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Showing results for tags 'concert band'.
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questions How do you get commissions as a composer?
NicholasG posted a topic in Advice and Techniques
Hello! I am a 15 year old composer who is looking for work soon. I have been writing since the seventh grade and now I am in 10th. I have been commissioned by my own director to make a piece for our band which I have almost successfully finished, it will be preformed for our spring concert. I start my music major next year and I'm trying to find how to actually make money off of the thing I love so much. If I could please be instructed on how to get commissions and things I need to setup (portfolio, website, etc..) I am willing to invest money into it. Thank you! -
Earlier a month or two ago I posted another version of this piece which was fairly unfinished and not ready to be played. Thanks to the communities feedback I believe I have a near finished work. I am ready to publish my first work at just 15 years old! This piece once finished will be preformed by my school and I will be conducting it
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Hello! I am writing for my high school symphonic band and I am in dire need of feedback because I havent matured enough as a musician. Please do give all that you can!
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I have been unhappy with my production as of late, so I decided to work on a piece for much longer than I normally do, and these is the unfinished results of my time. "A drop of color - For Wind Band (Rough Draft, Unfinshed)". Critique and review are very welcome. Please keep in mind that this is a very rough draft, and none of the visual weirdness or engraving issues will be present in the final score. https://youtu.be/4KUo4SZu5UA -
Finished this much faster than I thought I would, so I guess i'll post it here. PROGRAM NOTES Mov I, A Surreal Landscape. This introduction movement is slow, alluring, and representative of the night before christmas. Snow outside, warm clothes and an unsettling nervousness about the day to come. Mov II, Horizons. This movement begins the downward spiral. Not all life is as it seems. You expect gifts under your tree, but all that is there is a rock, and a looming horned shadow making its way across the horizon. Mov III, Arrival. The middle movement of the piece begins the flight of Certa. Certa, known in most cultures as Krampus, is on his way to deliver children to their untimely ends, for not cleaning their rooms and eating more hot pockets than the serving size suggests. Mov IV, Naught To Give. The final movement is the closest you will come to Certa. He walks up to your door and surveys the landscape. He turns around and starts to walk away. I guess you have until next year.
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I’m new to the forum and I thought I would post one of my pieces. I write music for Concert band, Brass band, and Fanfare. These pieces are sent to a publisher for publication. Being a self-taught hm… hobby composer, I hope you will comment on this piece. This band-music may not be to everybody’s liking, but any comment, suggestions, advice etc will be a huge help for me trying to grow as a composer. This is a fanfare I wrote for Concert band. I also made versions for Brass band and Fanfare. These heroes in the title are the first responders we are so dependent upon. Score and rendition are from Finale with “Note Performer”. It’s not the greatest rendition, but I hope you will get an idea of how it should sound. https://app.box.com/s/4lqfib9h8zfwsfi1gsvmm96pc9x4sl6i
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A band director I've known for many years had always wanted to commission a piece for his band, and as he was preparing to retire, he approached me with this idea. This was in 2016 during the political upheaval of both parties and the eventual election. In 2020, I decided to send this to my publisher for release. Indivisible "fractures" the US national anthem, then puts the pieces back together again, more or less. The introduction is dark and haunting, takes off in a fast "angry" section, a slow lyrical section, and a celebratory finale of the final verse of the anthem. Each section corresponds to the lyrics of the anthem. "Oh say can you see..." in the intro, "As the rockets red glare, the bombs bursting in air" in the angry section, "By the dawn's early light..." in the slow lyrical section, and the unified final verse of the anthem in its conclusion. I enjoyed writing this and hope you enjoy "Indivisible!" Thanks for listening, and feel free to comment if the mood strikes you. Cheers!
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Hello there. So I have been working on a band suite dedicated to this year's National Day. There are three movements: A set of variations, a slow movement and a march. The first movement is a set of variations on a well-known Malay folk song Lenggang Kangkung. I have used the melody before for another compositional project in school, and decided to reuse it again for this project. There are 9 sections (I am not sure whether to count the first section as a "variation", since it kind of is), with varying modes such as a scherzando, a fanfare, a solemn march or even a ragtime at the end heavily inspired by Golliwogg Cakewalk. The second movement is more impressionist. The main theme is paraphrased from a National Day Parade Song "Count on Me, Singapore". It's in rondo form, with the contrasting sections taking bits and pieces of other national day songs. The third movement is a march quoting two NDP songs: Stand up for Singapore and Love at First Light. It's in sonata form, with the development section starting off with many keys overlapping one another. I hope you will all enjoy this piece, which is also dedicated to a friend I know online. This is my first band piece, so any feedback, suggestions and criticism are welcome!
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This is a short piece I wrote in ~2.5 hours today. It sounded cool enough to share/post to my YouTube. Let me know what you liked about it/any comments. Enjoy 🙂 Score Video Link
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Greetings! I'm pleased to share a piece that was commissioned by a Community Band in my region and premiered in April 2018. "Lakeway Tribute" depicts the region of Morristown, TN, historic as the location of Davy Crockett's family tavern with rolling mountains and known locally as the community of Lakeway where homes line the Cherokee Reservoire, a lake community. So, I created a theme to represent the scenery, a theme to celebrate the festive spirit of the community, and to honor the memory of Davy Crockett's last stand at the Alamo. The form of the piece is mostly an ABCBA with transitions in between that seek to evoke a journey into the area. The piece is scheduled to be published in Spring 2021 and will go into the engraving process soon. You'll see in the score that, for the most part, everything is where it ought to be except the suspended cymbal. I didn't correct this for... reasons I won't get into here. But yes, I know it's out of place and it will be corrected anyway in the final product when my publisher engraves the score and parts. For now, please enjoy "Lakeway Tribute!"
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Hello, I recently decided I want to enter a composition competition for wind ensemble for the fun and the challenge. I have written nothing of the entry yet besides four chords. I have no experience writing for concert band; My composition history is mostly chamber music, a few pieces for string orchestra, and one for full symphonic orchestra. I am a classically trained cellist with some piano experience. Could you point me toward good resources (preferably online) for composers for concert band? I have mostly been relying on images of scores, Jacobs School of Music's Instrument Studies for Eyes and Ears (ISFEE), and the guidelines on the competition website itself, which I am finding a bit confusing. I also have some specific questions: 1. Which instruments normally double which? E.g. Can the second bassoon and the baritone sax play the same line? Are any combinations looked down upon? 2. If I wanted to use a timpani, side drum, clash cymbal, bass drum, vibraphone, and double bass, what order would they be in the score from top to bottom? 3. Is coming up with chords and other ideas at the piano helpful when writing for band? I am accustomed to doing this for my chamber and orchestral works. Thank you! ~ MissCello -
Hello all! Here's a relatively short piece for concert band that I wrote over the past month or so, inspired by the idea of a wondrous sea voyage to distant lands. I am hoping to submit this to a concert band composition competition by the end of the month, so I'm hoping for a bit of feedback if possible. It's not an ensemble that I typically compose for, so I'm a little bit "in the woods" here. Let me know what you think -- good or bad! Thanks for listening 😁 EDIT: I should note that one of the main ideas I try to get across in the piece is the shifting sense of rhythms (3 over 4, 4 over 3, etc.) reflecting the swaying, unpredictable movements of the sea.
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Hey all, I finished a rough draft of a work and need feedback on its orchestration, playing techniques, etc. I will adjust any notational errors later as I have not proofread the work yet. Any general advice/feedback is great, as the form of the song is set in stone. Thanks!
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This piece started out as the opening bars to movement II, which came to me while trying to sleep one night. The basic idea of movement III is one that I've had in my head for a couple years, ever since I wrote my first wind band piece in 2016/17. After that, movement I started with just me putting down notes to see what would happen. I've tried to experiment more with having instruments 'bleed' into each other (you can see this mostly in movement II), which is something I don't see much in most wind band writing. I haven't really pushed my harmonies that much (by my standards anyway) - I'm a bit reluctant to do that in a wind band context, because I don't think there's as much leeway as there is in the orchestral world, and I don't even feel a strong need to just yet. At the same time, though, I'm really proud of quite a lot of this piece, and I think it shows a few things that you can do with harmonies without necessarily pushing them to their absolute limits. I've tried to play around a bit with traditional wind band expectations, especially with regards to percussion, and I will continue to do so. I've always wanted to give a melodic solo to the temple blocks, for instance, and finally did so here in movement III. I also rebelled a little against using bass drum/cymbals in the traditional accompaniment oom-pah way, which is why I gave them a solo too. I worry a little that the movements are a little short, because I think each one could potentially go on for a full 5-6 minutes at least with their material. However, short individual movements is pretty common in wind band writing, and if the piece as a whole has a consistent feel and sound then I think it still works.
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I took the first movement of my "Symphony No. 2," and remixed it and arranged it for concert band. Since it was actually originally written with Hersheypark in mind, I called it "Ode to Hersheypark." This piece is dedicated to Hersheypark in commemoration of their 2020 expansion. It was written using Musescore 3 as well as the GeneralUser GS v1.471 soundfont.
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Someone on Discord suggested that I compose a piece about space and stars. Coincidentally, I decided I wanted to try composing something for Concert Band instead of just a hodgepodge of random instruments. I didn't yet feel ready for full orchestra; I wanted to experiment with a larger amount of instruments than I was before, but I needed to figure out how the Concert Band instruments would sound playing the melodies that I had in mind. So I went into Musescore, and it had a Small Concert Band template. I took away the Euphonium because I figured the Tuba was enough. I added in marimba, glockenspiel, etc, because I wanted them to compliment the other instruments and also to add twinkle like the stars. I have about two minutes of the piece so far, and I'm currently trying to figure out where to go with it next. I know that I want the beginning eight notes to reappear later on. I tried a few soundfonts, and decided that the GeneralUser soundfont sounded the best to me.
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Here's a band piece I recently wrote. I originally conceived it as a choral piece based on my own words, but I decided the words were bad and the music might work better without them. The beginning has a bit of that familiar "choral piece transcribed for band" feel, but starting about 30 seconds in, I begin to develop the material in more instrumental ways. I've accepted the fact that wind bands aren't always capable of the same nuances of colour as orchestras--especially in softer, more delicate sections. So the composition itself--as well as the orchestration--is a bit simpler than it might be if I had written this for orchestra. But I hope it's still effective. I'd especially like feedback on the orchestration. Are the contrasts interesting and frequent enough? Does the frequent use of glockenspiel and triangle get annoying or overbearing? P.S. - The sounds are Vienna Symphonic Library - just the basic Special Edition set. SCORE AND AUDIO
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A Chance Taken - Wind Band & Electronics
Noah Angott posted a topic in Orchestral and Large Ensemble
Hey all, just joined the forum, hoping for some input on a big piece I wrote a bit ago. I'm hoping to make some revisions soon and am looking at publishing eventually, so I'd be grateful for your input! A score is attached, I ask that you don't share it outside of this post. A Chance Taken is a piece I wrote in my last year of undergrad as an extracurricular project on top of my senior recital and student teaching prep, meaning I've only had a little bit of input on it. It's my most ambitious work to date, a 6-minute piece requiring a full sized Wind Band and an electronics track played on speakers. There's a variety of inspirations that went into this, including electronic, world, and and video game music. A big focus was on getting a lot of use out of three-ish different themes, and weaving them together in a variety of contexts. I'm especially proud of the closing section, which uses all of them at once. I have a VST recording here, which is the best representation of my vision for the piece. There's a lot of little details in there, so I'd reccomend some decent headphones if you have any. I was also fortunate to have the piece read by my university's Wind Symphony, although the recording quality isn't fantastic and we didn't have long to rehearse. I do like to think it might highlight some orchestration/balance issues though. Here's that recording: -
Final Draft of a piece that I wrote as a commission for a college in my area. They'll be debuting it in November. -
This is my piece Sunset. I have it tagged as a concert band piece as I was thinking about my high school's concert band's instrumentation (although this is not actually 100% it) while I was writing the piece. Originally, I was going to write it for strings, but that didn't really catch on to me. This is the first time that I have written for something other than percussion or piano as it is literally my fourth finished piece. I have actually been going through a period of writer's block (or whatever you call it for composing), and the idea of just writing music and playing around with ideas until something sticks was given to me by somebody I know. Thus this piece was born. It was definitely a weird process and time for me because I usually only start writing when I already have a good idea. Regardless, I like how this piece turned out. As usual, any feedback is welcome. Thanks 🙂 P.S. This is unrelated to the piece, but I am so ready to graduate. #Classof2019
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A small concerto (concertino) in a movement. It has a classical style mixed with a "romantic orchestration" It was composed back in 2015 for a 2016 premiere with the High school Concert Band from Escuela Libre de Musica The composition has some novice errors hehe, also I'm conducing, so I apologize for the dancing. I included the audio .midi and the premiere back in 2016 with the Escuela Libre de Musica Concert Band and Angel Cuyar as soloist. As always, feedback is welcomed! -
A while ago I decided that writing for wind band was something I wanted to seriously pursue. After a couple false starts this year, I finally got going on a second wind band work (after 'Aviary', which was performed twice last year), and gradually worked on it over the last two months. It's now become my longest single-movement work so far, and I'm quite proud of a few of the ideas in it. I'll soon be sending it around to a few conductor friends of mine to see if anyone will be willing to play it, but I'm pretty sure that someone will somewhere. The score still needs a bit of polishing here and there but I'll leave that for if/when I have to make some presentable parts.
