For those of you who thought little of concert band...

Check out this piece I just wrote. The recording is the dress rehersal, but it came out all right.

The score is attatched, and the recording can be found here:

Edgar Girtain: audio files

The piece is called "Onward." It is a work to commemorate the retirement of a great teacher.

Nice work, I enjoyed this - just a shame the performance doesn't really do it justice.

I especially liked the (Philip) Glass-esque layered motives you set up. They work well, and even lead to a real sense of "epicness" when combined with the loud brass. Good use of thematicism as well.

Kudos to you and the band. Hope it went down well with the dedicatee himself.

Thanks.

I actually think that the bad performers work a little bit to the advantage of the piece. (Although they messed up in some places in a way that makes me want to slam my head against the wall). I think that the way the band slowly lands on every down beat makes the thickly voiced chords sound a little warmer, and the lack of confidence in the trumpet section makes them sound more distant in places. I would liked to have made the piece a little more challenging, but given what I had to work with I think it turned out okay. Thank you again for the feedback.

^Isn't it kinda funny how that happens though? I know there was a piece we did with exposed off-beat chords in the trumpet section that they never really played together. The "drunken" feel of it worked very well for the style of piece though.
I'm having trouble getting your link to work.

The I Love Windows was very interesting. I'd never heard it played that way. It has a really nice middle the word to describe it is vanished from my mind but very nice.

Onward was very nice but the bad playing and tuning I thought, took away from it.

Bah, I can't play m3u files. Not fair. *raises fist*

In your score, trumpets go above horns in concert band writing. Only in orchestra do horns go on top. Also, add brackets to your instrument parts, there should be separate (smaller) brackets around the 1st to 3rd clarinets, alto saxes, horns, trumpets, and bones. Horn 3 plays higher notes than horn 2. Horns 1 and 3 are high parts, 2 and 4 are low parts. Keep that in mind. So all you have to do is switch your 2nd and 3rd parts.

Watch for collisions between elements like dynamics and slurs. Measure 15, your dynamic should be right below the first note in glockenspiel, not somewhere after. Pianissimo in first measure is a little bit low for bassoon, should just nudge it up a little closer. Measure 5, you gave cues to horn 1 and 2 to alto sax 1, but not to alto sax 2. Go ahead and add the cues for horn 3 and 4 to alto sax 2. If a director wants the saxes to play the saxes, at least there will be full harmony. Measure 14, euphonium doesn't get a dynamic... the poor bloke. =[

Measure 15, piccolo and flute collision, eek! Measure 19, saxes. Simile. Simile what, exactly? Looking at the clarinet parts, I'll bet you want them slurred... but write the slurs. It's unclear what you are similie-ing in the saxes. Honestly, I wouldn't write a similie in the clarinets either, just keep writing slurs. Measure 15 and 16, low brass... slurs colliding with tenuto markings. Urrgh. Fixy, fixy! Ohh, I hope the 1st clarinets know the alternate fingering for B natural at letter B... otherwise they could never play those sixteenths slurred. I don't know about you, but I usually write my key signature in the timpani part. Just a preference, I think, though. I'm not sure I'd bother writing that clarinet cue in euphonium, especially with the clef change. Might confuse them, might not.

Measure 59, flutes. Put flute 1 and 2 on top of each other, not displaced or offset. Also, beats 3 and 4 are just generally a mess. Maybe expand to two staves, the way you have it is just ugly. And you've had a single flute part this whole time... and suddenly decide to split parts. Odd. Measure 60, trumpet 2/3... nasssty articulation collisions. Are those clarinet tremolos at E supposed to be in time or not in time/counted?

Letter G... holy crap that will be loud. Gong and ffff bells and everything, bloody hell... Wheee, difficult clarinet part at H. XD . . .

Just keep an eye out for the collisions all over the place - sweat the little stuff.

Enigmus said a lot of what I was going to point out, but I'll add a few points:

Your score is sloppy. You need more white space so the elements won't collide. You've only got two staves for the percussion, while it looks like you really need about 5.

When you have instruments divide, be sure to indicate when they are to play in unison again. Use "div. and "a2". For the horns, indicate which horns are playing.

Your bassoon parts often go too low for the dynamic you've indicated. The pppp low Bb in the last measure is fantasy.

You've got trombones on pedal tones. Bad. Acceptable maybe on the bass trombone, ugly on tenors, ugly and unmanageable in a band setting with multiple players.

Starting at 127, the low brass part is too muddy; it's scored too close together and too low.

The background parts are boring... you've got too much block rhythm going on and nothing really there to draw the ear. You need to add some interesting counter motion. Adding a tremolo to block chords doesn't make it interesting.

Most of your cues seem out of place or unnecessary.

Your woodwind 'noodles' starting at letter B quickly become tiresome. Break it up, change notes, vary the rhythm, ANYTHING... but don't repeat measure after measure of slurred 16th notes.

The 32nd notes (staring around H) seem out of character with the rest of the piece.

Harmonically, I feel the piece could stand some interesting dissonance. It's too bland for my taste.

Originally Posted by EnigmusJ4

Are those clarinet tremolos at E supposed to be in time or not in time/counted?

For woodwind instruments, it's almost universally accepted that the indication would be an unmeasured tremolo.

The pppp and ffff are excessive.

Congrats on the rehearsal/performance! With some additional work this could be good.

EnigmusJ4: The clarinet part at H isn't hard. I'm sure if you picked up a clarinet for the first time in your life, you'd be able to play those measures within twenty minutes of practicing. At Letter G...it is loud. I can send you and Mp3 if you'd like. I think it sounds pretty sick. Thanks for the reply!

Mr. Flint-wwrrOkay. On the score-- I initially had everything written out by hand. It's a band full of old people though, and they didn't like reading hand written parts, so I had to type the entire score into Sibelius. Unfortunately I did not have enough time to make the score professionally clean. You are right though, the score is sloppy, I know that--but it gets the job done.

My bad on The pppp on the bassoon in the last measure. I know the lowest they will be able to play that is a mf, but overall I defend that note being in the score because that particular note on the bassoon is full and warm, and in that instance works well with the Tubas.

Trombone Pedal Tones: Not bad. I play Tenor Trombone, and I knew exactly what sound I wanted there. A G pedal sounds just fine on a Tenor instrument if a capable person is playing the instrument. If the whole section could nail those two measures, it would sound awesome.

Play measure 127 on the piano. Does it sound muddy? I don't think so. If the ensemble was attacking and releasing more clearly, I think that issue would be remedied.

Yes, I know the background parts are boring. I have a few good reasons. Firstly, they aren't supposed to draw the ear because they are background (duh). Honestly, I prefer it that way. You can argue with me that aestetics aren't really a good reason for anything, but...let's not go there. The second reason is that I didn't know how much rehearsal time we would have, and I didn't want to write anything that would eat time away from getting the key points of the piece right. In case you couldn't tell from the recording, I'm not exactly working with professional musicians.

The Cues: All of them show what's going on leading up to an important part for a section. They can see what's going on so if they mis-count, they can get back on track. All others are for the sake of doubling, in case people were missing from rehersal.

"Noodles" at letter B: Getting a little repeitive in our criticisms? Maybe you are making a joke, I'm not sure.

As for the 32nd notes...how do they not fit in? If I wrote two whole notes tied together, would that be out of place? As far as I'm concerned, it's a simple straight rythm, just like the rest of the piece.

As far as dissonance...I agree with you, and I don't agree with you. Dissonance has it's place, but not in this piece. As a matter of fact, if I had written more dissonant harmonies, I'm sure you would criticize them for being inconsistent with the rest of the work.

pppp is excessive, I'll give you that. ffff is not. It gets the point across. I can promise you that if I had ff or even fff written there, that section wouldn't sound as good as it does.

Although I appreciate your criticism, the last line is patronizing. You cannot congratulate someone on something and then basically call what you just congratulated weak.

In reply, my best defense for the piece is this: The band loves it, The conductor loves it, the dedicatee loves it, and most importantly the audience is going to love it. I know there are shortcomings, but this piece is a door opener for an entire community. I beleive that had I used more dissonance, a lot people would have been shut off immediately. For a large group of people, this will be their first positive exposure to new music. Isn't that exciting? The music world (especially the concert band world) needs more accessible music that isn't Swearingen.

Isn't this piece a step in the right direction?

I liked this piece in spite of the tuning issues with the ensemble. Even though there are a lot of Phillip Glass fingerprints in it , it manages not to sound like a takeoff. I thought you made the minimal techniques part of your own voice which is difficult to do, and combine it with some interesting music ideas.
My only reservation about this piece was the tempo which I felt was a bit slow or a bit the same throughout. Maybe this was the conductor or the limits of the performers but I thought it could be played a bit faster overall to give it a little more punch. Even of pinch isn't what you are aiming at I found the tempo started to get a bit sleepy by the end of the piece.

I agree with you about the tempo. He does take it too slow, (slower then it says in the score) and I don't know why. And yes, I do listen to a lot of Glass and Reich. I love minimalism. I try to take the best sounds of all music and incorporate it into my own voice.