America the Beautiful arrangement

Hello all,

This is part of an assignment for my composition teacher. I liked the result so much I thought I would post it and see if I was hallucinating.

As the title suggests, this is an arrangement of the said song. I was instructed to do four of these (With each vocal part on the melody), and this is my fourth of them. The objective is to do as much as I can to give the listener something new with the melody instead of the usual, breathe-on-four type of boring choir singing that so many hear... though not on this forum.

Please tell me if there is any issue with chords, formatting, or anything in general!

*Note- I don't like the two-staff format that I have this in, but my teacher requires it of me.*

America the Beautiful- Bass Melody.mp3 - File Shared from Box.net - Free Online File Storage

Alan

Nifty harmonies. However, they kind of jump out like small vicious animals. Ferrets, or something. I'd consider using some of the same harmonic motion in more of the piece, because it's super-awesome.

Thanks for commenting Christopher! What exactly do mean by "[they] jump out like small vicious animals?" Do you mean the the progression of chords isn't smooth? I don't quite understand.

I'm glad you liked it, at least I think that's what you meant.
Alan

The counterpoint's all pretty smooth, but the chord progression is not. Your harmony is quasi-functional, and you have these places where your melody and harmony are paced differently, and what happens is you get the "wrong" harmony at the ends of melodic phrases, and so the shift from phrase to phrase is harmonically static. When the harmonic rhythm picks up again, it's surprising.

Your ending measures - the last two - move, but they move within the same chord, which renders the end essentially unnecessary.

I'm concerned about your syncopated measure. It's sudden and is pretty much out of place - there's nothing like it in the rest of the piece, and that particular measure sounds a little trite because of the "oom-pah" feeling of it.

I like your counterpoint. I think what may help is to write the counterpoint without considering the chords at all, and then tweak as you see fit.

OK, I think I see what you're saying. I think my teacher said about the same things too. I'll see if there's anything I can do.

Thanks!
Alan

EDIT- [REMOVED]

Originally Posted by Alan

Hello all,

This is part of an assignment for my composition teacher. I liked the result so much I thought I would post it and see if I was hallucinating.

As the title suggests, this is an arrangement of the said song. I was instructed to do four of these (With each vocal part on the melody), and this is my fourth of them. The objective is to do as much as I can to give the listener something new with the melody instead of the usual, breathe-on-four type of boring choir singing that so many hear... though not on this forum.

Please tell me if there is any issue with chords, formatting, or anything in general!

*Note- I don't like the two-staff format that I have this in, but my teacher requires it of me.*

America the Beautiful- Bass Melody.mp3 - File Shared from Box.net - Free Online File Storage

Alan

I really like the harmonies and the resulting timbre but not the order in which they appear. The last third in particular is filled with appear to be random transitions and directional "fakes" (to use a term from Basketball).