Tree

My rating: 8.75/10
Thing I used: MuseScore
Edited using: HitFilm
About the piece:
This piece is based on the book "The Giving Tree" by Shel Silverstein. You could think of it as a glorified theme and variations with some different stuff in between, because that's pretty much how the book goes. The story is about a child's relationship with a tree, who represents the child's mother, and how the tree will continue giving throughout the child's life no matter what. I think. Hopefully the piece reflects the right emotions.
I actually finished this about 2 months ago in late June, but as you can hopefully hear, I played this myself! First time ever. I failed to get a satisfying recording until now, but I'm glad I followed through. I really pushed myself to finish writing the piece quickly, so it only took about a month to write (although I later revised certain parts of it). I'm not sure if pushing myself was necessarily a good idea, because maybe I could've thought of even cooler ideas, but twiddling my thumbs and making no progress isn't any fun either.
I rarely use an instrument when composing, believe it or not; I can hear a lot of things in my mind, and there are fewer restrictions there. This time though, I thought it would be interesting to try composing by the piano for most of the process, so that I could hear certain chords as I wrote them. I don't know how much it helped, but I don't think it really hurt much either.
Honestly the style of this piece is pretty close to my ideal style. More key changes and it would've been even closer, although I did want to keep it mostly in the same key throughout. I'm pretty happy with the little surprising bits I wrote.
About the playing:
This piece is kinda not easy. For my level, anyway. Even in this recording, you can hear some mistakes toward the end when I started getting nervous. It doesn't help that certain parts in the second half are quite tricky. The beginning of the recording seems a bit rushed and harsh, probably because I had already done several takes before and was getting impatient. As a whole though, I won't complain.
I really wanted to play this piece myself because I felt that it required a lot of emotional connection to be effective, and the way that I decide to slow down is not simple to write into the score as tempo changes. Learning and practicing the piece was lots of fun, especially because, again, this is my first time seriously practicing one of my pieces.
Bars 15-22 (where I kEEP rUShiNG), 31-34, and 39-52 gave me the most trouble I think, but another big thing was trying to bring out the emotions that I wanted. A lot of that involved slowing down the perfect way and using dynamics the perfect way, but it's hard for me to do either of them consistently. I really have to practice playing gently.
alright I think that's it

[@syaron4273]

I feel it’s a composition from heart. I have never read the book but I believe this piece is a gratitude from the boy to the tree or his mom. Those key changes are nice for, but I think it needs some seamless transition. It’s just my taste tho, so don’t be so worried about it since I myself struggling with the transition in my composing career. I wish I could play my piece like you did. I would learn to play piano once I get a job for myself. For nowI will just play around DAW until the time come.

[@ix1628]

not sure how this got picked up by my recommendations, but this is nice! how did you get into composing?

[@Alan-mh7lo]

I think I got into composing because I developed a passion in playing with chords on the piano, and one day I finally decided to write my ideas down. I don't know how this got recommended either but I'm very glad you like it

[@aleskerovw]

Same here, I've seen this video on my main page a few times now and decided to give it a go. Amazing composition, Alan, keep it up!