band piece - urgent

Hi all. If someone that knows chords well can help me out quick I will be very thankful. This piece is a dedicatory overture and it should mostly be major or tonic chords, it is for full band. I am having trouble with adding chord to my trumpet melody.

Thank you!

Overture.mid

Overture.pdf

Overture.sib

I barely even understand what you want. I mean are you really asking us to pick out your chords for you or what? You're the composer, you choose. Or are you asking us to make sure you've written them correctly? Because I'd have to know which chords you were trying to make to help you with that.

From bars 2 to 4, why not have the upper voices go up like you have them do, but have the lower voices (low brass and woodwinds) play a scale going DOWNwards? This is called contrary motion and is a very effective compositional tool. Listen to a lot of good marches and you'll hear lots of contrary motion in the opening measures. This is because a unison ascending line doesn't necessarily grab that much attention - it's boring.

In your last two bars, why do you have first clarinet below the others? Don't do that, it's confusing.

Measure 11 I'd suggest you use the subdominant rather than stick to the tonic. You'll have to change your trumpet melody there a little, but I think it will work better. You could just shift beats 2, 3, and 4 in the trumpet down by a whole step. Measure twelve would be Eb - G- Eb in trp. Measure 13 could be a dominant seventh chord (E flat in the melody, the accompanying chord is F major).

Also, you don't have to have all major chords to should happy and fanfarical. You can throw in G minor chords and C minor chords and D major chords that are a little bit out side of the whole I - IV - V language and still get a stunningly exciting majestic piece.

You want to harmonize the solo trumpet in the other trumpets? Is that your question?