Thanks! That's one of the best things a composer can hope to hear!

Thank you very much for your kind words. I still have a long way to go, but I appreciate your support. How happy I am to have many years of improvement in front of me, because I surely won't stop composing any time soon :) and of course - I will keep studying Bach!

Thank you so much! Well, I am an 18 year old from North-Rhein-Westphalia, so this means a lot to me :) But I still consider myself more amateurish than anything. Still - I try to convey what passion I can offer at the moment. Abitur is near you know - a big turning point in life.

Thank you. This is actually my main Issue. MuseScore - the software I am using doesn't sound good when I get virtuous. This has been hindering and limiting my compositions for a long time now.

@@schlu Yeah, MuseScore is notorious for that. It takes practice to just overcome it, ignore the limitations and learn to know what it will sound like. My primary instrument is cello, and sometimes I will record fragments of all the parts to see what I want to change. Similarly, just listening to quartets play and finding how different timbres are written work. :p

Yes, I will try to practice to see beyond what I can hear. Won't be an easy step to take, but it will be a necessary one.

Thank you :)

I am working on it :)

Thank you for the kind words! Well I am 100% self taught and just kind of trained my instinct over the last year when it comes to four part harmony and composition in general. I never actually studied any of this so I sadly can't give you any recommendations. I just wrote what I thought sounded nice and slowly understood the dos and don'ts over time. I have a long journey of learning ahead of me and wish you the best of luck on yours! :)

Thank you for the kind words! To make quicker progress in your compositions I would really recommend first writing for smaller Ensembles. Tackling a Symphony is the grandest thing a composer can do and can quickly be overwhelming. I don't feel at all capable of writing a Symphony. So. My tipps for you: 1. Scale it down. Symphonies are the final boss of composing. Gain experience by first confronting the common enemies. Limitations breed creativity - having too many instruments restricts what you actually want to achieve. 2. Learn four part harmony. This will result in more coherent melodies as a side product of more coherent harmonies. 3. One thing that helped me personally is actually to not catalogue my pieces. I have stopped using Opus numbers a while ago, because I realised that it makes me mentally mark my pieces as being set in stone. 4. Music theory is your friend and so is grouping phrases into 4 or 8 bar phrases. But the most important thing is: Don't stop writing! Composing is a wonderful thing! I actually think that you and I have much more in common than you might realise. We started in the exact same way. I have hundreds of drafts in my Score folder. I really hope I didn't come of as too pushy with my comment - I just wanted to give what helped me as an example on how one might improve more quickly. We are in the same boat here. I didn't write like this from day one. Nobody did. And oh how much I still have to improve: The staccato accompaniment gets too stale too quickly. I focused too much on the first Violin as the melody. The main and second themes don't feel distinct enough. Octaves in the outer voices are questionable. I forgot the coda. I could keep going, but I already stole enough of your time. You should be writing! I should be writing! Everybody should be writing! :)

​@@schluDanke für die ganzen Tipps!

Thank you!

I linked the sheet music for free in the description, if you're still interested :)

right?!?

Thank you! I dabble in cello, but my real passion lies in the piano and of course composition. I might plan to study music as well, when I finish my a levels.

That is same for me. I want to compose music with variability, harmony, beaty of classical music's extent, but in modern light as well.

I wish you the best in your project! Writing a string quartet is quite a challenging thing to do ;) The problem I have with MuseSounds Solo-Strings, is that they just sound incredibly glitchy for me. The dynamics just fluctuate randomly making the sound pretty much unusable. Would you happen to know anything about that?

@@schluthank you! That’s true, I had some bad issues with dynamics on stacatto notes but I didn’t have that many of them so it was still fine for me. You have alot of them so I see why lol I created a post on the MuseScore forum about it but no one has replied. I’ll try creating a bug report on GitHub since this issue is clearly happening to more people. Kind of a bummer but hopefully it’ll get fixed soon.

I have this problem as well. As much of a misfortune it is, I'm glad I am not alone in that experience, and feel free to share if you ever find a solution. Great work by the way; as someone who is trying to get into school for composition, witnessing another share this passion and do it well is a lovely thing. Keep it up! @@schlu

Thank you! I will follow your advise!

Thank you! Those are the sounds of the notation software I use. It's MuseScore 4 using MuseSounds and it's free. Might want to check it out! I actually used the ensemble sounds for this one since the solo instrument sounds are a bit glitchy on my pc, but I think it still works well. They have pretty much every instrument. I used MuseSounds for a whole orchestra in the past.

Thanks! I currently use MuseScore 4.

Appreciate it. I use MuseScore 4 for writing and rendering my scores.

THank you@@schlu

I'm certainly no expert myself, but key is definitely learning and following the rules of four-part-harmony. Don't bend the rule until you can confidently stand behind your decisions. Also keep the players in mind. Too many flats and sharps can prove to be rather tedious for less advanced musicians - I experienced this live, when my first String Quartet was rehersed (this shouldn't be a problem for professionals). Keep the bowing of all the players in sync if possible and have important beats on downbows. Switch up which instrument plays the melody from time to time and use dynamics to bring instrument into or out of the foreground. Don't be afraid to utilize the full range of each instrument. There are a lot of things I could say, but this should suffice in the beginning. You will get a feeling for multi instrument polyphony. Hope this was somehow useful information! :)

Thanks for the advice! I'll look into it.

The thing is - I obviously wanted to use the sound of solo-instruments for my string quartets, but the solo string sounds available in MuseHub are very glitchy and unreliable so I tend to use the ensemble sounds instead.

I wholeheartedly appreciate your advice and will try to take it into consideration :) You know, I just have this problem that things like sul tasto and different bowings don't appear in the sound generated by MuseScore, which makes it hard for me to really get into details like that. I am actually more of a pianist, so I have this inner voice telling me that the melody is always on top. I definitely need to work on that. Thank you!

I'd be delighted. I'm currenly pretty busy, but I'll get to it soon enough. I'll comment again when the link is reworked :)

I have linked the sheet music in the description. Hope it works. Sorry, took a bit longer than I thought.

I use the standard font from MuseScore 4. It's called Edwin.

Thank you dude❤😊

I use the MuseSounds from MuseScore 4. They sound really good, but have their limitations in technique.

And they're free.

How interesting! Thank you for the information.@@schlu

The composer is myself and the work is not yet finished, but I'm working on it ;)

Yes, I'll try to get the sheet music ready in the next few days. This means a lot to me. Thank you :)

I linked the sheet music is the description and seperated it into the different parts. I am still no expert at bowing and fingering, so feel free to adjust anything if need arises.

Please do :) I'd love to hear your thoughts in detail if it doesn't trouble you. I love every comment I get!

​@@schluI just did one, outside of this "answer" mode, in case u didn't perceive it

When I have some spare time Ill put some notes together to post. May take a week or so @@schlu

Alright :) Thank you.

Have a little time to write some thoughts. First I think its important always to know the musical intention behind a section we are considering. That is, there is no absolute rule of music or way that something should be done outside of its musical context. Any suggestion I consider and you consider in the future should be related to the musical intention of that moment in particular and in relation to the overall work. The question could be asked, do I want to express this idea, feeling and so on musically, but that ventures into the realm of musical style, language, philosophy, musical history, social development and so on which is something to be considered and processed over the course of many pieces and years. That being said, I mean to say that any suggestion I make I will try to do in relation to what I think you are trying to express and will be done to more clearly and deeply reflect that musical intention. I will try not to repeat what others have reccomended, but I think the rhythmic point can be addressed from a slightlly different angle than just saying you can add more rhythms. I think it is important to see rhythm as a part of motivic development, and as you focus more on development of ideas, rhythmic varioation will come more easily. For instance at M.33 or rehearsal mark B, you have a climax to arrival of somewhat new idea with the falling 8th note triad in first violin. I think here you might want, and what would make the arrival at the slightly more soft tranquil moment at m.37 more unique or stand out more from m33-36, would be both more movement to move forward from 33-37, as well as develop or incorporate the 8th note idea more in the other parts. In my ear I dont hear this as an exact mimic or copy of two falling 8th notes, but in the bass particularly as an upbeat 8th. for instance m.33 down beat (A) dotted quarter to 8th note (G#) back to (A) this could be done repeatedly or varried in different ways, but would add to the moment in many ways 1.) Forward propulsion to m.37 creating a rhythmic link and make more dramatic the softer section at m.37 when you then would return to half notes in the bass. 2.) Variation on the theme which brings more interrelation between the instruments and more voices rather than accompaniment and melody. 3.) New rhythmic material (dotted 4th followed by 8th note) which occurs organically from the melody which can later become more developed or generate new sections/material. For instance you could combine this later with the material in m.29 in the viola 2nd violin to say have the two 8th notes which were in m.29 on the beat, later shifted forward one 8th note to off the beat. 4.) The incorporation of the G# on the off beat 8th note gives more emphasis and reinforces the new key area of A major which we just entered. There may be reasons here or in other sections where you might not want to emphasize the tonic or key, but I think it is valid in this case, especially since the modulation is so abrupt. That being said I would in general in the future always try to look for small ways, such as this where you can add multiple (at least if not more than the 4 here above) layers of compositional threads which raise the work above the sum total of its parts. Moving forward I think the range of the instruments is rather low, they all stay fairly low in their register for the whole piece and the violin ever only reaches I believe first C above the staff once. This isnt always bad, but I think there is a quality in this piece of emerging lyricism which is hindered partially. Back to M.29, it is a nice arrival and is clearly a moment of hightened expression, yet I think this is limited possibly in part by my point above, the range of register, but more in my ear, by the range of notes. Starting in M.28 in 1st violin we have in sequence F#, B, E, F#, B, A#, B. This sequence does not explain the emphasis, length, or repetitiveness of each note, such as the two B's occuring at the same 2nd beat for two beats, both approached by the same F#, but for my ear, whether the repetitiveness of this aspect or the limited range of notes it becomes too much of the same. Again I say this in relation to musically what is happening, that is there is a break out moment of new rhythmic and more expressive material. I think this aspect makes one desire more from the violin in one way or the other, even if just slightly. Even sometimes the transfering of ideas between violins is enough timbral variation between players and instruments to achieve this, yet I am note sure about this section. I wish I could go on because I am just scratching the surface of what I am trying to say and have other comments but am to tired to continue, I hope it is clear enough. @@schlu

Thank you :) I'll look into it

Thank you so much! This is exactly what I've been struggling with for quite a while and I am tired of half-assing things. I'll follow your advice :)

Thank you for your thoughtful comment! I'll gladly take a look at your works :)