July 8, 201015 yr Hi Waffle, welcome to the forum! First things first, let's talk about your score. I'll go down the row. 1. This is kinda nitpicky, but your oboes are playing the same rhythm throughout the piece (for the most part) and they can share a staff. 2. I think instead of focusing on more uncommon instrumentation, you should add a second alto sax part to fill out harmony! 3. Two bassoons on seperate staffs are unnecessary. Share them on one staff like you should do with the oboes! 4. The cornet/trumpet thing died a long time ago. 2-4 Trumpets is the standard instrumentation for concert bands now! 5. Horns never get their own staff. Combine 1-2 and 3-4 on one staff. (some composers like to combine 1-3 and 2-4 on one staff, but i find this more confusing for the conductor.) 6. You don't need all the separate staffs at the bottom, gather up all your percussion instruments and gather them into staffs 1-3. I'm not trying to single you out, but it's good to know these things, especially in regards to publishing, etc! As for the actual music, I don't have many complaints! It sounded like video game music, not a bad thing at all. Good job!
July 8, 201015 yr Author Thank you for the advice, I'm just starting out so my scores look pretty mediocre haha. I agree with combining all the winds but the percussion doesn't make anything but snare drum sounds when i use general percussion staves so I'm pretty much forced to seperate them out. Thanks for listening
July 8, 201015 yr I listened to this piece this morning, left for a few hours and came back to see if I could read the beginning rifts in the horns, and I got it wrong. Point being, I think you should consider making an easier line, or get smarter people than myself to read it. To make it easier, try separating it into beats, like at 31 all the trombone notes are attached - seperate them when a beat 1, 2, 3 or 4 is hit. Besides that, I thought this piece was nicely done, it kept me interested from beginning to end, nice use of rhythms/ostinatos and melody to do so.
July 8, 201015 yr Alright, here goes. Without looking at the score, it's a good piece that just needs to do what I always say... "Evolve"! The good thing is that you have something that can evolve into a full fledged concert band work; it's just a matter of what options you take to get it there. Now, MichaelAlex is right about a number of things. When you post in the future, be certain to note that the score is an in work score. I got the impression that this was a completed work, and thus was expecting to see a standard score format. I've posted in-work scores, and when I first write scores, I have separate staves for each part, similar to your score. However, once you've completed a score, then you can combine staves together and give us a standard score to look at. It's much easier to do it this way, but I agree with all of the points made except 4. While most concert bands do indeed utilized cornets and trumpets on trumpet parts, and most scores are written only with trumpet parts, there are some uses for the cornet by itself. However, in this piece, you aren't doing that, so you should make those Cornet parts into Trumpets 3 and 4. As far as percussion goes, look into learning how to map percussion to a stave. I don't know how Sibelius' percussion mapping is compared to Finale's, but I built one from scratch so I'd be able to use it repeatedly. As it's most basic form, a percussion map is just a table that tells your music program when you see "this" note at "this" location on the staff, play "this" instrument. Sorta like how we've become accustomed to the snare drum/side drum being on the third space and the bass drum being on the first (bottom up). That's what a percussion map is. Then you can easily combine all of your percussion onto one stave, since they aren't different/complicated enough to require their own stave. With that being said, make certain that you post a score in transposed format. Concert pitch may be good for certain purposes, but most of the community here at YC probably is made up of people who are used to seeing parts as the performers would read them. It's also easier to note how difficult a passage is, such as your horn solo. I'd be afraid at that low pitch if the Horn were trying it, but since I know it's written a fourth up I'm not as worried. It's understandable that those durations are the actual durations you want. However, please remember there's a certain way to notate, and the main sticking point is to not go across a strong point of a measure. Basically, your initial harmony is shooting over the third beat, and is beaming three beats together in 4/4 time. Keep this in mind as you work through the score, as this happens throughout most of your piece. It makes it very hard for us to read it, though not impossible. For example, your opening with Horns and Low Brass, in a standard format, would end up looking similar to this: There should be something somewhere in your music program that allows you to rebeam. This should fix this problem. Hopefully. I'll work on an in-depth review of the piece, but there are a few things that should be on the same staff. Oboes 1/2 on a stave. I'd suggest somehow merging the Solo Clarinet with Clarinet 1. Bassoons 1/2 on a stave. Trumpets 1/2 and 3/4 on staves. Same with Horns. Tenor Trombones 1/2 on a stave. And eventually the Percussion as well, onto one, maybe two staves. I'm hesitant about the Timpani, because you may want to rethink the part so you only require 4. Read up on your timpani, because there's a bit of worry over which is being tuned to what pitch in my mind. I'll suggest looking at some of the other scores around here that are in a higher stage of completion. There's a lot here that might help you get some ideas to help improve your piece. But don't get discouraged; this piece is a great starting point on the road to a great work!
July 8, 201015 yr Greetings, This was a very interesting piece. I was really diggin' that ostinato that the horns played at the beginning and towards the end. I do get a very jazzy vibe from this piece and it really shows your compositional skills. I won't reiterate some of the things brought up by the other members because you already know what needs to be fixed. My two really big complaints are the middle slow section (B) and the final fast section (A'). I'll begin with the slower section: I felt a lot more could've been done with this section as far as percussion. They are pretty much playing the same rhythms throughout. From my experience, percussionist really love variety in their playing and love to be involved. Now, this doesn't mean add all kinds of crazy percussion, but it does mean try to add more colorful percussion to enhance this section. It may just be me, but the themes in the slower section could have been developed just a bit more than you established. Maybe adding other wind instrument colors to enhance this section. Now, my only gripe with the final section is the ending. I was hoping for just a few more bars of music, but it just seemed to end so suddenly. Perhaps you can see if you can develop that a little more. Then again, it is up to you as the composer. Haha. All-in-all, this composition shows that you have some real potential as a composer and I'm looking forward to hearing more of your compositions. Keep on developing your skills as a composer! Peace, C.L. Winston
July 9, 201015 yr Author Thanks for the feedback to all of you, I will definately revise the score and spice up some of the middle section, add some stuff at the end and we could have a decent piece. Thanks for listening
July 9, 201015 yr It's standard jazz, but there are some film-music-like orchestrations and the brass ostinato adds a lot of energy to the piece, that made it very pleasant to listen to. When the ostinato stops, though, I found the low brass pedal to be tedious more than anything else. The middle section seems to wander a bit too much for my tastes, at least for the first few moments. The build-up towards the end of the middle section and the return to the ostinato sat better with me. The ending definitely needs work, but you seem to be working on your piece as I type, so I'll encourage you to go ahead :happy:
July 9, 201015 yr First, let me say that I enjoyed that. It was moving, it's hip, the harmonies were pretty hot (though they coulda been hotter ;)), the melodies were varied and appropriate as well as exciting. I got a few nits to pick with you, though. -It plays like a marching band piece. Here's why: the percussion parts are only doing rhythmic supporting roles. So either fill out the percussion parts a lot more, or rescore this for marching band, because there's a lot of holes in the sound that're begging for more percussion backing. -Why two timpani parts? No concert band will have that. I strongly suggest rescoring those parts into one. Remember, only 4 notes per tuning; give the player ample time to retune unless you give him a roll to gliss up/down with. -The retransition back into A needs more than the horns. Maybe a percussion build, brass build or something. Horns aren't percussive and "to the fore" enough to build the huge tempo build you're asking with excitement. -2 trumpets and 2 cornets? You didn't write a true cornet part. Unless you know what a cornet part is and how it is different from a trumpet part, just write trumpet parts. -The horn solo part on pg 17...probably would not happen. Even for a player with good lip slurs, that's a loooong time of doing lip slurs. A euphonium player would probably have an easier time with it and sound much stronger and cleaner. -Slow section needs more moving lines. You only have one at any given time. I do like the backgrounds, but there has to be more than one main thing going on in such a long stretch of time. I enjoyed that! And it seems that a lot of these things have been talked about in this thread already. Hope it all helps.
July 9, 201015 yr I really enjoyed this! I would put in some more articulations in the piece. Articulations are what make or break a piece. A lot of woodwinds stuff looks like it should be slurred, but you have no articulation indicated. The middle section did seem to drag on a little but, but that's my only complaint listening wise. Very nice jazz style put into concert band elements. I enjoyed that a lot! Also, I agree with some users that the ending was too abrupt. I sounded almost like you pasted the beginning back at the end, didn't know where to go, then just added an ending note. Those are just a few things I noticed. This really is an excellent piece, however!
