After a long period of creative desperation, I thought that it might be prudent to fall back on my affinity for the pentatonic scale and compose a few 'oriental pieces' for enjoyment, as I did in a collection two years ago, where I composed one every two or three days, a rate unthinkable now. Though they had pretty dubious endings and a patchwork quality to them, they still have a certain freshness and felicity which I have long forgotten. Hopefully I can recapture the same tunefulness and lightness of the originals while reflecting on two years of progress, and I hope you guys enjoy hearing these as much as I do composing them.

Will be updating this thread periodically, I guess. Comments and criticism on the pieces are welcome.

Hi Jonathan,

I had a listen to your first piece off your 2nd book. A fun, energetic, yet quite complex piece! The musical idiom is foreign to me, even after listening to it three times. I am not familiar with music written in the pentatonic scale, so the idiom is not something I can really give you criticism on. It has the free form harmony of a jazz piece, but with classical influences..

It would be nice to have a look at the score, if for nothing else, to look at how the tempo runs through the piece. Can post it?

I had a listen to Chant of Inari, it was again another piece I can't seem to wrap my head around but this is a result of me studying music of the western civ. I suspect there is more use of the pentatonic scale, at least historically speaking, in the eastern hemisphere (notably the far east?) I wish I knew more about the type of instruments and music of the ancients of the east, the present day and every time in between!

Enjoyed listening to your piece!,

Riley

@pianoman: Thanks a lot for the comments. I believe most of the harmonies are of the diminished 7th and 1st inversion chords however, modified (a semitone up or down) to make it swoon. Hopefully I can get a score up soon, though this one is hard to notate. Also, you should just 'improvise' a melody on the black keys of the piano, you'll find that there are far less possibilities and such...