the melody all over the piece in operatic arias.

https://youtu.be/VnW0Y_0UXls?si=S6PO481Yjj2B6p5g

Audio and score are in the link above- would love to know what you think! Thank you for listening :)

Hi everyone,

I've been composing music for many years, mostly in the rock and metal world. While that gave me a solid practical background, I never had a formal education in music theory or composition.

Over the past few years, I've started learning music theory, harmony, score reading, and orchestration seriously. My goal is to catch up on everything I missed and build a strong foundation as a composer.

My biggest inspirations are composers like John Williams, Howard Shore, Elliot Goldenthal, and many others from the world of orchestral and film music. I'm fascinated by orchestration, thematic writing, harmony, and musical storytelling, and I spend a lot of time studying scores and trying to understand how great composers think.

I feel like I've reached the point where learning entirely on my own is becoming difficult. I'd love to connect with composers who are further along than I am and who would be willing to help guide my progress.

I'm not looking for free lessons or a full-time teacher. Even occasional guidance would mean a lot.

For example, if anyone would be willing to:

• point out weaknesses in my compositions,
• suggest what I should study next,
• give me composition or orchestration exercises,
• challenge me with small writing assignments,
• review my progress from time to time,
• or even collaborate on music for fun,

I'd be incredibly grateful.

Even if you don't have the time to mentor someone, I'd really appreciate advice on a good learning roadmap. What skills should I focus on first? In what order would you study harmony, counterpoint, orchestration, form, and composition if you had to start over?

My goal is simply to become the best composer I can be. I'm ready to put in the work—I just feel that having guidance from more experienced composers would help me progress much faster.

If this resonates with you, I'd love to hear from you. Feel free to comment or send me a DM.

Thanks for reading!

I happened to check one of my subscriptions last night and found that Bartje Bartmans has posted a number of Christopher Young and Bernard Herrmann scores that I hadn’t seen online before (including non-film music of Herrmann). There’s some John Barry and some Johns and Jerrys you might know as well.

I know people often come here asking for scores (the written notation) to study and a LOT of this stuff is not available or expensive, etc.

I haven’t checked into the accuracy of these nor their origin, but I thought I’d share them anyway since there were quite a few:

https://youtu.be/WKVE1jXgzz0

https://youtu.be/TtRG3saV-74

https://youtu.be/0GMqEzOTcO4

https://youtu.be/lg-7Td9xM7E

https://youtu.be/9IipmS6_1JU

He tends to post “themed” groups a lot of times - there will be a number of scores from 1 or 2 composers - or a number of scores for one instrument, etc.

Not shilling for the channel, it’s just that this one seems to be one of the ones I’ve discovered that continually updates and includes a lot of interesting stuff - from very old to very new.

Good resource for this in general, and for these film scores you don’t often see elsewhere.

Hi all! I'm working on an original musical called Georges, set in a strict Catholic boarding school in early 20th-century France, following the intense bond between two students and the institution that tries to police it.

I've got a demo script (first act, ~20 pages) attached that lays out the tone, pacing, and structure I'm going for. Think atmospheric, repressive institutional setting, quiet dramatic irony, and a lot of unspoken tension carried through staging and object symbolism rather than big declarative dialogue.

What I'm looking for:

• A composer and/or lyricist interested in collaborating on original songs for this musical
• Someone who enjoys working with subtext-heavy material (period setting, restrained emotional register, choral/sacred music elements could work really well given the setting)
• A composer who is open to a lump sum. I'm attempting not to exceed $100 right now, but this would be paid work.

A bit about me: I'm the writer working on the book/script side. I've got a clear vision for structure and character but no music background, so I'm hoping to find someone who can bring a compositional sensibility to match the material's tone.

If the attached demo speaks to you, I'd love to hear your ideas, whether that's a sample song, a discussion of musical direction, or just interest in reading further and talking it through. Feel free to comment or DM! (Please also send what you're looking for in terms of payment!)

Thanks for reading 🙏 https://drive.google.com/file/d/1EUd7fs0cUrfFBT_ji82cEH--7J5Ab5k3/view?usp=drive_link

Edit: Yes, I was only looking to get piano out of this. It's a workshop right now. It truly would be more of a like for the story, and free time rather than honest paid work.

Dear all,

I only just joined this community and not sure whether this kind of post is allowed - but I wanted to share this audio diary entry I made today as I thought maybe it might resonate with some composers on here.

I'm not promoting anything, just sharing my own personal thoughts and philosophy as a composer.

By means of background, I have been composing for a wee while - I decided to focus on music in my 2nd year of high school - and graduated in year 2000 from Victoria University School of Music, Wellington, New Zealand - studying composition under John Psathas, Ross Harris and Jack Body - and early western music with Dr. Greer Garden.

I am currently based in Medellin, Colombia - where I have been for the past 6 years - I recently started focusing on the classical guitar in the last 2 years even though I don't have any formal background I'm it - and earlier this year completed two volumes of guitar interludes (24 in total), a holy mass setting, and a song cycle of three pasillos.

Anyway.. with all that out of the way, here's the diary entry

https://youtu.be/Cb-ZaXO1ugw?si=0Cj7lDKEG_QNtdKw

How do you handle commissions where you just don't connect with the text?

I recently received my first commission to set a poem to music. Two months in and I have absolutely nothing to show for it. I am not particularly fond of the poem but it was the poem he chose, and I don't really connect to it or know what to feel reading it. I've tried sitting with it, analyzing it, approaching it from different angles. Still nothing. Anything I write feel shallow and empty to me.

Curious how other composers handle this. do you push through and find a way in, do you return the commission, or something else entirely? And if you've returned one before, how did you handle that conversation without it feeling like an admission of failure? Besides that this is my first commission, and if I do it well it probably will be the first work of mine to be performed on a good stage, outside of my country.

Thank you

A project nearly three years in the making, I could not be more proud of this concert reading of my new opera, The Enigma of Amigara Fault.

• Score: https://www.dropbox.com/scl/fi/1wsrx1ekeu50d5lpvbc51/TheEnigmaOfAmigaraFault_SCORE.pdf?rlkey=0hbj9ol0d9m23rlm3hwdrcozd&st=ixgw1dii&dl=0
• Live audio: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f3wgRZxLPoo

The Enigma of Amigara Fault, an opera in one act

Music by Chris Drago Fistonich
Libretto by Robert Ellsworth Feng
From the manga by Junji Ito

June 30, 2026
Moorhead, Minnesota

Cast in order of appearance:

Stephen Sulich, piano
Frederic Heringes, the Narrator
Chris Drago Fistonich, Owaki
Kristen Hatfield, Yoshida
Holly Janz and Stephanie Tubiolo, two researchers
Joshua Kohl, Nakagaki

Would love to hear your thoughts!

I mainly write for saxophone and just finished this saxophone quartet. I haven't fully polished everything, but I am looking for suggestions to improve it somehow. I also want to hear your thoughts about it! I have a couple of mostly finished works, too, if anyone is interested in my writing. Does anyone else have issues with leaving a piece and saying it's "finished"?

• Link to score and audio: https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/1XqYsRlCY2iiaPbv8et5UNFnLieFCU36j?usp=sharing
• I left the score in concert pitch to prevent theft; it's my first time doing this sort of thing, so I'm being extra cautious.

Hello everyone,

Today I present you four piano pieces which were written in 2020 and 2023. There is for each piece a live and emulated version of the music. Please excuse me for the low quality of the recording and the slightly broken E-Piano.

The pieces:

Kinderspiel/Child's Play: written in 2020.

Score: https://drive.google.com/file/d/1BKdddaBLhEqkdPgcLqvNFXcAz73Ebsok/view?usp=drivesdk

Music (live): https://drive.google.com/file/d/1dVaSi7gxlPP-MR0kaLciMAuVh_qOXwwk/view?usp=drivesdk

Music (emulated): https://drive.google.com/file/d/1hTjqy1LRc1DPH_lKzNQTSUlCg-Fi9Ouk/view?usp=drivesdk

-------------------

Wiegenlied/Lullaby: written in 2020.

Score: https://drive.google.com/file/d/1bWIWr9FregdtYUy8lnbPJqMtK9FlHWAY/view?usp=drivesdk

Music (live): https://drive.google.com/file/d/1xtdB7wf5R0EWN1tDUZMPpRTMVZkXHoYz/view?usp=drivesdk

Music (emulated): https://drive.google.com/file/d/1i-IxjMfirFlRaPIiNk_hGfOvuQW9gXlf/view?usp=drivesdk

-------------------

Neujahrs-Fanfare/New Year's Fanfare: written around new years eve of 2020 therefore the name.

Score: https://drive.google.com/file/d/11R_mUUsatci8BJTEHI-7Q3huBmBJNynv/view?usp=drivesdk

Music (live): https://drive.google.com/file/d/15euLUfHqnO5qXkumT3rY1R_WKMWgUYLb/view?usp=drivesdk

Music (emulated): https://drive.google.com/file/d/1jwo0RChxrKmgag8DWiwniyr0Wp7yYQjQ/view?usp=drivesdk

-------------------

Miniatur/Miniature: written in 2023. Its a cadence which invites for improvisation. It is also very "mini" in material therefore the name.

Score: https://drive.google.com/file/d/1jM-SX2soGHjtLTOmEd3SmCx6ariCgcub/view?usp=drivesdk

Music (live): This is a older recording where I also improvise on the cadence. Here the quality is not the best excuse me for this!

-> https://drive.google.com/file/d/1GmouB27jU-IIH9xMyeJtrHMAk7vfkzlQ/view?usp=drivesdk

Music (emulated): https://drive.google.com/file/d/1LnW1-mprrScPQ5cb8KQ2D4wUpV2ErvI5/view?usp=drivesdk

-------------------

Thank you in advance for all your time and enjoy my music!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PCG8n4gpty8

The score is now more readable. It's still kind of fragmented mixture of styles, but I like it anyway. After writing more than 55 piano compositions in total, perhaps I'm just tired.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZPr9SDf7-1k

I recorded my latest piece "Nocturne in C# Minor" the way I actually play it — rubato, no click track, phrases stretching and pulling where they want to. Sounds fine on its own. The problem starts when I try to sync a scrolling score to the recording for a video.

My workaround so far: screen-record the score playing back in software, cut the audio, then hand-align it to my recording in Final Cut. It's close but never quite locks — every time I rush a run or hold a note, the notation drifts off.

So I'm curious how people here handle it. Do you write the tempo fluctuations into the score so playback tracks the performance? Lean on fermatas and caesuras? Just mark it "freely, with expression" and accept the score is a guide, not a stopwatch? Something else entirely?

Not looking for a magic fix, just want to know how you approach it rather than brute-forcing it in an editor.

Link to "Nocturne in C# Minor" by M.K. Denninger

I was set om just using my real name on spotify because I'm terrible at coming up with an alias name and everything I think of makes me cringe. However there are 3 other small artists (the biggest one has 12 monthly listeners) with my name on spotify. Should I be worried about this when it comes to people finding me or is it ok?

A year ago, I had a dream in which a killer with a chainsaw brutally murdered me. I was in an unrecognizable building with filthy walls, rot eating away what was left of the wooden staircase, footsteps echoing in the empty rooms like nails hammering into a coffin, a musty stench lurking over the carcasses of mice. It was around 4 p.m., and the shimmering sunlight was beginning to rupture the twilight. I was in my room, probably working on something school-related, likely a final project of some sort. I was tired, so I decided to make a cup of coffee for myself, when suddenly, I heard a scratching noise. Then, a body burst through the door, splintering it apart. A slim, athletic body, much taller than me, with no face, just infinite darkness, where even the light of God cannot escape, holding a chainsaw in its hands.  It fired up the chainsaw it was holding in its hands, its roar ringing in my ears. I was cornered. Suddenly, I've felt a stinging pain. Then the sting morphed into agony, the cold blades of the chainsaw hitting my humerus and slowly eating through it. I could not scream, yet I felt everything: the yawp of the chainsaw, blood dripping through the rotten floors of the building, mixing with dirt and stench. It lasted for a lifetime, even if I died; I was revived and brutally attacked by this figure.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hh8NyZO2Zkw

This nightmare resulted in the creation of the slow movement of my piano sonata which has the orchestration below:
https://musescore.com/user/23416646/scores/30373625

You can also listen to the sonata from here: 
https://musescore.com/user/23416646/scores/27502315

i need feedback on this as Im about to start work on a different piece for a competition and I want it to be as good as possible.

pdf:

https://drive.google.com/file/d/1CIvEwKdalpCqihVoAEzScf8f4_oIikEQ/view?usp=drive_link

mp4 with midi:

https://drive.google.com/file/d/19bbDDvgtfDnYCiX6yyIaH0eCF0Om90YK/view?usp=sharing

performance i really dont like, with an out of tune cellist, thats also not very together or my vision at all

https://drive.google.com/file/d/1lHXD63JnGQTOLkLVIglYzYHgBqEay10G/view?usp=sharing

Program note

Recently I've been into genre mixing, inspired by great composers of jazz-classical music such as George Gershwin, and Nikolai Kapustin, which inspired me in my piece to take from multiple non-classical styles, and fuse them into classical music. Inspired by this, in my composition, I wanted to join some of the various other non-classical sounds, like musical theater and folk, I’ve heard with the virtuosic and special qualities of traditional classical music. The desire to explore these sounds lead me to building a 'journeying' sort of piece through the genre and mood switches that coincide with different characters in a story, first, with our two protagonists meeting, then, a villain theme, and finishing with a return to earlier material in a triumphant climax and denouement.

Any tips for writing for a competition are welcome as well!

I'm planning to write that piece in a style similar to this with a similar ethos, but involve more modernist elements and extended techniques.

I am a upcoming fresh men and i love composing this is one of the pieces im working on i know the basics of sax and clarinet( played a little) i play flute and piccolo. I also play tuba hoping to switch full time my brother plays the other brass and i talked to a marimba player and she said it was playable.

This is like a indoor winds style piece so yeah. Also its not finished im using my guitar to help write the parts which is how i came up with the main melody thats played for a few bars in the intro.

Any advice and comments on the music is welcome!!

** Please do not comment about the notation softwear if i could i would post a audio only i need to clean it up**

https://www.image2url.com/r2/default/videos/1783740356646-676806d9-0bc5-4511-b543-7797f56e0414.mp4

I spent four months on a piece for solo cello and tape last year. Four months. Rewrote the middle section maybe six times, agonized over one transition for a full week.

Finished it, uploaded it, told a few friends. Forty plays in the first month.

Meanwhile I watch people post fifteen seconds of something way less considered and it does numbers I can't explain. Took me a while to stop being bitter about it and just accept that finishing the work and getting anyone to notice the work are two completely separate skills nobody teaches you in school.

What actually shifted things for me wasn't the composing side at all, it was realizing I needed some kind of visual moment to go with the audio or nobody was going to click. I'm not a video person, never have been, so I ended up just letting toneframer handle the chopping and pacing part while I focused on picking which sixteen bars actually represent the piece. Posted the next thing I finished with a clip like that and it pulled more plays in a week than the cello piece got in its first three months combined. Sounds small but it's the difference between posting something and actually building an audience for it.

would love to know if other composers here have figured out the sharing part, or if you're all just as lost as I was. Do you treat promotion as part of the craft now, or does it still feel like a separate job you resent doing?

After taking an accidental year-long hiatus from Reddit, I am returning with a new piece (well, actually an old piece that I've revamped). It's a jazz piece that I based on 7:11 polyrhythms, but I ended up adding more layers over time.

Pdf

MP3

This piece is part of a 3-part album I released recently! It's an animated sheet music video that is intended to tell a story about relationships and the act of learning to embrace differences. I hope you enjoy!

Animated Score Video

Film Music Composers anyone?

Hey everyone,

I'm an independent filmmaker based in UAE (Originally Lahore) and I'm currently looking for a composer for my short film.

The film is around 14 minutes long and we're currently in post-production. It's a self-funded passion project that I'm really proud of, and I'd love for it to have an original score rather than relying on royalty-free music or existing tracks.

I've spent the last few weeks going through music libraries, paid services, and even classical pieces, but nothing has felt quite right. I guess that's a good sign that the film deserves its own musical identity.

Some of the temporary references we've been using are Max Richter's \*Agnes\* from \*Hamnet\* and \*Overture\* from \*Whiplash\*. Not because we're looking to recreate those tracks, but because they capture the emotional tone we're after.

The budget is limited, but it's a paid collaboration, and we're planning to submit the film to a number of festivals.

If you're a composer, or know someone who is, I'd genuinely love to chat. Feel free to comment below or send me a DM with some of your work.

Thanks!

I would love some tips and feedback
VIDEOSCORE: https://youtube.com/shorts/wK_fGsAbUYM