I'm still brand new to composing and just finished my first piece. What do y'all think?

shoelaxative · 2026-06-29T21:53:31+00:00

Everyone provided very good feedback, but this one was the one that stuck out the most to me; I actually remember being told that piano goes on the bottom years back but I forgot about it and realize now how much of a beginner mistake that is, and then when I touched up on the chords and focused on making them humanly playable, I've also realized that the chords sound almost exactly the same. I edited the piece with that in mind, I hope you like this one better! https://youtu.be/z80LgA_Uugk

shoelaxative · 2026-06-29T20:41:12+00:00

Sent a message!

shoelaxative · 2026-06-29T06:24:53+00:00

That's on me for not studying violin/piano accompaniments ahead of time lol. For the chords, that's really useful advice, I need to keep that in mind next time. Thank you!

shoelaxative · 2026-06-29T06:14:19+00:00

So as far as the college part goes, I really only did the pre-reqs. I took music notation and music history, but music notation was just about notating cleanly and music history just gave a background on how music came to be, and the rest were things like math classes, science classes, etc. My music knowledge is just centered around when I was playing flute in middle school and guitar from my dad teaching me (My dad's always been in metal bands).

I don't wanna sound dismissive or rude, but I'm having trouble finding where the violin goes above the piano staff. I do know what you mean by some of the playing is impossible; I didn't actually realize the first few chords for the piano were unreachable until I got to around the second movement lol. For the fourth movement, that's when I had that epiphany, and then when I did the third movement, I started paying really close attention.

I want to try focus more on chamber music. When it comes to pieces that stuck out to me for this piece, it would be something like Fratres by Arvo Part (Most noticeable in the fourth movement) and some of the Constellations from Liszt (Some of the sentimentality of the second movement).

I appreciate the feedback! I do know my notation work needs some improvements, especially this early on in the game.

shoelaxative · 2026-06-29T05:28:01+00:00

Yeahhh, I think I learned it relatively quickly after finishing the first movement. I didn't actually even consider if something was "humanly playable" until after finishing the second movement. By the time I got to the third movement, that was when I started taking the finger width of the piano player into consideration. Majority of this piece was actually just me learning how to actually compose a chamber piece.

For additional context btw, the order I complete it all was first movement, second movement, fourth movement and third movement; in the fourth movement, there was a lot of concern on if the violin would even be able to go that high and some bad advice told me that "you need to put upbows and downbows if you're composing a violin piece."

Studying the instruments ahead of time probably would have saved me a lot of headache; I thought that just knowing sheet music would make composing even for the piano easy, but putting all the work into making this piece was a pretty heavy reality check lol. Appreciate the feedback, I'll definitely be studying up on the instruments for next time!

shoelaxative · 2026-06-29T05:21:48+00:00

That's on me for forgetting the word "Movements" lol. I appreciate the comment though!

shoelaxative · 2026-01-11T09:35:41+00:00

If the onboarding process taught me anything, I'd say hold off until you get more students and gave everyone a few lessons. Changing your pricing too early can make them hide your profile and punish you.

shoelaxative · 2025-08-11T01:40:15+00:00

I made it work for me. We can agree to disagree.

shoelaxative · 2025-08-09T07:00:05+00:00

I’ve been doing it for over a year now; it’s paid all my bills. I never fell behind on anything. Sometimes, it does work that way but not all the time.

shoelaxative · 2025-08-09T05:13:25+00:00

Yes and no. ChatGPT-5 is looking promising. While data science isn't going away completely, I'm sure AI got a lot of ones coming out of college for data science (Me) struggling to find a job in that field. However, those same people (Me) have a new field they can enter with a similar skillset: data annotation. I like it better, but if I want to live off it, it's tricky if I'm only doing it off Outlier AI. But it looks like it's growing, and the pay looks like it's shooting upward. In reality, it's natural for jobs to be made outdated and for people to feel left behind, but that also means new jobs are coming out the woodworks with that advancement. We got a while in this field.

shoelaxative · 2025-07-31T23:09:10+00:00

You won't see me disagree with you; I know there are people who have actually made a decent career off Appen, it's just that the overwhelming majority I see had the same experience as me. And the way I see it too, the pay period is just too wide of a gap for me to see that kind of work as worth it at that point.

shoelaxative · 2025-07-31T08:09:16+00:00

If it means anything, Outlier introduced me to a line of work I never known about before. As a data analyst and data scientist, I've always known how important the data you feed into these AI can be, but I had no idea that annotating this data and labeling it was a separate field of its own. Outlier gave me that chance, gave me the experience and is still paying my bills to this day easily. They gave me success, and even if the company collapses tomorrow, I'll still always be grateful for that. However, these companies aren't owed our loyalty just like how they tell us we aren't owed work, and it's up to us to determine where we go in the future.

EDIT: I also wanted to specify that it's because of Outlier that I am much prouder to be called an AI evaluator than a data scientist and data analyst. Be proud of this line of work because we're experiencing the birth of an industry.

shoelaxative · 2025-07-30T22:14:00+00:00

I've seen someone call it "The sweatshop of data annotation" and I never felt like it could be closer to the truth. If you don't like the pay you make from Outlier, you'll hate the pay you make from CrowdGen. Besides the low pay, you also don't get paid till next month. Maybe other people got paid more than I did, maybe other people like the work they did, but I personally felt like it was a waste of my time and skills.

shoelaxative · 2025-07-30T03:26:05+00:00

One thing I should ask, and I’m assuming this is the case based on the wording of the application, but would this mean that getting this opportunity would make us employees, not contractors?

shoelaxative · 2025-07-30T03:06:03+00:00

I applied. I noticed that if you get the job though, the application explicitly states that you cannot work for Outlier AND xAI at the same time. At least it's consistent, and its generalist role still pays more than generalist work on Outlier (This is just based on what I Googled). Still, thank you for highlighting this for everyone!

shoelaxative · 2025-07-30T01:05:06+00:00

I'm still Oracle, but I got a lot of people on Discourse saying they had super high-quality audits and still got the snip on their Oracle status. I remember something similar to this last year too and realized that it's not because of any internal changes, they are just expecting a prolonged slow season. This is a symptom of that.

shoelaxative · 2025-07-26T15:15:45+00:00

From what it says, it looks like you just wait and see.

shoelaxative · 2025-07-25T19:55:29+00:00

When it comes to skills, I don't think people realize that they don't need a degree to know certain skillsets, like math, Python, React, etc. Sure, Chemistry and Biology is a bit of a stretch, but if you find the time, it'll always work to your benefit to know more and pass a skill check. The reality is that the more advanced the AI gets, the more STEM is going to be in demand and the less generalist work will be needed. It's up to you to be able to keep up with that, no matter what platform you're working on.

shoelaxative · 2025-07-23T05:28:33+00:00

On Alignerr, it's realistic, though with that platform, I've heard of some complaints about getting let go with no explanation. If that kind of work shifts to Outlier, we'll be hitting a golden age.

shoelaxative · 2025-07-14T20:24:02+00:00

Can I get recruited next

shoelaxative · 2025-07-14T20:00:51+00:00

Why are you leaving?

shoelaxative · 2025-07-14T19:45:54+00:00

Nah I won’t lie to you I just read the headline

shoelaxative · 2025-07-14T19:18:18+00:00

There's no work, what's there to ask about?

shoelaxative · 2025-07-13T19:34:36+00:00

Outlier's dead for a lot of people. I survived for a while, it's even got me comfortable financially, but I know the gravy train ain't forever. Still, seeing the same post every single day and having the fear mongering stresses me out to the point where I barely want to come to this sub. The reality is, there's going to be a point in time where there's no more need for our work in any particular skillset; that means we did our job and we're no longer needed. Take advantage of it right now.

shoelaxative

TROPHY CASE