verisyn

Yep, I've been busy. Thanks Fury.

Good news. I've taken it into account that boredom pays off. Yesterday I transposed all four movements, and guess what else? I added a 5th movement in order to lengthen the show. I feel as though it has more of an appropriate finale finish. The show now runs at about seven and a half minutes, fitting inside of the UIL requirements. The last movement seems rather fast, but I actually anticipate a lot of switching between normal marching and half-time marching frequently during it so that it doesn't seem too overwhelming to the marchers.

I found out yesterday that I do need another minute added. Sorry for doubting you guys. I'll either extend the second or third movement; possibly both. I'll get around to it eventually.

I think you might be mistaken; I just checked my perc. score for the ballad and there's no snare, bass, or anything that sounds remotely like that, besides possibly bongos. There's tamourine, ride cymbal, crash cymbals, chinese cymbals, hi-hat, vibrastrap, bongos, & splash cymbal on the only track that snare can be present on. Anyways, I'm now uploaded mvts. 2 & 4 with their drumline parts. :]

I don't have enough voices to add suspended cymbal, I don't recall any snare being present, and I (since I am a cymbal player) have been known to go overboard with what I think isn't enough, hahah. Having a limited amount of voices is my whole/main problem.

Well I can't really be too picky; it is free, afterall. It's not as much that I don't have the capabilities to write tenor parts as it is that I always seem to write them as being impossible for any human play. xD Thanks. :] I plan on conquering the second movement eventually; I start back at school tomorrow after our Christmas break, so I'm going to be on less and less thanks to homework. Man how I love ap classes. -_-"

Well I have now finished writing the drumline parts for Mvt.1, minus tenors. I don't have enough voices to do tenors, since I had to use toms (bleck) as my bass line voice. Also, there's a weird little techno crunching sound occasionally; that's the filler I had to use for snare rim shots due to the fact of lacking voices. :blush: Overall, the drumline might seem very overpowering due to the fact that I was required to mix and match the standard percussion voices to get my final resulting filler sounds. My apologies if it takes away from the original, but you could always listen to the original first and then imagine it while you listen to the re-write. :toothygrin: This re-write is now listed beneath the Ballad Rewrite.

Okay, thanks. I'll check in on that. :] Anvil definitely is not for the feint of heart. The only reason I use it is because my brother used it back ages ago, and I kind of started messing with it, and I got the hang of it. It's a lot easier than you think.

Hmm, I know that I can edit, but I'm not sure about how to insert the new music into it, I can only get it to let me edit my text. Hmm, I'll look into the drill. Yes, when I was writing the show, I was keeping my own school's band in mind; we have between 120 & 140 students; I'm not sure, really. Our guard also ranges from 25-35 people each year. We have a pretty large school.The only instruments that we don't have are bari saxes. We have around 8 tenors, 12 altos, 3 bass clarinets, 16 clarinets, 20 mellophones, 5 euphoniums, 5 tubas, 25 trumpets, 25 battery, 15 pit. I feel like I'm forgetting a section, but I can't quite put my finger on it at the moment. I used Anvil Studio to write, and then I open it in finale notepad to listen to it with more appropriate sounding voices, sadly though, then some of the volumes aren't correct when in contrast with eachother. I would kill to get Sibelius; it's what our percussion instructor uses, and we had a project that required us to use it in class. EDIT: I figured out how to post the re-write. It's now up and listed last. BTW A Forgetten Legend, you left out the link in you last post.

I have finished a re-write of Mvt. III, but I have no clue how to get it into this thread. If anybody knows how, and is willing to tell me, I would greatly appreciate it.

Thank both of you for you comments. Jamie, Mvt. II definitely would normally have maracas, but well, heh, I hate the midi sound for them, so I settled for the shakers. I would have added tambourine, but I think you should open the midi in an editor and look at it... I had to do all of it by hand, and it was rather tedious. Mvt. III is the one that I really did have the most trouble with, mainly because that I'm not used to writing slow music. I'm not going to make excuses for myself though, because I do know that I could have done better. Mvt. IV's ending, to me, reminds me of "ye olden times" of medievel Europe, and that's why I chose it. I love strong chords like it that retain a lot of the french horn sound (I'm not really sure if the midi is portraying it right, but I love french horn, being an ex-player and all). Dynamics are a pain for me, due to the fact that I have to go through and edit each note, due to the program that I use, so all in all, most things are actually the same volume, I've just gotten the instrumentation to sound as though some parts are softer than others. The trumpets actually have 21 measures of rest starting at 1:49. I just relistened to the midi, and frankly, the alto sax voice sounds a lot like the trumpet one, so it's possible that you are mistaken in saying that it's always trumpet, but your sense of too much is most likely different than mine, or anyone else's. Like I said first thing though, thank you for the comments; I've actually been thinking about giving the third movement a melody, but I can never seem to like what I come up with.

Thank you. I really do appreciate all of your comments. I feel as though the pit parts could possibly be more challenging, but I was kind of gauging myself off of our band's pit we had this marching season. It was full of freshmen, and none of them showed very great potential, nor had any of them every played four mallet. We had two rerturners; one was on vibes, which I know is good... he should have actually been marching snare, but we have one heck of a picky teacher. The other is... well, in pit for a reason; he's not very good at anything. I love all saxes' sounds, and I do agree that they rarely get their moments. Like I said, this is my first attempt, and I was running mostly on fear and the excitement to actually be doing this; I was having trouble keeping my ballad soft and balanced throughout most of it, and I think that's why I kind of rambled on throughout it. I sincerely appreciate it; some of my friends actually suggested to let our band director listen to it and see what he thinks, but I decided I'd let people I don't know listen to it first, in case I were to make a fool out of myself. xD

Hey guys. This is my first post. I've been writing music (well, attempting) for almost five years now. I am a sophomore in high school. A couple of my friends were saying that they liked some of my music. One of them has used this site quite a bit, from what I've heard (The Fury 2600 is his user) and he suggested that I post it here. He says that he thinks this one turned out better than any of his attempts at marching band music. So, I finally gave in and decided to post it. I'd love to hear feedback on what anyone has to say about my music. :] The show is entitled "Europe" Movement 1-- The United Kingdom Movement 2-- Spania Movement 3-- Atlantic Sunset Movement 4-- Norsemen UPDATES: -The Mvt.3 (Re-write) is a duplicate of my ballad, which now contains a melody. -The Mvt.1 (Snares) is a re-write of the opener that now contains drumline [filler] sounds. -The Mvt.2 (Basses) is a re-write of the 2nd mvt. that now contains drumline [filler] sounds. -The Mvt.4 (Drumline) is a re-write of the closer that now contains drumline [filler] sounds. (The toms that were there before unfortunately now blend in with the bass filler I used.) Another Update: -There are now five movements; United Kingdom, Spania, Atlantic Sunset, Norsemen, and World Faire. -The show now meets the UIL time requirements. -Everything has been properly transposed, fitting inside of all instruments' appropriate ranges. -All older versions have been removed to minimize confusion. Mvt.1-- United Kingdom (Properly Transposed).mid Mvt.2-- Spania(Properly Transposed).mid Mvt.3-- Atlantic Sunset (Properly Transposed).mid Mvt.4-- Norsemen(Properly Transposed).mid Mvt.5--World Faire.mid