Apologies for the essay Twilight but it should satisfy the points you’ve brought up and I’ll have two uploads for future pieces; one public and one private for here so that you can download the mp3 (I read your other rant xD.)
I’m glad you liked the simple melody and thanks for taking the time to listen and comment. Anyway, I have quite thick skin, I never take things in offense and always give my honest opinion to others, even if it is brutal and I respect when others do the same, even the people that throw obscenities. ;D I don’t emotionally attach myself to my music, or rather after I’ve emotionally written it I then detach myself from it. I’ve seen (and I’m guessing you have too) some people throw some right hissy fits when they’ve received criticism.
I agree with you about the lack of harmony (although not for this specific piece) and it is something I am working on. I’m a rather stern self-critic and already knew that my biggest flaw is harmony. There are some pieces I write to practice new ideas/skills (the one I’ve linked below was my first with choir and I began it purely just as a short exercise to learn the choir program) and there are some that I just…write, like this one.
By my own concession, harmony in general and in the context of scoring for orchestra are the areas that needs the most work. However, I have to reject the notion of intentionally avoiding doing something just because it’s simpler than one is capable of doing and/or just because other people do or have done it.
I’ll tell you why my harmony is a little behind anyway so that you can see if your assertions were correct or not. I never had a musical education and no one in my family or friends played instruments. I bought my first instrument, an electric guitar at age 16 and began teaching myself metal songs like Iron Maiden, Ozzy and Metallica. I began teaching myself some theory via books and practice and attempting to write for orchestral instruments at age 17, although I still spent more time practicing guitar (acoustic and metal by that point) than composing. When I was 20-21 I spent more time composing than guitar, and by around 23 I’d almost completely ditched playing guitar and began learning some piano songs to help with my composing in a DAW. I used Finale from 17-23 and taught myself how to notate the ideas I heard in my head/played and didn’t get a DAW until I was 23. The past 2-3 years I’ve been focused on getting my production skills to a good standard. There is still room for improvement of course, but in the last few months my priorities have shifted to my biggest weakness, harmony. I don’t know if that was your assertion but that is the actual reason; lack of learning and experience. I’m entirely self-taught in every way and jazz/harmony is the last major flaw that I will overcome with time and practice.
Anyway, in the context of the fantasy album that these personal tracks will make up I thought a smooth legato piece would be a nice change of pace to say; SoundCloud - Hear the world’s sounds of which I have several like this and almost none like ‘Butterflies.’ So despite the apparent countless others that write pieces like this, it is quite new to me.
This piece modulates and for the end the strings are scored with divisi in the 2nd violins and violas so that they can play major 7th, minor 7th and add 9 harmonies, so I can of course use more complex harmony than just bland I just didn’t think it was necessary in the ‘Butterflies’ piece to attempt more complex harmony given the melody and I felt too complex harmony would also alienate the target audience. My string library features properly recorded divisi sections (9/7 split for 1st violins etc) but I can’t actually use them (along with other articulations for all instruments) because C6 Artist limits me to 32 tracks, and with an orchestra that is a nightmare. ;D I originally scored it in B minor, and in the DAW decided it sounded a bit thin/weak so I transposed it down.
However, I’d already given myself the challenge to improve my harmony as it’s definitely my weakest skill now that my productions have improved and I’ve bought some jazz piano books some months ago to help improve my knowledge. Jazz is also something that I’ve recently started enjoying more in the past year or so. So hopefully, as with orchestration, I can learn a lot from listening and practicing.