Passion for Wind Band (looking for critique)

Hi guys, i guess this is the first time I'm posting my work here! I'm currently working on a wind band piece as a final yr project at a diploma course in music and audio technology (not really so related to my course). But its under a major module called portfolio development so you can basically do anything you like :D

Hope to get some critique and advice from the experts here =).. I'm currently revising the score as some of the trumpet parts are really stretching the limits for a high-school band to play :)...

Score:

www.sympheramusic.com/PassionWindBandFullScoreVer1.pdf

Mock-Up:

www.sympheramusic.com/PassionPODVer8.mp3

Some background for the piece if you're interested:

The name of the piece is Passion because it's sort of my own

self-reflection of my take on my own passion for music from the day I

started to love music and really composing music. Almost all the

motives in the piece are derived from the the main motive played by

the solo euphonium at the start of the piece; this depicts my

underlying passion for music, no matter how much my perception on

music has changed, the fact is that my passion for music still remains

no matter what happens!

Yep, that's the general idea and the transitions are relatively

quick for such a short piece too because it reflects how rapidly my

views and take on music can change almost from day to day :)

I hope the piece and the title itself is not too much of a cliche!

P.S Currently looking around for a local band around my area (I'm from Singapore) to see if any band is interested in playing this piece ^^, but it would be lovely to hear a band outside my country play it! Hopefully this piece is of some quality :P

That was positively amazing! I loved every minute of it, and the use of percussion to add sparkling on top was great. My favorite part swere the ones with hard hitting backgrounds behind a beautiful melody, but I loved all the melodies. It reminded me of Disney.

The one thing I didn't like were the transitions, where alot of the time you added a bar of nothing and changed the speed.

I'd ask my band to play it if you're offering it for free - are you? We're a small non-professional (but good if I do say so myself) community band from Ontario, Canada.

That was positively amazing! I loved every minute of it, and the use of percussion to add sparkling on top was great. My favorite part swere the ones with hard hitting backgrounds behind a beautiful melody, but I loved all the melodies. It reminded me of Disney.

The one thing I didn't like were the transitions, where alot of the time you added a bar of nothing and changed the speed.

I'd ask my band to play it if you're offering it for free - are you? We're a small non-professional (but good if I do say so myself) community band from Ontario, Canada.

Thanks so much for the feedback! really appreciate it alot :). Yes i'm offering it free, as long as I can get a live performance of it! To be honest, this is my first major large ensemble work and I'm really excited that someone is even interested in playing it! =) haha :)... I'm currently working on refining the score as well as preparing the individual parts, if you are interested in playing it, please email me at teraproductions@gmail.com and we can definitely discuss more ^^...

Thanks so much for the feedback! really appreciate it alot :). Yes i'm offering it free, as long as I can get a live performance of it! To be honest, this is my first major large ensemble work and I'm really excited that someone is even interested in playing it! =) haha :)... I'm currently working on refining the score as well as preparing the individual parts, if you are interested in playing it, please email me at teraproductions@gmail.com and we can definitely discuss more ^^...

Sent! As long as everyone else agrees, it's okay. The parts might be to hard for some people. I'm not sure our horns/trumpets could hit that high, I'll have to check.

Issues:

Instrument cues are not supposed to appear in the score.

Too much unison voicing in large sections.

Your saxophone parts go out of the range of the instrument.

Your trumpet parts are high, with the 2nd and 3rd parts being far too high.

Your bass trombone part is ineffective in several places because you've simply copied the tuba part, and it's too low to sound appropriate.

My biggest criticism would be that you very obviously use far too much Copy+Paste when writing. The string bass part is a carbon copy of the tuba part, with inappropriate phrasing and articulations. You have large areas where all the clarinets or all the trumpets are playing the exact same lines, regardless of appropriateness of range.

This could be a much better piece if you would go back and orchestrate it effectively. For now, this is going to sound horrid when a real ensemble gets ahold of it, because the orchestration is poor.

Instrument cues are not supposed to appear in the score.

Wait, what? Then where do they appear, parts only? How would the director know his options then? We are talking about the "possible substitution" cues, and not the "this is what you'll hear before you play" cues, right?

Anyway, for criticism: this piece suffers in one major way: the snare drum. Anytime a concert band composer uses a consistent snare part like that, it just...sounds middle-schooly, if you understand my meaning. This is not really your fault, of course, it's just that middle school band composers tend to give percussionists parts like that because they are easy to play and because it's a bit more difficult to really write effectively for snare. Anyway, the point is your sound here...it just SOUNDS like a school's concert band piece. Eh, this probably isn't helping much.

Hi Flint,

Thanks so much for the critique. I'm aware of the really high trumpet parts and i'm working on fixing it. Would you mind pointing out which saxophone parts actually go out of the range? Cause i'm pretty sure i stuck within range, besides being the trumpet parts being overly high.

Thanks for pointing out the double bass parts too, I'd be putting the correct phrasing and articulation like pizz at places where necessary instead of staccato markings.

I admit i did use quite alot of copy-paste because its the first time I'm actually writing for a wind band, so I did referencing, mainly from jacob de haan's ross roy to see which parts double what and how often they were, but I'll continue to work on the orchestration to improve it.

Unfortunately if I never get to hear how my piece will sound like when played by a real band, I wouldn't be able to really tell what is wrong with some of the instrument combination and i guess this is my biggest problem right now.

Really appreciate the critique!

Wait, what? Then where do they appear, parts only? How would the director know his options then? We are talking about the "possible substitution" cues, and not the "this is what you'll hear before you play" cues, right?

Anyway, for criticism: this piece suffers in one major way: the snare drum. Anytime a concert band composer uses a consistent snare part like that, it just...sounds middle-schooly, if you understand my meaning. This is not really your fault, of course, it's just that middle school band composers tend to give percussionists parts like that because they are easy to play and because it's a bit more difficult to really write effectively for snare. Anyway, the point is your sound here...it just SOUNDS like a school's concert band piece. Eh, this probably isn't helping much.

haha! It is supposed to sound like a school's concert band piece :) That's my main target audience ^^... so did you enjoy the piece? haha!

Wait, what? Then where do they appear, parts only? How would the director know his options then? We are talking about the "possible substitution" cues, and not the "this is what you'll hear before you play" cues, right?

Would you mind pointing out which saxophone parts actually go out of the range?

Specifically, there are a few low A's in the second alto part that caught my eye.

thanks for pointing it out, i found it :P

it is a soundtrack