"Turmoil" for Brass Quintet | Kyle Hilton (UncleRed99)

Turmoil.pdf

A short brass quintet piece I wrote, originally just to serve as a sound pack demonstration for Vienna Brass sound library in Muse, that ended up becoming a full score. Thought this sounded pretty cool 🙂

Hey @UncleRed99!

Nice Brass Quintet!  Definitely an ensemble I should write something for in the future considering I played Trumpet and French Horn.  I think my favorite measures in this piece are 16 and 44 because in those measures you abandon the chordal approach to the music where it sounds like the music is just an elaborate but slow (I mean a slow harmonic rhythm) chord progression.  Overall measures 12 - 16 and 40 - 44 are the most awesome to me, with a unique approach to melody, rhythm and scoring (I especially like how you create a natural delay effect where the 2nd Trumpet imitates the 1st at a delay of a 16th note.

Where there's room for improvement is something I already touched on above:  the harmonic rhythm seems like it's usually one or two chords per measure.  You don't necessarily need more chords or anything, just varying the harmonic rhythm to different note values could be enough.  And you could also have built some kind of accompanimental ostinato to kind of set down a cool groove underneath the melody to create a banger.  I also feel like there isn't really a long leading song-like melody that really sticks in my head that I remember easily after listening to this.  I've listened to this piece a few times while writing this review and somehow I still feel this way about it.  Perhaps there are what you might consider melodies but they're just not unified enough or self-similar enough to really stick in my head?  Or maybe I just have fringe expectations about this?  Or perhaps they're interspersed too much with passages that are dominated by too many long notes and chords that don't seem to create a melodic impression for the listener?  That's my impression.  Thanks for sharing!

On 8/29/2025 at 11:38 PM, PeterthePapercomPoser said:

Hey @UncleRed99!

Nice Brass Quintet!  Definitely an ensemble I should write something for in the future considering I played Trumpet and French Horn.  I think my favorite measures in this piece are 16 and 44 because in those measures you abandon the chordal approach to the music where it sounds like the music is just an elaborate but slow (I mean a slow harmonic rhythm) chord progression.  Overall measures 12 - 16 and 40 - 44 are the most awesome to me, with a unique approach to melody, rhythm and scoring (I especially like how you create a natural delay effect where the 2nd Trumpet imitates the 1st at a delay of a 16th note.

Where there's room for improvement is something I already touched on above:  the harmonic rhythm seems like it's usually one or two chords per measure.  You don't necessarily need more chords or anything, just varying the harmonic rhythm to different note values could be enough.  And you could also have built some kind of accompanimental ostinato to kind of set down a cool groove underneath the melody to create a banger.  I also feel like there isn't really a long leading song-like melody that really sticks in my head that I remember easily after listening to this.  I've listened to this piece a few times while writing this review and somehow I still feel this way about it.  Perhaps there are what you might consider melodies but they're just not unified enough or self-similar enough to really stick in my head?  Or maybe I just have fringe expectations about this?  Or perhaps they're interspersed too much with passages that are dominated by too many long notes and chords that don't seem to create a melodic impression for the listener?  That's my impression.  Thanks for sharing!

 

I appreciate the insight, Peter! I'll keep this in mind moving forward 🙂

It is a pretty nice soundfont, eh? Well done, with some nice dynamics peaks and valleys that sound very justified.

I think I'm with @PeterthePapercomPoser on a lot of my feelings; it sounds like there's a little bit of inconsistent energy throughout the work. You set up, for instance, a really compelling idea starting at m. 12, and it grows from there, but over time it feels like the energy dissipates even though my brain wants it to go further. I remember feeling like the slow stuff after the faster notes was in some sort of alla breve and it was really cool, but it stayed there, and it felt like it died out a bit. I think letting one or two of your instruments have some contrapuntal rhythmic drive would go a long way, even if it's just some generic "have more notes here" kinda writing. m. 32–33 is a prime example of this for me; what a cool little entrance figure—it'd be awesome if that rhythmic profile continued! But it just kind of stops, in my opinion. 

Like this passage from Mendelssohn's A Midsummer Night's Dream "Overture" is just a bunch of half notes with one note being repeated a bunch under it and it does the job (timestamped) : https://youtu.be/qU0d0zuNn7k?t=92 

Basically, give yourself the time to build! It ain't an ice sculpture 🙂

Nitpicks:
1. m. 17, better to have the dotted quarter as a quarter tied to an eighth.
2. m. 14 and all bars like it in T2, you might consider having things beamed by the beat for easier reading.
3. The triplet figure in mm. 3 and 7 feel a little inconclusive ending on different notes for some reason. Not sure why, that's pretty common. Maybe something to do with the support in the rest of the ensemble.

Nice little work!