Del Arco Iris

"This piece started out as my interpretation of the color Teal, however that was no where near the final product. January 16th, 2011 my aunt Virginia Whittaker passed away in a car accident. She was came from a family of three other sisters and 5 brothers, one of which include my father, the one she was closest too. Her death took a horrible toll on me, because I never got to be close to her and everyday I feel like I missed out on a wonderful person. It wasn't intentional at all, i just wasn't as close to her as my other aunts. anyway, one of her last conversations with my father she explained her fascination with rainbows and how she loved the story of God's promise to Noah. This piece really shows my emotions throughout the past few months, and it is very colorful, so this is why I dedicate this piece to her. Thank you so much!"FINALLY FINISHED. 100%

Pretty piece of music! I like. A couple things, in a very particular order:

At measures 29 and 34, your harmonies are very ambiguous- There's a G in the bass, but it sounds more like Bb major- was that intentional?

Use the maj7 or 9 more in the mid-range instruments (saxes, horns, etc.), because what you have with the piccolo and flute and high clarinets doesn't do the full chordal structure justice.

From a chordal standpoint, 46-7 is quite messy- it's not clear what you are trying to do. I think it's G minor, but I'm not sure. It makes me uneasy, that's all.

At the end, add tuba on the root with the woodwinds. It'd add some finality to the phrase.

For the conductor, keep the baritone as just bass clef. You can have a treble part for the player if they need it, but the conductor is perfectly fine with just the bass clef.

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Very nice- especially the last few bars- oboe!

Thanks for your comments!

This piece makes uses of polychords to get a very bittersweet sound which was what I was aiming for. The chord you are speaking of in bar 29 and 34 is a Gminor BbMajor polychord with the G tonality in the low brass/woodwinds and the Bb tonality in the saxes and other tender instruments. I hope that makes more sense. As far as 46 in 47 I was going for more rhythmic direction more than harmonic so I really wasn't focusing on the chordal structure in those two measures, however that spot is definitely worth reanalyzing/revising! I see where you're coming from about the Baritone T.C i just like to have it as a resource to avoid confusion in player/conductor communication.

The ending is my favorite part too!

Thanks for your comments and for listening! (:

One more thing I noticed (I listened to it again, sue me, I liked it) was that sometimes you have the tubas in 3rds. that's pretty edgy- no matter how good it sounds in MIDI, unless both notes are well in the staff, it sounds muddy in practice. Just something to be careful of.

One more thing I noticed (I listened to it again, sue me, I liked it) was that sometimes you have the tubas in 3rds. that's pretty edgy- no matter how good it sounds in MIDI, unless both notes are well in the staff, it sounds muddy in practice. Just something to be careful of.

The tuba is NEVER on the third.

The only exception is at 65 where both notes are high enough in the staff to produce a warmer sound.

With all these extendeds and and polychords analyzing can be difficult and sometimes misleading, so i applaud you for being so thorough! thanks so much! (:

Oh god. my apologies. I realized it was measure 61 you were speaking of! Yes, that is something that should be revised i just didn't want to write anything that was too much of a jump from the low C. Thanks so much for pointing that out and please accept my apology. ouchhh.

Oh god. my apologies. I realized it was measure 61 you were speaking of! Yes, that is something that should be revised i just didn't want to write anything that was too much of a jump from the low C. Thanks so much for pointing that out and please accept my apology. ouchhh.

Hey, Mike.

I like a lot of the colors you’re getting in this piece (pardon the pun). There are a few issues that are bothering me a bit. I’ll do it stream-of-consciousness style.

-a lot of instances where hot sonorities choppily jump to sudden resolutions/consonances. Keep in mind that in this type of music, major 7th chords are consonant sonorities and don’t have any tension built into them. Prime example of this is 2:12. You have the clarinets I believe hitting a hot dissonance that I felt like wanted a LOT more attention than you gave it, and it resolved without stepwise motion (???) into a major 7th in the middle of the phrase. Like an anticlimax. You do this exact example more than once, too.

-I see a good number of range concerns. We talked about this being able to be played by 7th/8th grade bands? Well, I see high Es in the clarinet and high Cs in the trumpet. In a chorale that is VERY difficult to do, disproportionately so from the difficulty of the rest of the tune. So what you have is either a tune that is very easy for high school bands or a decent tune for jr high kids but with major range concerns. That may cause an issue with getting the piece performed.

-The overall pacing and direction of the tune works for me. The issues are internal transitions. They aren’t smooth.

Thanks for sharing! I’ll keep in touch about performance opportunity as you refine this work.

Dev reviews everyone's music but mine. . . I'm jealous.

FINE DAMMIT

Okay, this opening section is very contemplative but I feel you're relying far too much on chord color and ambiguous harmony to sustain interest - for me, swelling whole notes for like 2 minutes (with the occasional thin line in the oboe) gets very stagnant, and I feel there are a myriad of ways to keep this mood but still have something more happening to keep the listener interested. I've written pieces much like this section before, that rely on tone color or gradual shifts in harmony/etc rather than a melody or heavy rhythm, and there are definite ways to keep the listener guessing. I see you use essentially woodwinds only, maybe utilize ONE trumpet to highlight an inner part? Repeat a gesture with a pianissimo low tuba note to give it a ghost of a bass note? Maybe rolling on a marimba or bow a vibraphone with the motor on?

the section on p.8 (m.44) is more to what I'm talking about - here, tremolos, quick ascending woodwind lines, brass ideas feeling out-of-meter with each other all work to keep the listener engaged. I would prefer it if this type of idea, with more motion, were a larger part of your piece.

In general, the work feels very section-y; the double barlines are very audible, if you understand my meaning.

The ending (mm. 84-5) feels very out of place to me, it sounded like V-I even though it wasn't exactly that, and after a piece full of nonfunctional and nontraditional progressions hearing V-I is almost funny.

I think I can appreciate the aesthetic you're driving towards with this work, and I also feel I can't say for sure which sections work and which don't without a real recording. So take my review with a grain of salt.

Thanks for your review Dev I sent you a PM.