BoneWeek 7

After a few false starts and dead ends, I managed to knock out another BoneWeek Fanfare. I started writing these in celebration of International Trombone Week. You can find the previous fanfares both on my website and the ITA website.

A few notes about this one.

• There are no "quotes" of well-known trombone pieces
• I tried to avoid falling back into any clichés (not easy sometimes)
• I wanted it to have some rhythmic energy and no obvious presentation of a melody (see above)

With any of these fanfares, I use an odd test: would I want to play it. When I'm at a convention (like the Eastern Trombone Workshop which I'm missing...sigh) and looking through music I might purchase, I often look at the score and say, "Yuck, I wouldn't to play that part." The most common cardinal sin of composers and arrangers:

• putting all the interest into the first part and thus generating boring parts for everyone else
• making the first part so tiring that it becomes difficult to program such a chop-buster

These goals aren't difficult, so why do so many arrangements fail these tests. Lazy arrangers?

Anyway, here's the fanfare from my website. If you put it on a program, please let me know. It's always nice to get a concert program for my files.

You may ask, "How many of these things are you going to write?"

I have no idea.

Here's the link: BoneWeek Fanfare #7

BoneWeek 6 - done

I've written another BoneWeek fanfare. Like the others, it is available for free download on my website.

BoneWeek Fanfare 6

I'm also happy to report that this piece will be premiered at the Eastern Trombone Workshop by Dr. Bradley Palmer and the Columbus State Trombone Choir.

For anyone going to ETW, I'll be doing a group warm-up on Saturday morning.

Yeah, it's at 8am.

BoneWeek Fanfare 5

Better late than never!

I've finished and posted BoneWeek Fanfare 5 for trombone octet.

I've made it a bit easier than previous fanfares.

It's all available free from my website...

Bolero and BoneWeek

Sorry I haven't posted in a while. Most of my late night energies have been spent finishing up BoneWeek Fanfare #4. I went through with my original idea and created a piece that is largely based on Malcolm Arnold's Fantasy for Unaccompanied Trombone.
I'm pretty happy with it. Once I'm done proofing the parts, I'll send it in to the ITA and post it on my website. I suppose I should get around to posting BoneWeek 3 on my website one of these days. The first three fanfares are still available on the ITA website (although hard to find from the home page at the moment). Now that I have Finale 2006 and am beginning to understand their "human performance" feature, the sound files for this new fanfare should be more realistic (ritards, fermatas, crescendos, etc).

I also have a Bolero performance with the Augusta Symphony weekend so that has taken up some time. So far so good in rehearsal. It does make your heart thump a good bit!

Classes at USC start next week and I'll try to back on track with blogging.

BoneTherapy

Got an interesting email from the director of the trombone ensemble Bone Therapy. They took my second BoneWeek fanfare and shortened it, nicknaming it the Bone Therapy fanfare. The group's leader even sat down, recorded all 8 parts in Garage Band and posted it on their site.

Here's a link.

I'm trying ( and struggling ) to write BoneWeek Fanfare #4. Apparently the ITA people aren't sick of me yet. I want to make sure it isn't too much like the others but is still pretty listenable and playable. One idea a I've had: I might make it a tribute to Malcom Arnold, who passed away last September. One way to do this: make it somehow connected to the Fantasy he wrote for unaccompanied trombone.

Here's a stunt I'm not talented enough to pull off (but it would be pretty cool): write a piece into which the original Fantasy would fit. In other words, if a 9th trombonist played along on the Fantasy it would fit with the fanfare. I don't think I'm going to attempt this since I doubt the original piece would be all that strong. This idea reminds me of Luciano Berio's technique of composing a Chemin that was designed to envelop one of his Sequenzas.