Concert Band Anyone?

Yes, I'm finally done, my most recent concert band piece and my best yet.

The beginning is has a light and bouncy feel and it turns into a dark, heavy section. It is heavily influenced by Holst's the planets. It might even sound the same at first with the 5/4 meter in the low winds. But it's not, you'll see after the first statement in trbone and horn. This section soon merges into a quartet with two clarinets and two saxophones, next is a "Rite of Spring" style section with dissonances, polytonality and fequently changing metres. Then is a fanfare style part and then blah, blah, blah the typical ending and a surprisingly nasty sounding chord (on purpose mind you.) to top it off.

Did I need to do that.. well I suppose no you understand what you're in for.

It's for a typlical concert band, since I hate strings. :D

I took three weeks to compose. :)

All comments appreciated, negative and positive.

Enjoy.

Hello Mitchell -

Nice to see someone else composing concert band pieces on YC...

overall decent piece... I would say it needs a little more clarity though. It's hard to know where the piece is going much of the time. It also gets a little repetitive in sections... the dark middle section fits with the repetition, but in the last section there is some repetition that seems out of character for that part of the piece. I am not great at critiquing pieces, but I would suggest removing some of the repeated figures toward the end - I think around a minute or minute and a half from the end. I personally would like a little more build up in the piece... a point in the song where you know it's the emotional high point. Keep at it... Concert band needs more repertoire :thumbsup:

Hmmm. 33 downloads and only one comment. That seems a little odd, oh well.

Around measure 40 really sounds like Mars, the Bringer of War, by Holst

Awesome! I really liked it alot. It's a very wonderful band peice. I did think that the harmonies were a little strange at times. A few too many seconds. But maybe that was just the midi. Keep on composing!

I really enjoyed it for the most part, but I think the 5/4 section sounds just a little too much like Mars, and the ending notes sounded a little too random. I think the best part was the time signature stuff you had going on. You should check out music by Jonathan Newman, who is an absolute master of meter changes. Just go to composer JONATHAN NEWMAN, hit "look & listen" and find "Metropolitan" and "Avenue X" (the latter was written for band). Enjoy!

edittttttttt

There's another for band called "OK, Feel Good" (o.O) that also has lots of meter stuff.

I have don't have much to add. Overall I thought it was pretty good. I also give you props for writing a concert band piece. It only seems like a few of us are doing it and I haven't written one in ages. I think I'll start. Back to your piece. The skill level change really are quite strange. It somehow manages to get really hard, really quickly. This might discourage it from being played since the first half seems much easier than the last half. Really good high school bands may not want to play it for the easy skill level in the first half. Likewise, a lesser level band may not be able to play it for the last half. Also I think there may have been a little too many ideas in there that didn't seem related. Maybe if I had a score and could study it more. The ending feels very abrupt. Aside from those comments it was a good piece. Good work.

Sounds good... even though the midi hurts my ears... There were some places where it just sounded a wee bit strange... or it might just be me

Good job anyway

Yeah, I do agree, large ensembles definately sound horrible in MIDI. I liked the work overall, but the resemblance to Holst's "Mars" was a little too uncanny for my tastes. If it lost some of the 'messy' bits, like the random piccolos at the very end and dissonances at 3:30, which I know you did intentionally, I think it would be even better. I really enjoyed the whole thing, especially the bit at 4:20!

WOO

WOO

WOO!

Was that a little of primordium I heard in that army like march theme ?

Or it was just me...

Well I think its an overall good piece.

couldnt find much missing from it [only the composer can really tell whats missing or not]

One thing I found weird was... it jumps from easy to hard to easy to hard to easy to hard and back to easy.

I can probally play this like most of my friends for the first 1 minute.

But then I would probally have to pratice the [Mars] like theme for a pretty long time.

GOOD PIECE ANYWAY!

Better than my Exar Kun piece :D

[im still working on it. I have to get my transitions to lfow together more evenly and nicely