Incursion for Band

This is a piece I wrote earlier in the semester, and the Baker University Symphonic Winds premiered it on their final concert of the year. I don't have an MP3 of the piece, but I do have a youtube video. The picture messed up, but the sound is intact. I also attached the score and a MIDI.

YouTube - Incursion

i like it, is so cool, u can see my comment in you tube. thanks for post

Great, you even got a real band to play it, well done.

I really like the part in the video where all the girls take off their clothes. That's what made it for me.

Or was that aliens attacking?

Congrats on getting a live performance.
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Ron

nice classic sounding band piece. try varying the accompaniment styles used throughout, not always making the accompaniment one thing and then the melody-kind of 2 part ideas..let each instrument have some of its own identity. nice melody and harmonic ideas though!

Very cool. I like your use of rhythm (passing it from section to section is very effective), and the contrasts between different parts of the piece seem to work nicely.

My only complaint is the ending; it comes rather unexpectedly and doesn't really seem to provide the energy that the rest of the piece has.

You might spice up your rhythms even more, maybe experimenting with complex meters (I've found that a bar of 3/8 or 5/8 every so often can really liven up a fast piece if it's used the right way). The music of David Dzubay (pronovamusic.com) is a good example of this. Although his music doesn't really use conventional forms or tonality (which is why it isn't my favorite), his orchestration is very cool and his rhythmic intensity is insane. Specifically, look for a piece called "Ra!". His "Shadowdance" is also good (there is a section where he has 6/8 time and 7/8 time happening together with the downbeats lining up) for studying rhythm. Stravinsky's "Rite of Spring" is fantastic, as well (it pretty much rewrote the book on rhythm and meter).

Sorry for the long post! Guess I got a little excited...

Could you post a PDF score? (Gah, I'm such a bitch about that)

Thanks for all the feedback! This was my second piece for band, and I was going for a semi-march feel, so I didn't want to make it too rhythmically intense... I mostly stick to 4/4 and use additive rhythms in that, rather than use non-conventional meters, as I feel they often alienate the audience.

As for the ending being abrupt, I basically had too many voices going. I wanted to have the oboe solo be a sort of echo of the theme from right beforehand, so as to make it feel slightly more distant, and use that to make the piece come to a close, but I think having the entire band play the chords made that ineffective...

As for having a PDF score, I don't, because I don't have Acrobat on my computer... sorry. >.<