Sorry for the pause, it's been a busy time for me.
To your piece. The orchestration is sounding much nicer this time, as I hope you'll agree - it's richer and the piece sounds much more mature. I liked how different statements of the theme were orchestrated slightly differently, and I appreciated the way you developed the theme throughout the piece. Very good work here.
Nevertheless, there are still some nit-picky problems with it. However, because I'm something of a weirdo like this, we're going to completely ignore them for now and, for that matter, this entire piece. The reason is that you should never be focussing on one single piece for too long, and now that this one is done to this point, we're going to leave it and move on, and then, once you've gleaned some new knowledge from the new activities, we'll come back to this one. For now though, please put it safely away and don't touch it.
Now then, for your next task, I have devised something to help you with your percussion writing, which was the second aspect that this little course was supposed to help you develop. So here's what we're going to do, in short: write a concert band march in the style of such amazing band composers as James L. Hosay. I'm going to assume that you've perhaps not heard any of his work, and so I offer the following two samples to get you familiar with the style. I like to describe him as the John Williams of the concert band - you can see for yourself whether or not you agree.
The first is called Black Granite and unfortunately my fragmented recording of the piece is of spectacularly bad quality, but it's still useful to listen to so go ahead and see what you think.
Black Granite - eSnips, share anything
This second one has better sound quality and is going to serve as something of a model for you. It's called Symphonic Fortress and is essentially a big, powerful march for full concert band. Enjoy!
Symphonic Fortress - eSnips, share anything
Now, with both of these, I'd like you to pay particular attention to the way he utilizes the percussion section to augment the other instruments. He demonstrates percussion writing that's fairly typical of good concert band music, which is why we're going to be using him as a guide. I'm not going to bother insulting your intelligence by going over every single thing he does, but as a general idea, notice how he accents beats with cymbals, how he carries the rhythm with the snares and uses them to give interest, how the chimes and mallet percussion add amazing flavour, etc etc.
With that in mind, you're going to construct a march of your very own, as I said. The style will be much the same as his: with thick and complex orchestration, interesting harmonies, and - duh - good use of percussion.
To get the ball rolling, I want you to start off by coming up with a rhythm that you want to use for the march, because that's important. It can be a basic 4/4, that might be worth using for this piece since we want you to be able to focus on the piece without having to worry about fitting things to a quirky rhythm. Once you know that, see if you can come up with some basic melodies/harmonies that you consider appropriate for a march.
I'm looking for an upbeat, but not necessarily happy piece. It can be very dark and menacing if you can pull it off, I'd certainly enjoy it. Either way, see what you can come up with and let me know if you've got questions or need help!
Good luck and good work again on your previous assignment!