Fight Song

My high school marching band (Freehold Township HS, if you care) used to play "On Wisconsin" as their "fight song", which means its what we play when we get a touchdown at football games. Recently though, the stupid administration of my school decided that we didn't want to play a song of a different school as our fight song for whatever reason. Obviously, this doen't make any sense because so many high school bands play On Wisconsin or Ohio State's "Fight the Team" and nobody complains. But of course my school has to be the first to complain.

Anyway, I made it my goal to compose a completely original fight song for the school before I leave (which is in like 20 days). I must have tried like 4 or 5 times with different ideas, but nothing would satisfy me. Then, suddenly, as I was just playing around on the piano, I started playing Mary Had a Little Lamb (don't ask!) and for whatever reason I played it in the common style of a fight song, and it sounded really good! I then proceeded to take that and modify slightly so it sounds good without sounding like Mary Had A Little Lamb, and I love it. There's only one thing (melody-wise) that I have to do before I can say the melody is done and I can start on the harmonies. I have that idea as a very good A theme, but the song really calls for a B theme and I think a simple AABAA or something similar. I came up with something for the B theme, but I really don't think its good enough. I tried to do a simple call and answer with the low brass and stuff, but it just doesn't sound good enough to me.

Does anybody have any ideas or suggestions for my B theme or anything else? Any comment would be greatly appreciated.

Freehold_Fight.MUS

Freehold_Fight.MID

I worked on it a little and came up with another possible B theme. Here it is. I think I like it more than the first attempt.

Freehold_Fight2_2.MUS

Freehold_Fight2_2.MID

It sounds like it might work very well with a full marching band, just make sure nobody finds out your high school "fight song" is derived from "May had a little lamb". ;)

The A section is nice but the harmonisation of the low and high brass is a bit off in places. Take bar 18 where they move in quasi-contrary motion. You end up halfway through that bar with with a C and C# playing at the same time - not good. Bar 26 begins with an open 9th interval too, which is very empty as far as harmony goes. It needs a few more notes. In fact, come to think of it, every note played in the high brass forms a non-functional relationship with the low brass in that bar. It's a 9th, an octave, an open 7th, a 5th, then in the next bar it's quite non-functional too. Needs some tightening up, especially considering the strength of your theme.

The B section is good. Call and response gets the thumbs up from me.

Come to think of it, actually, maybe my comments about harmony aren't really valid because these are sketches. I'd be very interested to hear the full version once you've finished it.

Wow! Thank you very much for your detailed input. I understand what you are saying and I pretty much agree with your arguments. I think you are confused with what I mean by A and B themes. The structure I chose was AABAA. Theme A is 8 bars long and B is 12 bars. When you were referring to my A theme, I think you meant what I call my first attempt at the B theme of the piece. Like I said above, I think my second attempt is a better one because it sounds a little more natural. I barely think about the theory of what intervals I choose, I mostly just do it by ear. I don't know if that's good or bad.

I will submit the finished piece hopefully in a few weeks. Once again, thanks a lot for your valuable input!

Here's a couple of things that will help you to pull all this together:

For starters, when writing a Fight Song, I would suggest looking into writing a full-fledged march style. There is actually a form to writing a march, and you're pretty close. First you have 4-8 bars of introduction, then you have 8-12 bars of the A section which repeats. Then you have 8-12 bars of a B section, which also repeat. This is sometimes followed by a breakstrain which leads into the Trio. The Trio is a section that typically changes key (Down a 5th) and includes melodic material from the A and B sections. Think of The Stars and Stripes forever, which fits this exact form.

Also, every fight song has lyrics, even if most people don't know them. Look up and see if your school has a motto or pledge or something and write music to that. You have some good ideas, but I think you should start this project in the right place.

Also, you have added a stinger at the end of this march, but you have placed it one beat 4, which is a weak beat in a march tempo. You'll want to shorten the first noted to a quarter note and move the stinger to beat 3. Nice work, though!

Yes, I have often speculated about the strange similarity between marches and fight songs. Actually, I wrote this song while I was in the middle of trying to write a regular march. I guess it put me in the right "mood". Looking at other popular fight songs for reference (such as On Wisconsin), I see a structure like ABA, or AA'BAA', in which the B theme is often dog-fight-esk. I think I'll probably settle for the structure I've chosen. I think it works fine and I don't have that much time to make major changes. The main problem with making it a full march is that it'd be way too long. As stupid as it sounds, the fight song should probably be around a minute to tend for people's really short attention spans at football games.

As for lyrics, I definitely agree they are needed. I was actually planning on organizing a school-wide lyrics contest. I think I'll end up with decent lyrics, however corny they turn out to be.

In regards to the stinger, I agree it is not optimal on beat 4 (or the "and" of beat 2 since its cut time), but I kinda don't think making it on the 3rd beat would make it any better. So, I think I may just give up on a stinger, even though it is so characteristic of me to use stingers all the time! :angry:

Thank you so much for all of your comments! I'll start harmonizing it soon and I'll keep you posted! :blush:

Trust me. It goes on beat 3. If you don't put it in, the band will play it anyway (my experience with marching bands).

Also, the Florida State University fight song is considerably longer than a minute. However, people only really know that much because that's the part they know the words to (F-L-O-R-I-D-A... etc.). If you want it to be shorter, you should write it out as a standard march and simply cut out the repeats.

What you have right now is an A section, half a B section, and back to the A section. All you need to do is make the B section as long as the A section, and then add B section material into the Final section. A B section is NOT a breakstrain (or Dog Fight section), and you can't just put one in unless you have a substancial B section first.

Ok. I know I've been away from young composers for a while but I've been a little busy.

Anyway, I haven't given up my fight song yet even though its well after my intended completion date. I've tried to make a harmonization a few times for full band but its just too overwhelming. I'm figuring out that, at least until I hone my skills better, I really need to make a piano arrangement of my compositions first and then translate it to full band later. So, thats what I did about this. I haven't actually had proper access to a piano yet so I haven't been able to bang out all the chords yet, but it sounds all right to me on the whole. I know I can improve the piano arrangement a little before I make it into a full band. Anyway, here's what I have so far!

Freehold_Fight_piano.MUS

Freehold_Fight_piano.MID

Here's my latest update on the fight song. I have completed the full arrangement of the first, main theme to my satisfaction. I may change it slightly as time goes by, but here it is for the most part.

Freehold Fight full.MUS

Freehold Fight full.MID

I think a 4-8 bar intro would suit you well, something along the lines of a short fanfare, to almost announce the beginning of the actual song.

I also think that maybe instead or repeating the A section verbatim, that it would be better to change it up a little to keep things sounding fresh. My school does that with one of their fight songs, and it works quite effectively.

Here's an example from my school, it has both a fanfare and a different repeat of the A section (in a different key)

http://free.retron.net/music/05 Go Southern Go.mp3

EDIT: Another thing you may want to take into consideration (especially with your repeats and all) is how much time your band may have to play this between plays.

Hi.

This so far sounds like a good fight song. (a lot better than the one my school has lol) Anyway, here are a few things I noticed (based on the piano reduction):

1. Like Nightengale Inc. said, make sure to put the last note on the third beat. It would be hard to march to it the way you have it in the piano reduction.

2. mm 5 and when that measure is repeated other places sounds wrong. I think that it's the C in the bass. You might want to change that two either two quarter notes of Bb or a half note of Bb. (just an idea :whistling: )

That's really all I noticed (you also need to add words later). So far, great job. Please continue with the big band score. It sounds awesome! :D

-William