Contest Piece for Wind Ensemble

A concert band work that I recently finished. I started this work over two years ago and wrote most of the thematic material then. Today I finished it adding the second half of it. Suggestions for a better title are highly appreciated! Comments welcome. Enjoy!

Contest Piece for Wind Ensemble

quite good very good wow bravooooooooooooooooo

It sounds sort of like a piece for a game. any future plans for this piece?

Very nice, I think this will make a good competition piece... I actually don't have much to say! The brass writing is powerful and effective. I especially like the major seconds. I'd clean up the oboe and flute parts in 15-16 and better specify what you mean in 170-171 with the tuba.

Have you studied many wind ensemble scores? Reed, Curnow, Grainger... Mahler? Your approach is not particularly subtle but this piece isn't supposed to be. Great concert starter or finisher.

As always, a spectacular work! This astounds me, especially all the strange notations in strange changing time and key signatures you have, so I don't have much to say besides excellent work.

The things I would change include the strange pause at 71 for that piccolo part that I'm not a fan of. Soon after you have the piccolo solo, which is nice, but I think you repeat it too many times on - even when adding horn and trumpet counter melodies.

It would be interesting to hear this played live - do you have any plans for that?

None yet, though any ensemble that's willing to try is welcome.

Wow! I love this piece, its incredible. I have no words. Get it performed!

Really cool! The brass part is very lively. This would definitely be a challenging piece to play, but it sounds amazing. Thanks for posting, I really enjoy it.

I really love this piece. I enjoy the music, and not only that, the score is beautifully done! I wish I could get my scores looking like that. This piece would be difficult to play, driving the band to work hard and would definitely give the feeling of "I JUST OWNED THAT PIECE" after the performance (if played well). Not for the faint of heart to play, but it's not hard in the sense that you don't know what you're doing. You definitely know what you're doing. Great piece, and I'm sure many would be willing to play a performance.

Wow.. Quite amaizing.I really enjoyed listening to this piece! .Nice work! -Minoxor.

Intense. And fun. Because of all the fast, repeated notes, I think of traveling. On a quest perhaps - for a name? I'm terrible at naming my pieces. I can see why composers just put and opus number/style marking and a key signature. Anywho, the orchestration is great. This piece sounds like it's aimed at REALLY good high schools, college level, or military band. The quick tonguing figures would be difficult to get perfectly clean in a real life setting, I think, but not impossible. Need more wind band composers like you.

This is really well done, but I'm afraid it would be too difficult for my band. Do you have any other concert band pieces that I can look at?

I thought you had a website but I could not find it under your information tab on here. Could you send me that link again? It's been a while since I have looked over your compositions.

Thanks! And good work!

Also, you should consider entering the concert band competition I am hosting. (Or being a judge...but I'd love an entry from you.) There's even a cash prize! (It may only be $20.00 at the moment but still! lol)

For some reason the main motif of this piece reminds me of the main motif from the Brave Little Toaster soundtrack. Either way, it is a very well crafted piece and I'd love to hear it recorded by a band.

I'm really not in a great place to listen to the recording/rendering of this that you uploaded. I have a few comments from reviewing the score, if that's alright.

Concert bands probably struggle MOST with intonation. It's usually better to find ways to help these ensembles as much as possible.

For example, keys with sharps tend to be more difficult to tune than keys with flats. Ab and Bb are just better in terms of range in most cases. This is rather picky, but in a contest for concert band, you'll find directors look at some of the performance aspects that will impact intonation. I'm finding now that it's so much more significant than we're led to believe in composition studies. Let me go through some of the different instrument families specifically:

Woodwinds:

Some of the flourishing lines, especially in the flute, are really cool except that when these lines cross it's practically impossible to read without rewriting it as the performer or memorizing the line. Just look on page two and imagine you're reading it. Maybe you've printed parts separately? There's nothing wrong with taking one of those lines down an octave in the flute or swapping out one of them with the piccolo. Either way, the practical performance issues with some of this material need to be addressed.

Brass:

I don't have -too- much to offer here. Trombone 3 seems like it might be better as a Bass Trombone to add more bass to the ensemble. A contra-bassoon and a Bari-Sax are also good bass voices to add to the mass of the ensemble sound. You may have been working from an orchestration list for the contest though, so I don't know if these suggestions help.

Percussion:

I don't like how you score the percussion. Personally, on a percussion staff with one line, you can consolidate the snare and bass down to one staff, with snare on top and bass on the bottom. This is preferred to separate parts, actually, because that's less printing the director needs to do and one less part to keep up with in the music library. This also gives you more room on the score to add additional percussion. Where's the suspended cymbal? Did I miss it? You can add that to the bass drum part instead of consolidating the snare and bass if you want. This is also common. One percussion instrument per part is impractical though, except for timpani of course.

Also, might I suggest some concert toms and more auxiliary percussion?? S.D., B.D., Timpani, Cymbals, and Xylophone are pretty common, but there are so many more things you can include from Triangle and Windchimes/Bell Tree to Tambourine and Temple Blocks. There are plenty of other percussion instruments to add. The general rule of thumb I follow is to imagine the percussion family in four parts, just like any of the other instrument families. The Timpani and Bass Drum, respectively, are like the bottom voice (in the case of bass drum, timbre). The tenor and alto voices are the auxiliary instruments like Triangle, Suspended Cymbals, Break Drum, and other "toys" of the percussion section. Then you have soprano instruments like Mallet Percussion, Snare Drum, and so forth.

Percussion instruments don't function in the same way that voices of the ensemble do, but you have to think of your options for percussion in groups just like any other family. Your snare, bass, and maybe crash cymbals will be grouped together. Your mallets will be grouped somewhere else. Your timpani player will be somewhere else. Your toys and suspended cymbal will be somewhere else. Think in groups instead of single instruments and you'll find there's more room to add additional timbres and colors to make your concert band work more vibrant. There's also no problem with using a normal 5-line staff for your non-pitched percussion instruments, either. Each line and space can be used for a different instrument. Just be sure more complicated rhythmic stuff isn't overlapping. If it becomes the case that you have several different instruments performing different rhythmic patterns you'll want to have separate staves.

Okay, that's all I have to add for now. I look forward to listening to this and commenting further.

To elaborate a little on Orph:

Unless you write a "grade 4/5" level piece (it looks like this one MAY qualify, don't have time to check too closely), a piece in concert G won't sell. Sad but true fact. Public school band directors simply don't play tunes in the "obscure" keys. So abilities in that key are terrible and thus not played.

I think it's a terrible disservice, but that's the way it works.

I think that key is a factor, but if the piece is good enough it will sell.

I know tons of band pieces in harder keys that are very popular.

I know tons of band pieces in harder keys that are very popular.

For example?

Ones that I have performed are On a hymnsong of lowell mason and October by Eric whitacre. the holsinger piece is in D major and october has like 3 or 4 nonstandard band keys. I could list more if you'd like.

You'll note that both are very slow and technique within the key isn't an issue.

The exception doesn't disprove the rule. Just about every popular concert band tune that has a fair degree of technicality is in a "band friendly" key.

Indeed. Whether G major is a "band key" depends on the skill of the ensemble. Personally, I just used it because it was convenient for the ranges of the brass especially.

There are a few hazo pieces that are written in odd keys. I'm not disagreeing with you in the fact that most band pieces are written in Eb, Bb, F. I'm just saying that if the piece is good enough, it'll path its way in the band repertoire.

Hazo, Whitacre, Ticheli, Holsinger, Mackey are all well-known living composers. Their works will do well regardless.

Their name lets them do things out of the ordinary.

Now, if you want to write for higher level groups than high school, do it without any concern about this issue.

But a work has to be pretty darn good to do well if it's in an atypical key and written for younger groups.

Enough about that. :P

I think it's a publishing/marketing scheme. Obviously publishers are impartial to pieces written atypical keys because they think it won't sell. But if you're into self publishing, obviously you can take certain liberties and still get your name around. Jonathan Newman and John Mackey are probably my favorite self published band composers that write what they please. but as you said.

Enough about that. :P

Most of the critiquing I had thought of has already been said, so now I'm just going to voice my thoughts.

WOW. So fun! The beginning reminded me of music from the Legend of Zelda so much. Definitely would be a difficult piece to get mastered. I see that you're a trombonist... some of their parts were pretty difficult! I commend you if you can play along!

But wow, it just felt so happy and lively; I'm not really sure what else to say! It was really enjoyable to listen to. I actually smiled at the end of it just because it made me so happy!

Wonderful work! Make this part of a larger work! And see if you can, by some miracle, find a band that can play it for you!

-Keegan