Rachmaninov's Élégie

• Apr 16, 2016 - 05:04

Well, it took far longer than I was expecting, but I finally finished transcribing Rachmaninov's Élégie, Op. 3 No. 1. I hope that, at the very least, the playback somewhat sounds like a human being.

https://musescore.com/user/2660886/scores/2008481

So, thoughts? Opinions? Anything in particular need tweaking or changing? Personally I feel that I could have done more with note-specific dynamics, but the amount of time required for that would be immense.

Comments

• Apr 16, 2016 - 08:27

Lovely. The triplet brackets in Measure 101, however, appear to have their Horizontal offsets set incorrectly as the brackets overlap (had to find something wrong with it).

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• May 9, 2016 - 00:56

Listened to this again and was still very moved. Reminiscent of Chopin's Nocturne Op.32, No.1, of course, but with feeling (which you added). The latter piece is used in an episode of Star Trek to illustrate the difference between playing as written and playing as felt (where Seven-of-Nine is trying to behave more humanly) but it might have sounded better if they had chosen the Rachmaninoff piece.

I'm having a go at putting the Sérénade into MuseScore just to get it into my head rather than for playback.

Incidentally, do you know why measures 79 thru 82 change from C# to Db even though they are enharmonically the same? (I've seen a score on IMSLP that has this but just wondered what your views were).

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• May 9, 2016 - 03:47

I was actually working a little bit on Melodie, but found that at least in his performance, he adds a lot of notes into the first few measures. To say the least, that piece will be a challenge to get playing properly should I ever complete it. As for why he changes from C# to Db, to me it seems that he was trying to distinguish those particular measures from the part immediately before. It very rapidly transitions there from passionate to melancholic. Note the lack of a decrescendo or diminuendo marking in that area, or even a ritardando; it seems that he wanted those measures to speak for themselves. Of course, I'm no expert; I don't even study the subject. Just enjoy transcribing pieces and eventually (hopefully) teaching myself to play them.

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• May 9, 2016 - 06:41

Oh, thank you for reminding me- I lowered the scaling so that I can ensure that every single thing could actually fit on the pages. I just increased it back, and sure enough, everything still fits. Let me go about clearing up all the misplaced items.

EDIT: Alright, changes have been made. It should look far better now, with the proper spacing. Also fiddled with a few slurs, adding some that I forgot.

Unfortunately for one of my other scores (Prelude in C-sharp Minor), I cannot reach the same scaling due to the sheer lack of space on the second page. So, had to compromise and go somewhere in the middle so that at the very least, the first page isn't so barren.

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• May 9, 2016 - 08:31

Professional I am certainly not, though I'll gladly take advice. If it wasn't obvious, my main use of the software is playback more than notation. Still, having it actually be properly engraved would be nice. For the most part all I do is just take the score that I'm working with and mimic it to the best of my ability. Which is why you end up with things like a mezzoforte dynamic right in the middle of the staff. For the most part, things like articulations are auto-placed by the system unless they collided with something, at which point I moved them.

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