Collection of Christmas Music for Brass Sextet

Hi, guys. Been a while since I've posted here, but I see there seem to be a lot more people around here these days, which is awesome.

I've gotten together a group of friends and we're going to gig around locally during December playing Christmas music. Problem is, we didn't have any. So instead of buying music with money we don't have, I decided I would spend now through the end of November arranging a collection of tradtitional Christmas music. I've been at it for almost a week now and I have five songs. I'll list them in the order I arranged them.

Sleigh Ride

This, I haven't heard played since last year and got it down all by memory.

Winter Wonderland

Same, Haven't heard it in a long time, and just jotted it.

Greensleeves

This, I wrote for low brass and horn, it's a slow, pretty piece which incorporates an interesting counter-melody. I think it's interesting anyways.

White Christmas

My favorite Chirstmas song of all time is the Drifters singing "White Christmas." Took that same arrangement and instrumentalized it for chamber brass. This was mostly transcription.

Grandma Got Run Over by a Reindeer

At the request of a younger sibling... eh, this was almost mostly transcription and intrumentation.

The instrumentation is:

2 Trumpets

1 Horn in F

1Trombone

1Bass Trombone

1Tuba

Percussion as needed

The thing I'm getting hung up on the most is just plain intrumentation on songs I have to transcribe. I plan on transcribing more since I want us to play popular music, but cramming it down into this is rather difficult.

Well, anyways, this keeps me in practice. It's been a while since I've actually written anything at all. Any and all comments and suggestions are welcome, thanks guys.

What a bunch of humbugs!

The Twelve Days of Christmas

I guess there should be a section here for arrangements...

Altho it's somewhat difficult to comment on these arrangements without any score, there are a few things I noticed:

- All the parts fit, and it sounds like it would be easy to perform the arrangements - nothing really sounds out of range on your MIDI example

- Perhaps you could switch your voices round a bit more (e.g. don't have the tuba always playing the bassline.. sometimes the melody... don't always have the trumpet playing the melody the whole way through)... with these kind of songs, the audience knows how they go - they are standards - so to make it interesting for the audience perhaps there could be more variation in the timbre and instrumentation

- Perhaps you could add another melody line to act in counterpoint in sections, this again would give something to grasp onto, instead of just the trumpet playing the melody and everything else a ryhthym section...

- I liked your rythms and rifs - cool stuff :)

M.

Scores? I can do scores. However, you'll need the lastest version of Notepad or Finale 2007 to read them since I did these in Finale 2007.

I guess you're right about the voicings. I was definately trying to go for different vocing styles, but I was doing it in a per-song basis as opposed to within a song. I don't really have time to come up with some really innovative ways of reinventing the Christmas-wheel. I need to arrange three Christmas Songs a week until the end of November so I'll have a decent repretoire. Some of them are transcriptions and some of them original arrangements. I'll tell ya, though, transcribing a single instrument is one thing, but discerning chords is TOUGH. I'll need to do it a few more times for the popular classics like "Jingle Bell Rock," and "Holly Jolly Christmas."

Grandma Got Run Over by a Reindeer.MUS

Greensleeves.MUS

Sleigh Ride.MUS

Twelve Days of Christmas.MUS

White Christmas.MUS

'Nother one.

Winter Wonderland.MUS

any possibility of you doing an improvisory part??

Wouldn't be too hard - the pieces are simple - just come up with some chord charts and maybe mix things up that way??

Some people don't like to improvise.. but with those christmas songs it should be really easy

and i have finale 2003 so hopefully i can read it - i alwyas concert my scores to .pdf so they are accessible to everyone.

Yeah, but not many people like soloing without a rhythm section. I know I don't. Maybe I could get some simple brush and ride action going.

umm, Jester.. now, I just downloaded your file and... it says incompatible version.. cannot open, srry bud, love to listen to it but can't.is there any way u can fix that? thx

Scores? I can do scores. However, you'll need the lastest version of Notepad or Finale 2007 to read them since I did these in Finale 2007.

Uhm, Greensleeves isn't correct IMHO

There's an accidental sharp in the theme, near the "end"

I think I know what you mean. I've heard it played that way, 9/10 times I hear played the way I wrote it.

Merry Halloween!

Some short work with bells.

Carol of the Bells

The First Noel

my only critique is that you have parrallel 8ves all over the place, specially between the bass and the upper voices. To me in this style, is best to avoid it in order to achieve a better writing. I may be wrong and you put them on purpose, so correct me if this the case.

You have a good attitude in your pieces , which I think may lead u to positive results in the future.

greetings.

Yes, that's done on purpose. I feel like the paralell octaves used in certain areas emphasize the genre. I don't think I did this nearly as much on the other pieces, though...

More to come...

Yay, I got GPO!

Hark the Herald

It seems that GPO doesn't come with sleigh bells... or maybe I'm missing them... any ideas?

any midi? my connection does not bear long downloads. as a suggestion you could try Soundclick for storing your files, they offer 3 ways of accessing the pieces: downloading, low-fi stream and high-fi stream, and it is for free!

Sorry, I'll convert that to mp3.... GPO saves everythnig to wav... I'll get the others converted too... I just can't find any sleigh bells... I'm at a loss...

It's been slow, but I'm still kickin'

Jingle Bell Rock

It's been slow, but I'm still kickin'

Jingle Bell Rock

Nice Arrangement. Wouldn't mind snagging this for a Xmas web page (that is... if I did web pages~) :cool: