Armed Forces Medley (Barbershop)

This was a project to include the Coast Guard hymn into a pre-existing armed forces medley. A few obstacle that arose most involved the key changes. There were none in the original arrangement, there was no Coast Guard hymn, and there was not an acceptable transition in the end for "America the Beautiful". So I had to basically re-write the entire piece. The completed version I present here.

It honors (in this order): The Marines, The Navy, The Army, The Coast Guard, The Air Force, and The United States of America.

Note- I did not arrange America the Beautiful, and it is only included here to broaden the effect of the entire work. This arrangement was done by the current President of the Sunshine District, Sean Milligan. There is also a learning track available of him singing all four parts. Knowing that, my recording is considerably more sloppy.

Recording available at www.myspace.com/nightingaleincorporated

Armed Forces Medley.MUS

Armed Forces Medley.pdf

Just a quick comment to say...Very well done, good harmony, although I'd probably get a little more wild. It was great all the songs this arrangment delved into...Anyway sounds great...Now all you need is a real quartet to sing it eh?

Actually, I have a whole chorus of guys to sing it, but I could probably convince my own quartet to give a performance of this arrangement. That's the good thing about me writing for barbershop, I'm almost gauranteed a performance from somebody.

By the way, I'm considering writing a Barbershop Opera. Any thoughts on that?

Barbershop opera? Well it sounds kinda cool anyway, I'm not quite sure how one would combine the two, but i suppose it would be somewhat like a musical with real cool harmonys

Do you know of any barbershop operas?

America The beautiful is not an armed forces song.

Anyways, They are a bit slow don't you think? Why Clarinets?...especially in Bass Clef. There is some parts, very small parts though hardly noticable that sound wierd.

:D

I should explain, America the Beautiful was originally included to end the "Armed Forces Medley" and is typically included in most barbershop arrangements. It's more of a "Patriotic Medley" that highlights the armed forces.

The voicing is not for clarinets, but for men's vocal ensemble. Unfortunately, finale isn't great on voices, and it's easier for me to hear precision with clarinets. So, therefore, you needn't be concerned with the clarinet portion of the song.

I should explain, America the Beautiful was originally included to end the "Armed Forces Medley" and is typically included in most barbershop arrangements. It's more of a "Patriotic Medley" that highlights the armed forces.

The voicing is not for clarinets, but for men's vocal ensemble. Unfortunately, finale isn't great on voices, and it's easier for me to hear precision with clarinets. So, therefore, you needn't be concerned with the clarinet portion of the song.

Ok. can't you change the sound in the Window tab then change instrument?:D

I could, but I don't neccessarily prefer the voice sound. You can change the sound to anything you wish.

Cool arrangement! But, you certainly are brave to be dissin’ the Army like that! You do a whole verse of all of the other Armed Forces (even the Coast Guard!), but only the chorus of the Army song!

What happened to:

“O-ver | hill, o-ver | dale, we will | hit the coun-try | trail,

as those | cais-sons go | roll-ing a- | long.

Coun-ter- | march, right a- | bout, hear those | wag-on sol-diers | shout,

as those | cais-sons go | roll-ing a- | long.”?

Seriously, when an Armed Forces Medley is publically performed, the usual schtick is to invite those in the audience who served in the Armed Forces to stand and be recognized as the heroes they are while their service’s anthem is being played and/or sung. By shortchanging the Army anthem so much, you greatly shorten the time that they would have to stand and be recognized compared to those of the other four services.

I really do think that you should put the verse back in.

The voicing is not for clarinets, but for men's vocal ensemble. Unfortunately, finale isn't great on voices, and it's easier for me to hear precision with clarinets. So, therefore, you needn't be concerned with the clarinet portion of the song.

Myriad Harmony Assistant + Virtual Singer doesn’t have that problem. :)

I wish this Forum would let me attach an Ogg Vorbis or even .MP3 file so that I could show you a sample of a Full Mix and a Learning Track (stereo separated, part predominant) of your arrangement made with this software.

If you want the .MYRiad source file, let me know. I have not yet tuned it to Barbershop-style Adaptive Just Intonation, but do have all of the notes and lyrics entered, and assigned to Virtual Singer voices that are optimized for Barbershop. The whole .MYR file is only 107kB, and most of that is for the embedded custom voices which do have sampled breath (“H” phoneme and aspiration between notes) sounds, but the rest of the voices are done with formant synthesis.

And yet it’s full sheet music notation info, not just MIDI data. The files can be played with free software including Web browser plugins (even embed the sheet music in playable form right onto a Web page!).

You can password-protect .MYR files and decide what people can and cannot do without the password (e.g. can load and play, but cannot alter, print, save, export in any way [sound or image], copy/paste, etc.), and also have it force the display of a splash screen which has the title of the song as well as your arranger credits, and clickable links to your E-Mail address and/or Website so that no one can claim that they didn’t know how to contact you for permission.

Great Work!

Michael

The Armed Forces Medley is well done, but I must ask that you correct the lyrics to the Air Force Song. The correct words are "climbing high, into the sun", not "flying high, into the sun". You can verify this here

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_U.S._Air_Force_(song). I know--the original was also wrong--and I corrected it on my copy.

Cheers

The pdf comes up as gibberish.

how do you add those accidentals with parentheses? I have always wondered that.

how do you add those accidentals with parentheses? I have always wondered that.

This is fantastic! I'd caution you to correct the "semper paratus" on page 4, but that is all. This is great barbershop writing...not an easy skill, I might add. My compliments!

There's no barbershop opera yet - but there's a barbershop musical, called "Forever Plaid" - I'm sure you've heard of it.