Lesson with Foxhull (Orchestration and Percussion)

Alright, it looks like you've got your template then. You don't have to do the whole dailiy updates thing; I'd prefer that you took some good time to make a solid contribution to the amount of work and then came to me when you had a question or something of the like.

Like I said, there's no hurry here, so work on it and show me when you've got a good start going Unless there are questions, of course.

Just to let you know, I have finished 104 measures, so I'm almost done.

Wonderful, looking forward to it.

OK, here it is, there are a few changes from the notes, but other than that, I followed them. Tell me what ya think.

Alrighty, so I've taken a look at your draft and I'll leave you with my comments and your next task.

What you've done here is a wonderful job of expanding the piece to fit the given ensemble. Your choice of which instruments to mix together where is actually quite good. I see that you've already started working in some dynamics and such, which is good too - it shows me that you already have a vision of how you'd like the performance to sound. I enjoyed the syncopation you've got going on between pages 4 and 5; keeps the motion of the piece feeling fresh.

Now let me gently tear it to pieces for you so that you can see what you need to work on for the next draft:

First off, a specific little thing: get rid of the bass marimba line in the slow section, starting right near the end of page 6. The reason is that the percussive, woody sound completely screws up the mood you've got going on up until then - throws off the mellow feel.

Now the biggest concern I have is that you've done very little actual "orchestrating" with this draft. What you've done is take your original musical lines and copy and paste them into various different instruments. As I mentioned, the combinations themselves are great, but for the wrong reasons.

For this next draft that you need to do for me, I'd like to see you take this foundation that you've made and start doing some orchestrating. Here's what I mean. Start with some rhythmic variation - all you've got going on here are two or three different rhythms MAX through the full spread of your ensemble. Have one instrument hold a nice low legato line while another plays with accenting stabs while another chimes in with the occasional brief arpeggio while another carries the melody while another comes in overtop with a simple but effective countermelody while another....you see my point. Don't limit yourself to what you've already written.

Now that you're writing for more instruments, you need to make sure that you spend time on each individual part and give it a personality all its own. Make sure that when your performers get their part, they're each happy with it. Every instrument in your ensemble should have a defined role, at least at some point within the piece. If it doesn't, then get rid of it.

So basically what I'm saying is, your next step is to start thinking in terms of individual instruments within the ensemble and go over what you currently have. In the end, you should have massively revised the individual parts to make the orchestration interesting, rhythmically-diverse between parts, harmonically thick (where appropriate) and interesting.

This step should take a while because I really want you to pay attention and do a detailed job. If you need me to work through some of it with you, drop me a line. Any questions, same thing.

Good work and good luck!

I'm posting this because I want to make sure I'm on the right track, but this is what I've gotten done in the past few weeks.

Here it is, tell me what you think.

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!

Alright, I did a LOT of research on the style and form of marches, and I wasn't getting anything for a while. I ended up doing a jazz arrangement for the jazz combo in my school, and now that I finished that, I tried the rhythms and chords for a march again, and it is now flowing better. Here is the result.