Nightmarchers

Programmatic Notes: "Nightmarchers" is a dramatic and powerful programmatic work descriptive of the Hawaiian ghost tale of the same name. Written in three sections, the piece opens with the marchers emerging from their burial sites just as the sun sets to begin their march. Suddenly, a joyous section with much drumming and chanting represents the ceremony that the marchers conduct in order to honor the chief leader amongst them. Finally, as the sun begins to rise in the distance, the marchers conclude their march with as much intensity and celebration as it started.This is a grade 1.5 work, so there isn't really much complexity going on throughout the piece. Please post constructive reviews/criticisms. Thank you and have a great day.Peace,C.L. Winston

Nightmarchers

Speaking as an educator, this piece is fantastic, albeit a bit hard for a grade 1, perhaps on the higher end of a 2. There's a story, there's background, it exercises cultural diversity, all of which is brimming with possibilities for supplemental activities. On top of that, it's a very nice piece of music. :santa:

There's a lot of suspensions and other NCTs (not to mention varied instrumentation) that make this a hard 2, IMO. Also the fact of it being in minor (as opposed to modal) and the syncopation. This is assuming that we're talking about the same grading system where the high school literature goes up to about a 5.

I like your attention to detail. The percussion parts in particular. The score is very clean, I see no collisions. EDIT: Oh, found one. Bottom left first page, ff.

You may want to double check the convention for slurs of accented notes. Should the slur be going over accents? It seems kind of odd to me, I recall slurs going between accent markings and their notes (but outside of staccato and legato markings).

Also, you may want to be a bit more specific with your marking for "Joyous voices." You mentioned a chant in the program notes, but I don't see a notated part to be chanted.

Presumably, you wrote this for disemination and/or publication. Little tip: Finale scores look like Finale scores because of the default fonts. Be particularly more creative with your fonts and formatting on the title/subtitle and composer text boxes.

Also, if you care about having a good audio rendering, the playback of the instruments can be set to change to "clapping."

Let me know if you're interested. It's not terribly important, but it's nice.

Thanks for sharing!

good stuff , i like it

Pretty good job.

Speaking as an educator, this piece is fantastic, albeit a bit hard for a grade 1, perhaps on the higher end of a 2. There's a story, there's background, it exercises cultural diversity, all of which is brimming with possibilities for supplemental activities. On top of that, it's a very nice piece of music. :santa:

There's a lot of suspensions and other NCTs (not to mention varied instrumentation) that make this a hard 2, IMO. Also the fact of it being in minor (as opposed to modal) and the syncopation. This is assuming that we're talking about the same grading system where the high school literature goes up to about a 5.

I like your attention to detail. The percussion parts in particular. The score is very clean, I see no collisions. EDIT: Oh, found one. Bottom left first page, ff.

You may want to double check the convention for slurs of accented notes. Should the slur be going over accents? It seems kind of odd to me, I recall slurs going between accent markings and their notes (but outside of staccato and legato markings).

Also, you may want to be a bit more specific with your marking for "Joyous voices." You mentioned a chant in the program notes, but I don't see a notated part to be chanted.

Presumably, you wrote this for disemination and/or publication. Little tip: Finale scores look like Finale scores because of the default fonts. Be particularly more creative with your fonts and formatting on the title/subtitle and composer text boxes.

Also, if you care about having a good audio rendering, the playback of the instruments can be set to change to "clapping."

Let me know if you're interested. It's not terribly important, but it's nice.

Thanks for sharing!

Peter,

Thank you for your very constructive criticism. It means so much coming from an educator. I was worried that it may be a little high in certain parts so I'll try to see if I can fix those things. I'll look at that collision to mentioned as well; more often than not, I'll miss something while editing. Referring to the "joyous voices", the brass section will add those themselves as directed by the conductor. I didn't notate them because I don't want to see those to any set rhythm. Please tell me how to change those "claps" to actual claps. I've been trying to do it in Finale, but I'm just not able to do so. Your help would be greatly appreciated and thank you again for your review.

Peace,

C.L. Winston

Except for a few Fs in the trumpets which definitely would not be okay for a grade 1 but are okay for a grade 2, the ranges all look good.

I hear you on the editting. Most times I'll feel like I've looked at everything twenty times, yet I'll still find one more collision on the printout. Really, I only found that one on yours, bravo. I don't know how you did it.

Re: the "joyous voices," if you really, really want it to be non-notated, you might want to consider making the measures empty as opposed to filled with rests, if you know what I'm talking about. So the players know they are doing something, just something unspecified. Definitely sounds interesting, please upload a recording if you ever have one done!

To fix the claps, you can set a technique dynamic (or really any dynamic category) to change the patch of the instrument. Unfortunately, Finale doesn't consider percussion to be a patch for some reason, so we have to go at it through the back door. It's easy for a full concert band. First, find out what channel your percussion is on, preferrably the one with the least amount of play if you've got multiple ones. Create a new dynamic named "clap", go to the "playback" dropdown menu and select "channel." Set the effect value to the number of your percussion channel. Voila, you have now created a marking which turns the instrument into percussion. Find where the clap sound is on the staff and you're set.

Of course, that means 1) you have to mark in the parts "Play" which makes sense, and 2) to undo the channel change, add to the "Play" effect a channel value of "0" which returns it to original.

Now you'll notice that your "tacet second time" note in that area will sound a lovely random sound. The easiest way to take care of that, IMO, is simply to create an identical Finale document without repeats that spells it out and use that one for your rendering. I say this because I've always had to deal with a glitch when dealing with tacet markings having to do with my mix and the repeat bar. In case you want to try it (it's great if it works!), here's how. Create a dynamic marking or duplicate one of those already there, set the key velocity value to 0, check the 'Play on pass' box and fill in 2, i.e. execute a 0 velocity on the second time only at that point. Note: you'll have to hide it, and you'll have to immediately undo it with another hidden marking dynamic that brings the volume back up so the claps are there the second time.

Whew. Hope that helped a little.

Kindest regards.

-Peter

Peter,

When I set the dynamic for the percussion channel, it still doesn't recognize the claps. I placed the sound in the percussion map just to be safe, but the playback doesn't seem to recognize this. Perhaps I am doing something wrong. It plays back percussion, just not the claps. Is there something I'm doing wrong?

I see the problem. The 'clap' sound on a treble clef is D#2 which is completely stupid-looking. I guess the shortcut doesn't work for the clapping sound, sorry. I'd imagine you should be able to import a clap patch which would make that so much easier, but I don't know much about that. You might want to consider, again, creating an auxilliary file that is solely for the purpose of the audio rendering, in which case it doesn't matter what it looks like.

Thanks again for sharing, man. Is there a performance of this in the future?

Peter,

I think I will do that suggestion about the auxiliary file. A performance in the future? Not really. I didn't really compose this for any specific band in mind, but it would be awesome to have this performed. I actually plan on having it published, but I guess we'll see how that goes. Thanks for listening to my music. There is more to come.

Peace,

C.L. Winston :D

I love this piece! It was very catchy and I liked everything going on it. Nothing really to criticize, this is some good work!

Ben

I love this piece! It was very catchy and I liked everything going on it. Nothing really to criticize, this is some good work!

Ben

Ben, your words are like music to my ear. :lol: I'm really glad you like the piece. Hopefully, the publishers will feel the same way.

Peace,

C.L. Winston

This is not a 1.5 where I live this would be a 2.5 mabey a 3 in MD....Hmm mabey reveser some of the Ideas it gets a little old to listen to after a while

Maby reverse and make 2 harmony within the French horn..That would make more sence..Good luck geting it published