u/Double-Strategy9791

Hey if you like intense piano you should check out my new song. It’s solo piano. I composed, performed, recorded mixed and mastered it all myself. I also did the cover art and the music video which you can find on YouTube by searching for me, M.K. Denninger or the song Toccata in D Minor — Allegro feroce. Hope to get successful enough that I can have some help and focus on the music more. This is my second single before the album comes out on Halloween.

Hey I really love this one part of Appasionata by Beethoven but then I don’t like where he took it. So I took the part I liked and cut the rest and then composed it where I heard it go in my head. Check it out, I think it’s pretty cool. Then I threw it on an organ cuz it gave me Bach/Toccatta vibes. I’ve been practicing it a lot but still can’t play it. One day!!!!

I'm trying to figure out where the line sits between "original" and "rework," and I'd like to hear how working composers actually think about it.

So part of it is recognizably his and part of it is entirely mine. What do I honestly call that? Original? Arrangement? "After Beethoven"? Something else?

The example that keeps coming to mind is John Williams. I think Jaws theme owes something to Dvořák's New World Symphony. If that's true, is Williams the composer of the Jaws theme, or did he rework Dvořák? Where's the threshold where borrowing a kernel becomes your own piece versus an arrangement of someone else's? You could say he did this with Gustav Holst as well.

I'm less interested in copyright (Beethoven's public domain) and more in how you'd describe it as a composer — what you'd put on the label and why. Curious how others here handle it when their own work grows out of existing material.
So is this a rework or an original composition? Thoughts?
Music with score:
https://youtu.be/FEUrWDP0k\_4?si=LA6eYqhS1Ci1Jq-1

I’m new to this and still figuring out what to call things. I wrote a short piano piece in F and called it an impromptu. It came out pretty spontaneously, so impromptu felt right. It also wasn’t as chill as some of my other stuff, so nocturne didn’t feel right either.

The way it goes: intro, then the main theme, then a new part in the middle, then back to the main theme with a variation that leads into the outro. It’s basically built on just two chords the whole way through, Fmaj7 and Bbminor, sometimes with extensions added.

What I don’t know is how you actually tell these forms apart. How do you know if you’ve written a sonata vs a rhapsody vs whatever other forms are out there? Is it about the structure, the feel, or do you just pick what sounds right?

Hmmmm can’t add the video…. I’m new to Reddit, so I need to be like in here a certain time before I can add video?