Selva Nocturna - Piece for Percussion Ensemble

While this isn't meant to be performed without a conductor, I couldn't find a better section to post it in, so yeah.

Selva Nocturna (which means "Jungle Night" if Google Translator is to be trusted) is a piece I wrote a little while back for my high school's percussion ensemble (for which I am the conductor, oh ho) because a friend of mine wrote a piece for them the previous quarter and I said, "hey, I should totally upstage him with something better"

While I realize this piece has a few flaws and the melody isn't the most original thing in the world, it's still pretty decent I'd venture. Written for 9 players (10 if you split the auxillary part in two) on:

Bells

Xylophone

Vibraphone

Marimba

Timpani

Concert Bass Drum

Conga Drums (2)

Concert Snare

Auxillary (includes african drums and cymbals)

The piece is somewhat challenging, especially for a group of high school freshman/sophomores which happens to be the group that will be performing it. I'd enjoy hearing what you types think of it. Anyway enough blabbering, here it go:

selvanocturna.mp3 - File Shared from Box.net - Free Online File Storage

selvanocturna.pdf

performing live will definitely do justice to this piece. The timpani part is extremely hard to play, lots of pedaling, I hope they will manage to do it. Anyway, the piece is very lively, though not the most original thing I have ever heard, but it is quite decent. Maybe adding some arpeggios to the vibraphone would make the piece more vivid and fresher, but that's just an idea. Good luck having it performed!

Yeah the timpanist is the girl that taught ME four-mallet technique - and she's a freshman. She's crazy good.

Have you ever wrote any pieces for winter percussion/drum line? This kinda reminds me of the show my old high school preformed.

Nay, I've never had anything performed or published (until this Thursday).

Nay, I've never had anything performed or published (until this Thursday).

Oh you must be exited then.

:)

-The title does not appear on subsequent pages.

-I would generally reassess your dynamics. It might be beneficial, balance wise, to mark ostinato parts (like the hand drums at the beginning of the piece) down a dynamic level when the 'important' parts come in.

-You need to state at the beginning of the piece what pitches the timpani should be tuned to, and how many you have.

-What kind of African drums do you want? I would assume you're talking about a Djembe, but I'm not sure. It would be good to research the instruments you want. It would be like someone putting 'American Drums' on a part.

In the first bar, if you want the mallet parts rolled, then put tremelos on them, otherwise don't write anything after the first beat. Unless a part is rolled, half notes and such are just confusing.

For example, the timpani part should look like this:

Bar I (rolled)- Ab(dotted eighth) Bb (16th) tied to Bb (dotted half) with tremelo

or Bar I (not rolled) - Ab(dotted eighth) Bb (16th) quarter rest, half rest

Bar II (ringing)- F(whole note), with the letters 'l.v' next to it

or Bar II (rolled) - F(whole note) with tremelo markings.

Hope that makes sense.

Bar 3 - The Snare rhythm, and any other time in the piece that the rhythm shows up.

It's difficult to read. I would recommend writing it as follows:

Dotted Eighth, 16th note, 16th rest, Eighth note, 16th note, Eighth, Eighth, Dotted Eighth, 16th.

The reason is that with all the 16th rests, it's really difficult to read. Because most percussion instruments are of indefinite duration it really just makes things harder to notate them the way you have them.

Bar 9 - The vibe part might be easier to read if you have the following:

Dotted Eighth, 16th tied to Eighth, Eighth tied to half

Bar 11- The xylophone beamings are incredibly confusing. You want to show all the downbeats.

Bar 14- You should probably have every part have accents on beat 4.

Bar 19 - There is no reason to have the Snare drum notated like that. It would be better to just make them 16th notes.

Bar 24- Timpani part. You've done a good thing with the 'muffle on rests' business. One thing I've seen, in Daniel Levitan's Concerto for Marimba, is having dampening notated by an 'x'. So instead of 16th note, 16th rest, 16th note 16th note, you would have 16th note (normal notehead), 16th note (x notehead), 16th note (normal notehead) 16th note (normal notehead).

Just a thought.

Bar 31 - Same thing with the beamings. Instead of Dotted Eighth, 16th tied to Eighth, Dotted 1/4 note, 1/4 note....try Dotted Eighth, 16th tied to Eighth, Eighth tied to 1/4 note, 1/4 note.

Bar 35 - Timpani---BEAMINGS!!!!

Bar 49 - I would suggest making this a 4/4 bar, followed by a 3/4, so everyone knows that when the Timpani come in, it's bar 50.

While you may see this as me ignoring you, I assure you I am not: essentially all notation/score cleanup issues can either be filed under "yeah, I know, oops" or "I had some alterior motive for doing that." I was in a bit of a rush to get this into the hands of the performers because I've got limited time with them, and as long as it was good enough to convey the idea, I was fine with it. I do appreciate your criticisms though.

I've posted this here more to get feedback on how it sounds, how well written the music itself is.

Live Recording - 08 Track 8.wma - File Shared from Box.net - Free Online File Storage

it's uh...it's a bit shaky. The performance was only so-so, in my opinion. They got lost tempo wise in a couple spots. Held together well enough though. Eh.

Dude I just reread that and it totally sounds like I was ripping on you. That wasn't my intention at all, haha. Sorry if I sounded rude man.

Don't worry, I know the score was far from perfect, but like I said, that's mostly due to the fact that cleanliness wasn't to priority for this piece.

Great!

Don't know if original or not, but the theme on measures 15-... is really really nice. I think I would've exploited it more before the change on m. 23. Just my impression, anyway.