A Gladiator Enters the Ring!

A match ensues between a Gladiator and his opponent!  There are weapons strewn throughout the arena.  It is a fight to the death - if only the odds were in favor of anybody surviving...  This is a piece sparingly scored for full orchestra.  Once again I apologize for the quality of the non-stereo mp3.  Thanks for listening and I would appreciate any comments you might have.  Am I posting this in the right forum?  It's not exactly incidental music.  I wrote the description to this piece after I had already finished it.  Since I don't have a score, I'm also including the midi file (thanks to chopin for fixing issues I've had with including the midi file in my posts) 😃AGladiatorEntersTheRing.mid

It sounds like a piece from a soundtrack. How long did it take you to compose?

Honestly it couldn't have taken more than a week since there's plenty of repetition in it (but I wrote it back in April-ish when the corona virus quarantine started so I don't remember).

Nice work. Maybe it's the general MIDI sounds you used, but this reminded me of the soundtracks from some of those old N64 games made by Rare (think Conker's Bad Fur Day, Banjo Kazooie, etc.) There is actually a gladiator scene in CBFD that this would go very well over. 

A couple of things I want to ask you: I was curious why you decided to give the trombones chords throughout the piece, while the rest of the lower voices (timpani, cello, bass) are hammering out this really cool syncopated figure? It's hard to judge without a live recording, but I don't know that the trombone chords add too much to the overall texture, and I think they would add to the syncopated figure if given some crunchy staccato chords to accentuate the syncopation.

I was also curious why you kept the orchestration the same between the two iterations of the melody. I think if you maybe backed off a little bit the first time you state the melody (starting at m.8 ), then ramp up the second time (m. 24) it would give the piece more direction, variety, and interest. For example, maybe use only the lower octave voices the first time, then bring in the upper octave the second time. Just an idea, feel free to ignore. 

I also liked the contrapuntal lines between the winds and strings in the second half of the melody, I thought it added to the intensity quite well.

Is there no way to export an audio file from the software you used? If I'm not mistaken it sounds like you just used a mic on your computer speaker. If you used a DAW it should have the ability to export audio. I had to download the midi to hear the lower voices clearly.

Thanks for sharing!

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Nice work. Maybe it's the general MIDI sounds you used, but this reminded me of the soundtracks from some of those old N64 games made by Rare (think Conker's Bad Fur Day, Banjo Kazooie, etc.) There is actually a gladiator scene in CBFD that this would go very well over.

I'm from the SNES generation so I've ever only hear of Banjo Kazooie. =/

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A couple of things I want to ask you: I was curious why you decided to give the trombones chords throughout the piece, while the rest of the lower voices (timpani, cello, bass) are hammering out this really cool syncopated figure? It's hard to judge without a live recording, but I don't know that the trombone chords add too much to the overall texture, and I think they would add to the syncopated figure if given some crunchy staccato chords to accentuate the syncopation.

I see what you are saying.  When I was writing it I felt that the arrangement needed a pad or drone of sorts underneath and an open 5th in the trombones fulfilled that requirement.  Maybe it would sound cool if they just hit the bottom note of each timpani hit like you said but I haven't tried it.

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I was also curious why you kept the orchestration the same between the two iterations of the melody. I think if you maybe backed off a little bit the first time you state the melody (starting at m.8 ), then ramp up the second time (m. 24) it would give the piece more direction, variety, and interest. For example, maybe use only the lower octave voices the first time, then bring in the upper octave the second time. Just an idea, feel free to ignore. 

That sounds like a good dose of my own advice back at me!  LoL.  Yeah, I should've changed it up a little the second time but the temptation to just use a repeat was too great and I couldn't resist.  I will definitely keep these possibilities more in mind in the future though.

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I also liked the contrapuntal lines between the winds and strings in the second half of the melody, I thought it added to the intensity quite well.

Thanks.  Another thing I can't resist is canonic imitation at times when I'm not using a heterophonic texture with the melody already.

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Is there no way to export an audio file from the software you used? If I'm not mistaken it sounds like you just used a mic on your computer speaker. If you used a DAW it should have the ability to export audio. I had to download the midi to hear the lower voices clearly.

Thanks for sharing!

I am on an old Windows XP machine and am using the sound recorder to record a wav file and convert it to mp3.  Problem is that my old sound device won't allow stereo recording and the bass isn't very loud.  I didn't record through a mic at all - that's just the way it sounds when I record on my device.  I am using a Yamaha XG midi wavetable synth for my sounds.

Thanks for your comments!  They're greatly appreciated. 😃