Band Reading

On Wednesday I had a very interesting experience hearing the wind ensemble read my new band piece that I wrote. Hearing my piece being played from speakers by means of MIDI data was alright and I thought my piece was sounding pretty cool. Going into the band reading I was expecting it to sound better then hearing it played from my computer, but unfortunately it was not the greatest reading. Now I know that they were sight reading but I was expecting a bit of a better read through from the band. Since the reading I have been a little bit nervous about submitting this to the Gower Band competition thinking that it may be too hard. Hearing my piece being sight read was defintitly something I was not ready for because I knew exactly how the piece was suppose to sound and when the group didn't achieve it, it felt frustrtaing. I guess this is the way it is for composers, even though you write down all of these directions on a page, what notes to play, how fast, how loud or soft, players will never fully play it the way you hear it in your head.

There were some good things that I got from the reading. I was able to get a sense of balance and I was able to hear some of my dynamic ideas in person besides listening to it from a computer. A cool thing about my piece is that at times I have each section come in a beat after the other starting with the tuba and going up to the flutes to create a huge chord. This sounded decent on the computer but it sounded really cool in person because you could hear the entrances coming in from different areas of the band.

Overall this was a good experience and I am happy that I chose to write for band.

Ending

I believe that an ending to a piece is very important to a composition. You can't leave an ending going on to long and can you can't end the piece to quickly. My questions and thoughts about my piece as of lately have been around how I should end the piece. Of course I can bring things back and make the piece coherent but how does one go about making a perfect ending? I feel that my piece is lacking that. It could just be from me having to finish my piece for a deadline but my piece does not have that really special ending.

I feel as if I just want to be finished with this piece because it seems that this has been the only thing I have done for a while is write and orchestrate. Maybe I can't write the perfect ending because I feel more distant than usual towards my piece. I think if I were to take a few days off, I could think about things and possibilities and give my piece the ending it needs.

This kind of brings up another point I have been thinking about lately, how much do you compromise for a deadline, normally if you were writing something for yourself you would make sure every part of your piece is what you want. Sometimes however I feel as if I have to compromise on things like accompaniment and colour. If I had a few more weeks to work on this piece I would take lots of time to go through my piece and make it exactly what I want and what I hear in my head.

As I am finishing up my piece these are just a few of the things I have been thinking about while wishing I had more time before my piece needs to be done.