Battle- short music piece for wind orchestra

Hi.

This is my only piece for groups that are bigger than string quintet, and I think it's almost done.

Please give me your feedback so I'd be able to improve the piece and fix problems in it.

Please don't steal anything from the piece, I worked very hard on this one.

Also, if something sounds familiar... I probably didn't mean it.

Except for the pattern in the Bass Clarinet at the beginning.

Thanks in advance :)

This is well orchestrated! I am impressed! 

Creating a battle theme using wind instruments is very difficult. I think the piece sounded well but when doing a battle theme, the piece deserves to have less pauses in between and needs faster tempos (depending on what type of emotion you're going for in the battle itself.) 

I think the percussion and brass were done well as it brought out the intense feeling you get during a battle. During a few parts where the wind instruments reintroduce themselves kinda took away that battle feeling and gave it more of an overworld map feeling. That's why I say it's hard doing a battle theme with winds. Although it can be done, it just needs to be done a certain specific way so others can still relate it to a battle theme.

Overall, I highly enjoyed it man. Post more!

On 11/19/2017 at 10:24 PM, Sepharite said:

This is well orchestrated! I am impressed! 

 

Wow, I only saw it now.

Thank you XD

On 11/19/2017 at 11:00 PM, LostSamurai said:

Creating a battle theme using wind instruments is very difficult. I think the piece sounded well but when doing a battle theme, the piece deserves to have less pauses in between and needs faster tempos (depending on what type of emotion you're going for in the battle itself.) 

I think the percussion and brass were done well as it brought out the intense feeling you get during a battle. During a few parts where the wind instruments reintroduce themselves kinda took away that battle feeling and gave it more of an overworld map feeling. That's why I say it's hard doing a battle theme with winds. Although it can be done, it just needs to be done a certain specific way so others can still relate it to a battle theme.

Overall, I highly enjoyed it man. Post more!

 

I just saw your feedback, sorry for the huge delay.

That's the piece I consider to be my best one and I didn't even follow it under my own post XD idk why.

I know that the battle feeling stops at some point, I tried to give the listener's ears some rest time before the great ending,

and give the players that didn't do that much until that point chance to express themselves.

My idea was that the story follows someone that got chased by an enemy solider out of the battlefield and fell off his horse.

Then it takes him a while to stand up again, and charge back into the middle of the battle ready to hit the closest enemy... and the piece ends just a second before that.

Anyway, thanks for listening :)

why no string section?

Looking at the first 6 bars:

You could do well with some variety in your stabs, runs and bass. Trade them off the instruments and double at unison or octaves for emphasis.

Timpani is unplayable. Put it up an octave - you'll get more oomph out of it.

Select key spots for the cymbals. Now they are too many.

Woods/brass: only one of each? Why not voice chords. It will make for a fuller sound.

11 minutes ago, bryla said:

why no string section?

Looking at the first 6 bars:

You could do well with some variety in your stabs, runs and bass. Trade them off the instruments and double at unison or octaves for emphasis.

Timpani is unplayable. Put it up an octave - you'll get more oomph out of it.

Select key spots for the cymbals. Now they are too many.

Woods/brass: only one of each? Why not voice chords. It will make for a fuller sound.

 

Are all the hints about the first six bars?

About the string section- it would demand a bigger orchestra,

and I want this piece to be as playable as possible,

here it's super rare to have your piece performed by a full scale orchestra,

especially for someone my age.

yes I was only listening and looking at the first 6 bars.

I don't know about your local orchestras but it would seem extremely rare to see an ensemble of this kind instead of - let's say - a symphony orchestra with a double winds line-up.

Wind bands are extremely widespread and are often happy to play new compositions, even if just once at a rehearsal. I've played student compositions myself while in my uni wind band, and I've had a composition played by them. However, this isn't quite a wind band piece - for example, the standard wind band orchestration includes 2 flute parts, 3 clarinet parts, 2 alto sax parts, 3 trumpet parts, and so on. It's flexible, but having 1 of each part makes it seem like it's for a very specific ensemble.

Yes, the timpani part is unplayable as is, because most of the time only 1 timpani is able to go down to that range of E and below, and you've written 3 notes in that range. Putting it up an octave would help, but it's also rare to get the top timp going up to a C.

I thought windband too but the contrabass threw me off. 

It is for a specific band.

This specific band also has a Contrabass player, that I know personally.

Here's a link to their latest concert:

Does it look better now?

Yep that's completely fine! It's actually surprisingly unusual to play two timpani at once. There's nothing difficult about it, and I certainly wish more composers did it, but I'm just letting you know. I think the reason might be that the timpani generally supports the bass, and having notes close together in the bass can occasionally get muddy - but there's no intrinsic problem with that. Mostly, timps might get written in octaves or 5ths. As long as you're aware of what you're doing though there's no problem with writing them in 3rds or less.

The other thing I notice about the part (and it's in other parts too) is your tendency to write quavers in sextuplets, for example starting in bar 108. This is technically correct but can be a little misleading. When I read the part in my mind, my instinct is to play them in the space of a crotchet instead of a minim - and then the last quaver triplet, oddly enough, gets played as a crotchet triplet because I subconsciously realise I have two beats left! I think my brain sees the '6' and automatically assumes that they are semiquavers, because 95% of the time I only see sextuplets with semiquavers. Writing these as separate triplets would be better - even in a full bar of triplets, the safest way of writing them is generally as four separate triplet groups. The same goes for crotchets - it's more common to write a crotchet sextuplet as two separate crotchet triplets, although it's not quite as confusing as the quavers.

I want the timpani to sound like a war drum, deep and loud.

That's why it was that low at the beginning.

I'm not sure how it would sound in fifths or octaves, but I don't want it to sound clear.

About the tuplets... will fix right away.

Thank you!

I can't believe it...

I just finished turning every single sextuplet into triplet,

and then my computer collapsed and now Sibelius refuses to open the file,

it tells me to open a backup file yet it didn't make any backups....

Oh wait nvm XD

I still lost some work, yet it's not that bad,

I'll reupload the pdf once I finish.

There you go.

(I might have left a few sextuplet accidentally, the one in the flute at the beginning is on purpose)

Regarding timpani: is there a reason only to stick to three notes?

You might want to give the timpani a key signature so it isn't dissonant to the rest. 

As with my comments on voicing and player numbers they still stand. 

I would have a lot of comments regarding part layout, but my first note is: keep this one on two pages. Make it fit. 

Will fix soon.

No there's no reason for the three pitches of the timpani,

I just want a timpani sound and at least three different pitches.

Why do you think I should add more?

I didn't really get your voicing and player numbers comments...

@bryla

There.

Impressive! It works really well with the passages that have sparse and relatively soft instrumentation. You have great dynamics and detail, so that it is interesting and unpredictable, but still works as background.

@bryla

Tried to let more instruments play to give a fuller sound.

3 hours ago, Rabbival507 said:

@bryla

Tried to let more instruments play to give a fuller sound.

 

PDF

• Tried to Use More Instruments

I don't see a difference on the first page?

16 minutes ago, bryla said:

I don't see a difference on the first page?

 

It doesn't start with the whole orchestra because I want to keep some power to the finale.

I'm not adding strings because it's written for the wind band listed above.