Down the Hatch!

Hey everyone!

Just finished mixing this today. Basically the story behind the piece is this: I was sitting improvising at my piano the other day, and what I started playing was really dark... I liked it, but it was a really melancholy piece. I started thinking "damn, the past few things I've sketched out were really sad - I'm gonna write a happy piece!" So, obviously, I did. I hadn't written something jocular (or just plain goofy) in a while, so this was a nice retreat back to that.

Techniques I used were: sort of an idea of perpetual motion (there's really no point in the piece where it loses it's driving feel), fun little piccolo/flute/glockenspiel runs, and some odd chord changes. Anyways, as cliche as some of the runs may be, they really gave the piece the sound I was going for, so I'm happy with them.

I tried to salvage the score by keeping it separate from my midi/synth score. I may have overlooked some things, but overall I think it's solid.

Please feel free to critique, comment, hate, laugh, poke fun at, or flame me. They're always welcome. :P

-Down the Hatch!-

- Evan

I won't even try to pick at this since it is written so well! This definitely sounds like something you could imagine in a film score for a comedy. My only question is what sounds did you use? They sound great!

If I had to say one specific thing, it's that I love your orchestration! :D

Alan

Sounds great, would work great for a light comedy film.... what sounds did you use??

Not really alot I can be negative about it!

Cai

Don't mind me, I'm a very picky person.

I would add a cautionary down bow marking in the violins + viola on the pickup before the first measure. Not entirely necessary, though. Starting at 5 you lost the staccato marks in the violins. Add them unless you want them played differently from the first four measures. A marking, simile, might also work. I'd use the stacc. markings, though. At measure 7 the violins are marked arco but there was no preceding pizzicato mark. Also, dots are missing here. At 10, Vln. II has a p and a crescendo, but Vln. I has a similar figure and does not have the markings. At 11 and on be on the ball with those staccato markings. A simile might work in some cases, but like I said, I just keeping using stacc. dots everywhere. Measure 16 Vln. I has beams, rest of the strings do not. I'd also include a bow marking there, as well, for safe measure. If you want 17 on a down bow, make the first two chords at 16 as down as well. Check dynamic placement around 15 in the strings. Some collisions there. Snare drum also kicks up here. It's not on the right staff line... it's... way off. If you are using Finale, which I reckon y'are, this *might* help in setting up those percussion staves: Percussion Staves in Finale

Maybe you wanted staccatos in winds at 11 on as well? In general, a lot of the 16th note triplets you have in the strings might be better slurred than d

You've definitely accomplished your goal of retreating back to jocular. This piece is very quirky.

Nicely orchestrated and has good samples to express it.

I don't see any critique worth mentioning and EnigmusJ4 pretty much mentioned them anyway. :P

Nice work and keep it up! :D

Wow, guys! Thanks for the kind words :)

Let me see...

Alan - I really had no idea what form of media this could be used for when I was composing it - I figured some type of film, game, etc. So you thinking that it would work well for a comedy is great! Definitely something I was aiming for! The sounds I use are EWQL Symphonic Orchestra Gold - they're really amazing samples, and they mix beautifully. They're a bit pricey, but definitely well worth the money. I'm also glad that you commented on my orchestration - I've been trying to branch out a bit in that department, and sort of do stuff that I normally wouldn't do.

shreddychops - Once again, I'm happy to see that you liked the piece!

EnigmusJ4 - Thank you for the intricate response! It seems that many of the things you pointed out (i.e. missing staccato marks, multiple dynamic markings per instrument, etc.) are due to my using finale's output as a "rough draft" of sorts before I mix it all together. What I basically do with that is get the MIDIs to play back (dynamically or otherwise) as I would like them to when I mix them, so that there is less work to do with levels, etc. while actually in the mixing process.

About the percussion staves - I am well aware that the proper notation is along the line, however, since I've written this for a sampled orchestra (and have no intention of ever having it performed) I notate the percussion parts for the correct patch and location of the patch on the midi keyboard (which happens to be way below the stave).

Thanks for the advice on the bowings for the strings - this is probably one of my biggest flaws in that I tend to forget to mark bowings on nearly every piece I write... I'll be sure to keep an eye out in the future.

As for mm26 with the honrs, cellos and bass - the legato marking was purely for the midi rendering (it involved a patch change), and would not be included on a final score. The slur was to indicate the desired playing of the phrase, but not literally involve bowing the entire thing. I would probably indicate this in a more organized score with bowing marks. :)

And Yup! I have written this for two piccolo players (untraditional, but what the hell :)) so that divisi is very intentional.

Thanks again, though, for your wonderful critique of the piece. I'm glad you took the time to listen through and diligently follow along with the score. About it's brevity - it's really just supposed to be a quick joke piece, so I probably won't consider lengthening it. I feel it's briefness adds to the comedy of it!

Bob - I think we all need to deviate off the main course and do something playful sometimes! I know I'll be doing this much more often now, just because it was a fricken blast to write! haha

Thanks again, guys, and any further critiques (although Enigmus did a hell of a job) are still appreciated :)

To continue the discussion about the perc. staves, (:P) the link I provided up there was a sort of tutorial I made on setting them up properly. In Finale if you learn to fuss around with them just the right way you can get them to be on the correct staff line AND play the sound you want at the same time. It's actually not all the hard. I usually just set up a template file with all the percussion staves I might need already set up and use that to start with so I don't have to do it for every new piece I start. So it ends up relatively painless. Also, something that my help, what I do is I have two files for each work. When I finish a piece and am completely sure I am done with making changes, I save a second copy of that and use that for adding playback nuances and etc., that way I have a file that is a good score, and another that I could use to make the recording and not have to worry about dirtying up the score with countless extra markings. The only drawback to this of course is if you decide to go back and change some notes around afterwards. :P

Nice. It's very rare that I listen to a piece that makes me smile. :)

Everything seemed to work- nothing stuck out or appeared to be ill-placed. Cheesy...maybe a little, but it works.

Pretty nifty, I must say!

~Kal

This was fun! It reminded me a little of Bruce Broughton's score for "Honey I Blew up the Kid." I could easily see this working for a Disney animated film or Disney theme park attraction.

Enigmus, I tried setting up the percussion staves like you said, and while it worked with my library, it would only play one note from the patch, requiring me to sharp or flatten the note a countless amount of times to get the desired sound! I think I'm just going to continue doing the crazy notation of perc. when using libraries, and (as I have done in the past) just put them all on the line when a piece is getting performed - much easier for me! But I do thank you for the help! :P

Kal, Thanks man! the goal of the piece is to do just that, make you smile! So that's good that I got the right message out through the piece! I agree with you in it's being cheesy, but I love this type of stuff either way! :D

Aqua, I've seen Honey I Blew Up the Kid many many times, yet sadly I can't remember the score. :( I'll take your word though, in saying that it's a similar style - that is the sort of tone I tried to create the piece with. I also think it's cool that you said it could be used for a theme park attraction - while I have no idea what sort of ride it'd be used for, that's a really cool idea. I go to Busch Gardens a lot (I live like 45 minutes away from Williamsburg) and I always love the music they have playing on Apollo's Chariot and Alpengiest - it's of a pretty good caliber... I wonder how they go about doing stuff like that? :)

I totally just got the movie title "Drop Dead Fred" in my head when I listened to this song, it was very entertaining.