More Grieg!

I did a lot of these my freshman year.  This was the biggest one (four flutes, three oboes, six clarinets, three bassoons, brass in threes, celesta, 2 harps, organ choir, strings, and percussion).

I’m going to re-work this sometime soon, so that it’s, you know, ACTUALLY PLAYABLE BY ANY ORCHESTRA THAT CURRENTLY EXISTS or something.  Whatever.  It was fun.

At The Cradle

A thing I did a long time ago for woodwind section.  An arrangement of a Grieg piece for Piano solo.

Hello ESO Members!

Here’s the recording I promised I’d put up on Thursday.  Please listen to it while you read your part, so you can get an idea of what’s going on around you.  I know we can pull this off really well, judging by how good the read-through went at the last rehearsal.

Thank you so much, you guys.  I’ve been waiting a long time to see how this sounds with real people instead of my computer, and it’s been totally worth the wait.

Symphony No. 1 in A Minor: 1. Adagio Maestoso - Allegro ma non troppo (Draft)

Hah!  Made it to the end of the first tonal group (the A minor one), and started on the second one (C major/G major).  It’s been a rough start, but I’m starting to get really excited about writing more and developing what I already have until there’s a full hour of music (by which point, I think I will probably exceed the file size limit for Tumblr, but whatever).

Oh my FREAKING GOD YOU GUYS!  You have no IDEA how excited I am about this whole project now that I’m actually going somewhere with it!  About realizing that after three failed attempts (in the past five years) I’m finally (possibly) going to be adding my own symphony to the classical tradition.  About finishing the first movement and handing the manuscript to my adviser and saying “Here.  It’s my first symphony.” 

Yeah, there’s stuff I’m not too jazzed about in the material I’ve already written, and there’s stuff that I’m worried about down the road (like how I’m going to write a convincing slow movement, or how I’m going to adapt my thematic material to a triple meter (for the Scherzo), but that stuff’ll come later.  Right now, I’m a little too pumped to care.

So, here’s a little bit more of my sketching on my first symphony in a minor.  I’m sorry for ending on the chord I did.  Or maybe I’m not. 

So, after what feels like a REALLY long dry period, I’ve got something new (or, if I’m being honest, progress on something I posted a while ago).  After trying a bazillion different ways to move on with the music, I finally went with this.  I’m not sure if the current end will be the actual end (I’m pretty sure it won’t but I may be convinced otherwise). 

Once again, this is a bit of a gift for Ferio, the artist and writer of Breath. 

• Total Duration: 9 Minutes and 29 Seconds
• Length in Score:130 Measures
• Un-compressed File Size:95 MB (4.4 MB Compressed)

So, I like, JUST realized that I never uploaded the final draft of this last spring when I was writing it.  I mean, it’s mostly the same, but it has one or two changes that I think make it work loads better!  So, here AGAIN is the last movement of the Greyscale Suite for Large Orchestra. 

I’m slowly working on putting the four movements together into one file, so that you can hear what it would be like in performance.  Unfortunately, I’m having a LOT of trouble with the balance of the orchestra, so it’s taking me forever.  HOWEVER, once I DO finish it, I think I may have someone who would be interested in helping me get it performed by no less than the Indianapolis Pops Orchestra (which is basically the Indianapolis Symphony Orchestra when it’s not playing repertoire from the classical canon).  My composition teacher moonlights as one of their conductors, and he’s been really excited about this for a while.

Anyway, here’s this again, finished for the time being (although I may change a few things around when I pair it with the other three parts of the Greyscale Suite).  Happy Listening!

My First tone poem, re-worked about a bazillion times to date, but still with the same thematic structure.  I based this one off of some themes by a well-known Japanese composer.  I’m going to guess that a whole bunch of people will recognize who it is when they hear me quote one of his more famous themes.  (I’ll have to take the quote out before I consider publishing it, but whateves).

Oh god, that second half is going to get a SERIOUS re-working one of these days.  Still so far to go, but I like parts of it now, so I’m posting it anyway.  Wrote this back in 2009, on Finale PrintMusic 2006 (which is to Finale 2011 what MS Paint is to Sai).