Hire a horn line expert to write your next marching show!
Regardless of the musical style, the size of the band, or the strengths / weaknesses of the band, I can do the horn line writing for your marching shows. Here's what I can offer:
Education and experience. I've been doing transcriptions and arrangements professionally since 2001, and have a BM and MM in jazz composition and arranging. (I'm also quite capable of handling music that isn't jazz.) The music I write for you will be legible and detailed with dynamics, articulations, rehearsal marks, and measure numbers. You won't have to spend any rehearsal time deciphering the music.
Instrumental expertise. I can perform on nearly every woodwind and brass instrument in a marching band. I know their capabilities and limitations, and know what kind of skill to expect from high school, college, or middle school musicians. You won't be stuck with someone who knows brass but not woodwinds or vice-versa.
Demo recordings. For an extra fee, I can make a home demo recording, on live instruments, of your charts. Because I can simply play all the instruments myself, I can do this relatively quickly and cheaply. Sure, you can just hear the notation program playback, but hearing it played on real instruments is immensely more satisfying and gives students a better sense of how everything should sound. See below for examples.
Flexibility. Most of the time, I get really specific assignments: "Take this piece, use 0:53 through 2:48, but trim it down to a minute and a half and write an alto sax solo for the melody at 1:03 - 1:20." I can do that, and I can also work with you to create a show from a more general outline. I can also adapt the arrangements to your band's strengths, weaknesses, and instrumentation. It's also no problem to go back and make edits if a piece needs to be lengthened, shortened, or altered in some other way. See the recordings below for some examples of edits like this. I will also include chord changes and simplified suggested mallet parts, both of which will help out the percussion writer. Sometimes, I'm asked to write keyboard parts, and that's no problem. (When it comes to battery parts, best to leave those to someone more familiar with marching percussion than I am.)
Education and experience. I've been doing transcriptions and arrangements professionally since 2001, and have a BM and MM in jazz composition and arranging. (I'm also quite capable of handling music that isn't jazz.) The music I write for you will be legible and detailed with dynamics, articulations, rehearsal marks, and measure numbers. You won't have to spend any rehearsal time deciphering the music.
Instrumental expertise. I can perform on nearly every woodwind and brass instrument in a marching band. I know their capabilities and limitations, and know what kind of skill to expect from high school, college, or middle school musicians. You won't be stuck with someone who knows brass but not woodwinds or vice-versa.
Demo recordings. For an extra fee, I can make a home demo recording, on live instruments, of your charts. Because I can simply play all the instruments myself, I can do this relatively quickly and cheaply. Sure, you can just hear the notation program playback, but hearing it played on real instruments is immensely more satisfying and gives students a better sense of how everything should sound. See below for examples.
Flexibility. Most of the time, I get really specific assignments: "Take this piece, use 0:53 through 2:48, but trim it down to a minute and a half and write an alto sax solo for the melody at 1:03 - 1:20." I can do that, and I can also work with you to create a show from a more general outline. I can also adapt the arrangements to your band's strengths, weaknesses, and instrumentation. It's also no problem to go back and make edits if a piece needs to be lengthened, shortened, or altered in some other way. See the recordings below for some examples of edits like this. I will also include chord changes and simplified suggested mallet parts, both of which will help out the percussion writer. Sometimes, I'm asked to write keyboard parts, and that's no problem. (When it comes to battery parts, best to leave those to someone more familiar with marching percussion than I am.)
RECORDINGS
These recording are home demos I've made of my marching band arrangements. Note that:
- As a native trumpet player, I can't really play a tuba/sousaphone. Those parts are played on a bass saxophone.
- Any mallet parts recorded are intended only to be a general guide, and not finished mallet parts.
- As a native trumpet player, I can't really play a tuba/sousaphone. Those parts are played on a bass saxophone.
- Any mallet parts recorded are intended only to be a general guide, and not finished mallet parts.
My instructions for this piece were to create something that sounded like a journey through constantly changing environments, and to end with something big and dramatic that would bring the audience out of their seats. The original piece works well for that as it dashes in and out of eleven major keys and constantly changes dynamics in unexpected ways. I tried to convey that feeling with constantly shifting instrumentation as well. As for the ending, I took a spot in the original where a major chord dissolves with some added notes and turned it into a grand ending where the band ends on a triumphant major chord which is then transformed into an atonal, shrieking train wreck by adding four foreign notes one at a time. Performing this one ought to be challenging - not so much technically, but musically. I'm aware that piano is not really a marching band instrument, but this band uses an electric keyboard in the front ensemble, and I know they have the piano available, so I wrote for it.
This arrangement of "The Polar Express" was written for a Christmas themed show that also included music from other Christmasy films. I was asked to include some rapid, impressive woodwind runs since the director felt the previous horn writer had made things too easy. The rising key change at the beginning is there because this tune transitioned out of the previous one in the show. The connection is quite smooth if I start this one in A-flat then slide up a whole step instead of just starting in B-flat. However, I like the modulation on its own too. This is a good example of how I may edit a piece after it's complete: The show ended up a little long and the band director asked me to cut out a few dozen bars of this one, which I did. (This recording is the complete version, however.)
"Professor Pumplestickle" is a fun romping dance in 12/8. This one was a good opportunity to use all the different colors of a marching band. It's also a good example of why I include chord changes for the benefit of the percussion writer - this one has a few less-than-obvious "Giant Steps" type progressions.
This one was written for a band that, at the time, had relatively strong woodwinds but a small, inexperienced brass section. The arrangement is tailored for that band. The director wanted alto sax solos in two spots and all the tempo changes and asymmetric meters - even the 11-beat pattern at the end! - intact for challenge.
This one's a good example of how I can work with a director to plan a show. He wanted a stormy, angry, intense piece of orchestral music, but didn't know which one. I suggested Mussorsgky's "Night on Bald Mountain", the "March to the Scaffold" movement of Berlioz' Symphonie Fantastique, and the "Storm" movement of Beethoven's 6th. He went with "Bald Mountain". The unusual calming ending doesn't make a whole lot of sense on its own, but it is there because this transitioned into a quiet pop ballad in their show.
This one's from the same Christmas themed show as "Polar Express" above. The director wanted a quiet, pretty movement with a build to a powerful climax. He also wanted a piccolo solo (which I play here on flute). I made this chart a woodwind feature, with brass gradually sneaking in during the crescendo to the climax. The original is quiet and calm all the way through, so I added the dramatic build. I also added in the pedal points, which I thought was a nice bit of subtle harmonic change. You may notice I use "Believe" from the Polar Express movie as a counter melody. It's played by the clarinets and tenor saxes after the key change while everyone else is playing the primary melody. That tune was another part of the same show, and the director encouraged me to make thematic connections like that when I could. This is another one that I edited slightly later: you're hearing my original arrangement here, but the opening needed a bit more sound on the field, so I added brass to the first four bars.
"Rooftop Chase", part of the orchestral score from the Fantastic Beasts movie, is not a typical marching band piece, with its lack of obvious melody, harsh cluster harmonies, and strange meters. But it's always fun to write something that's a departure, and this is a really effective piece for a competition. A band that can balance those clusters is going to create amazing effects.
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