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Fantasy for 2 Pianos and Percussion


LayneBruce

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  • 1 month later...

In general, very well-formatted! And if I'm not mistaken, you are using this for college prescreenings and want it to be as clean as possible?

Please don't take the following advice as a negative value judgement on your piece -- I actually very much enjoyed it and think it is quite good. I do want you and this score to do as well as possible though, so:

For most percussionists I've met (especially snare drummers), it's easier to read notes when they are beamed in groups of 1 quarter note (4 sixteenth notes). So, for example, mm. 30-31 in the snare part (Perc. 2), each quarter note value would be beamed separately. An easy way to do this in Musescore for only the percussion parts is to simply edit the time signatures of each percussion part and not the rest of the parts. You should right click on the time signature, select "time signature properties," and change beaming by clicking each note you want to separate. You should also select "Also apply for shorter note values" to make it faster (so you don't have to separate every subdivision). If you're okay with changing the beaming for all parts, go ahead and apply that procedure to a new time signature in the master palette.

Also, in general, (you may know this already,) you shouldn't write a note across a beat (as in 4/4: sixteenth - quarter - half - dotted eighth). Therefore, the snare part in the preceding example would also read differently. (Search "Mallet Quartet Steve Reich Marimba 1" and you'll see something similar to what I mean -- by the way, I think that that is a beautiful piece, and you should listen to it if you get the chance: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2IwhsE8oDy8.)

Another thing was that your name for the "Perc. 1" part becomes "Xyl." (xylophone) in the middle of the score, which may be confusing to someone reading it. You may want to go and change the name or at least short name of the instrument back to "Perc. 1".

Finally, in your score notes: under "Special Instructions", where you explain the technique of bowing a metal stand, you wrote "this unorthodox techniques". I am also a little confused by the explanation of where you place the bow. It can be made clearer by saying something like "bow the shelf (upon which sheet music is placed) of the music stand as one would bow a vibraphone. This should produce an inharmonic screeching tone." This would also allow the percussionist to decide how best to approach the bowing. Also, you wrote that it may require resin to be placed on the bow -- industrial resins should not be placed on bows, and rosin is always required on any bow. You may want to change that to "This effect may require more rosin than is usual." And lastly, you may want to change "A conductor may or may not be necessary to perform this piece" to "This piece may be performed with or without a conductor."

To recap: You did a great job with this! There are just a few minor things that I thought could have been made clearer for your prescreenings. Good luck!

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