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Welcome to our podcast, Band BFFs. The podcast where we make your music selection less complicated.

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On today's episode, we're going to be continuing our fall concert series with our medium to

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medium difficult choices. Today, we are going to be discussing Dark Ride by Randall Standridge,

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Toppin Races by Jason Nitsch and Zombie Tango by James Meredith. Cheers to starting the conversation!

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Our first piece today, Dark Ride by Randall Standridge, is in the key of concert F or D minor.

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It's about two minutes and 15 seconds, two minutes and 20 seconds long. As it's typical of

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Standridge, lots of percussion instruments in this one that are required. The trumpet range is not

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extensive, though there are two parts. There are two clarinet parts. The clarinet never crosses the break

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in this. So even though this has some aspects that we feel like makes it slightly more challenging than

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some of the easier selections, very playable for a middle school or young high school ensemble.

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This piece starts out mysterious and creepy as it says on the score a little bit slower and it's supposed to

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emulate a mysterious ride through the forest in the dark and you're hearing things and you're getting

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spooked. So you'll hear lots of effects. Yeah, you'll hear lots of effects throughout the piece to show that.

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There's a prominent chimes part here at the beginning and some good mallet percussion parts. Of course,

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tons of accessories later on too. So as she mentioned, percussion is pretty much non-negotiable.

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You can teach your students about stagger breathing here at the beginning, which is always a great thing to

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experience as a younger player. And then it starts out with a clarinet and bassoon melody, nice and dark

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just woody sounds. That's really pretty. It's low-shalamo register for clarinet, which is great.

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And then the flutes get to come in and join them. And then we add in a few more instruments as we're kind of

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building the suspense. We have some notes against each other, some half steps and whole steps in here.

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So it makes it sound even spookier. And then we have this ritardando going into 11 where it just

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automatically gets faster, almost twice as fast, if not more. So you want to make sure that you guys

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practice that tempo change. And we've got lots of excitement here. Lots of energy in the wind players.

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The trumpets in the alto sax have the melody here. There are some articulation style, style markings

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written on the notes. You're going to want to make sure you spend some time on that to really execute the

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style that's written on the page. Because the clarinet part sits in the shalamo register, there's going to be

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a lot of considerations for fingerings because we're in the key of D minor. So there's lots of F sharps.

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That would be something you may want to consider marking in their parts. Beforehand, there are even

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some times in this where you can't use, it would be a perfect opportunity to use a fork to be natural,

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but you can't because of the lower notes that you're coming from. So make sure that you're looking at those

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parts individually and it's a great sectional work for the clarinets in this.

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There's also an optional harpsichord part and it turns into, like on a synthesizer and it turns into a voices part later.

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I've never played it with the synthesizer part, but it sounds really cool. So if you have that in your band hall,

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I would highly recommend adding that in. It just adds to the spookiness flavor.

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Lots of trills and different things, tambourines, ratchets as we're kind of making our way to 19.

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19, as Lara said, is where the clarinets have that shalamo register melody. You do have to be sure to mark

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when it can and cannot be forked, be natural. And that's really, really important throughout this piece

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so the clarinets aren't flipping. The same thing comes back in the alto sax part later on.

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So just make sure you're going through one measure at a time and pre-marking your parts as much as possible

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for the students so they can have success the first time. There's some cool effects in trumpet and

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vibra slap and all kinds of neat little things here and there.

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And making sure that we pay close attention, this is a repeated section at 19. So making sure the students

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understand if they play the both times or if they only enter the second time, just making sure that they're aware of that.

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That's the new part, yes.

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And we have some accidentals that carry through the measure. Again, that's one of those pre-marking the parts

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for students can really help them be successful quicker.

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The low person part, low read tuba is pretty important in this piece. They often have like one and two and three

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going into the next section. It comes back over and over and over. So each time they have that working

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on making sure that that sounds really nice and also staccato, but that it just sounds cool for them

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because it gives them a little something to look forward to. As we go into 28, the trumpets have the melody

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here and there's a cool little like harmony part with sax and horn. We're not as tooty here.

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We're thinned out a little bit just making sure you're talking about balance.

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This is a little more flowy. I feel like this section because there's less to new to staccato accent.

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This is just a little more flowy in this section.

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And then the flutes and oboes get to come in to join the trumpets for a little bit.

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And then we have some forte piano and accents on one and three here as we're coming into 36.

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Again, with the three and four and one with tuba low read, but this time with accents instead of staccatos.

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As you can see in the synthesizer part, now we've got the voices sound to make it sound spooky if you use that.

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And then the fluton obo have that part and it's this cool little like chromatic moment on top of the trumpet melody.

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And it continues on and on for a while.

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And you want to make sure I know when I have played this, my students that chromaticism is really cool.

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It's the new part. It's what's new and different.

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But because of how it's orchestrated here, it can be overpowering and really dominant in the ensemble.

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So making sure that your students understand. Yes, it is the new part.

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It is really cool, but it's meant to be in effect and does not need to cover up the melody.

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And this again is a great teaching opportunity for you as a band director to review all those chromatic fingerings for your woodwinds.

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And also like the alto sax part says E sharp in it in measure 38, getting a chance to review like in harmonics.

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And what is this note and what does this mean?

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You can do it as the whole band.

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It's like a good like theory review at the beginning of the year, which I think is pretty cool.

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44 we have the same melody idea, but this time with accents and it's the low people with the melody with just some little interjections in the flute oboe clarinet sax part.

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And then trumpet and sax bring the melody back at 52 and you go faster.

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So it's an automatic just quicker by about 12 beats per minute. It's like, oh, I'm getting scared.

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More. That's right. You're running faster. You're running faster.

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You're getting faster. So it's the same melody though. A lot of the same things come back the chromaticism in the woodwinds, which is one of the things I like about it.

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It's repetitive. So once you, you know, once you've taught a section, it's real easy to just say, hey, we're going to copy paste, copy paste at 58.

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You get this cool effect in the mallet two part was scraping on the bars of the time. This is such a cool part.

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My kids loved it playing this part. It is meant to sound cacophonous.

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Yes. So I mean, you know, don't be afraid. Let them kind of, you know, lean into it a little bit, obviously, while still making sure that we hear what's happening in the wind players.

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But this is all building this forte piano layering on top of each other and the glissandoing and the trombones.

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Yes. And you've got like everybody's just kind of got different parts here and figuring out how you want to layer it is going to be important.

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But it also is building the suspense going into the ending.

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Then we have another forte piano here at 62.

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And then we're going to have the low people with accents leading us in and some of the middle voices, tenor voices and then the upper woodwind and mallet with a little trill here and there and then a glissando to end it out with a Zylo.

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With the Zylo Bliss as well. Yes. Zylo.

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And we want the trombone and the Zylo phone to really lean into that.

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That's it. That's all that's happening here. With that and snare. So like have them really lean into that before a nice big full sounding last note where you made it. You got away.

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Congratulations. We love Dark Ride. Dark Ride is a great piece, not overly challenging, but lots of really good teaching opportunities for your ensemble.

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Next is Coffin Races by Jason Nitch. And this piece is really fun.

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It's written to be based on what are actually called the Coffin Races, which happen in Colorado every year.

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And it's goes along with the Raising of the Dead Festival.

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And literally they like have coffins like rolling down a hill.

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So it's kind of a cool thing just to kind of teach your kids about too.

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This is a good like kid magnet type piece. They love playing it because it has a really like cool theme to it for sure.

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It's in the key of G minor and 4-4 throughout. Again, there is quite a bit of percussion.

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Your snare player is going to be really important in this and your tambourine player.

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They're going to play upbeats.

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It's going to be very, very important.

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A lot. Yes.

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So and there's a lot of this even in the wind players on this piece as well where we have a lot of upbeats.

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Just a quick suggestion. If your tambourine player is having trouble keeping all of those upbeats in time,

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you might consider mounting the tambourine and having them play with their, the downbeat on their leg

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and the upbeat on the tambourine so that their hands are playing 1 and 2 and 3 and 4 and,

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but if you mount the tambourine, then you can do that.

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And again, I would only do that if your tambourine player is struggling,

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but that is an option to make that part a little bit easier for them.

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Just like Dark Ride, this has an important ratchet part as well.

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So just some other little accessory parts that are important to cover in the percussion.

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Then it starts out with a high E in the trumpet one part and a lower E in trumpet two.

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So make sure you're...

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The trumpet range on this is pretty high.

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High E and F some of the time. Yeah.

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Clarinet range isn't as significant as the trumpet range it does.

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Same thing about E to F, I think.

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It does play over the break, but it's not, it's not a crazy range for first clarinet.

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But that trumpet, first trumpet is starting on high E.

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You gotta make sure you have a solid trumpet section.

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Yeah.

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Then it kind of has this like little fanfare and then the tenor voices and mid voices come in with the same fanfare and rhythm.

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And then we get the tubas get a trill.

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I mean, they lost their minds the first time I played this.

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Like, oh my gosh, we finally get to do what the woodwinds do all the time.

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So it's fun and then you get the one and two and one and two and that Laura was talking about.

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Tambourine's got a hold down those up beats.

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Then we have adding in the melody part with like trumpet oboe clarinet.

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And then we kind of have an echo and the tenor voices and you really want to focus on the style here.

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Ta ta ta ta ta ta ta ta ta.

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And making sure that you're really thinking about style and making half notes go all the way to the next part in the bar line.

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Then we have a clarinet melody at 13 with just a great easy rhythm, fun articulations here.

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Low people are going to lead us going into 21.

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Yeah.

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And I would have the clarinets lean on the first note of the slur.

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It's not marked accented, but I would just have them feel that ta ta ta ta ta ta ta ta ta ta ta ta ta ta ta ta ta ta ta ta ta ta ta ta.

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Just lean in on that a little bit to help keep that melody driving forward.

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Totally.

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Then the clarinet too keeps that part going, flutes add in, saxes add in, and now the clarinet one is going to add a new melodic part with oboe and horn.

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And so we want to feature that and bring that out.

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And it's got some fun rhythms, a little bit more challenging than dark ride had.

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And I'll notice on the clarinet part, the clarinet parts are really independent of each other.

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So the first clarinet part is playing more that like counter melody that's happening in the tenor sax and horn.

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And the second clarinet is playing that original melody we heard.

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So there's a lot of independence there that you want to make sure that your clarinet section is comfortable with.

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Then we have everybody coming into measure 29 with some contrary emotion.

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We have some people going up in pitch, some people going down in pitch.

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So just bringing out the lower voices as much as possible.

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And then we have this cool part in the trumpets, one and a three.

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And then you have one, blah, lee, three in the horn part.

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So just bringing that part out back and forth between the trumpet and people who have the same thing and horn and people who have the same thing.

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And notice that the xylophone part is different.

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They do not have the two sixteenth notes on the upbeat.

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They have a sixteenth triplet on the upbeat.

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So I'm just making sure that is correct.

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And we do want the xylophone to lean into that and bring that out.

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It's easier, obviously, for them to do that than the wind players.

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So how, you know, that is correct.

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Don't shy away from it. Have them lean into it.

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Absolutely.

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And the triangle part has the same rhythm as the horn and middle voices in 30.

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So they can kind of bring that out too.

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They just have like matching parts there.

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Then we're back to the same thing we had at the beginning.

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Now the low people have the melody.

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So we're going to let them come out middle to low horn.

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Sorry, trombone and euphonium, no tuba.

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And then after they get their little moment in the sunshine,

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we add back in with that same little counter melody part in the flutin' oboe.

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But now the trumpets have added in.

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And then we have another cool part in euphonium and alto that can be brought out.

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And I love that combination, that color combination of euphonium and alto.

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So, you know, obviously making sure that your altos are coloring that euphonium sound.

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Have your euphoniums play that nice and strong, but that's a cool color combination.

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Yep.

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The flutes get a little higher here in this moment.

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So you may even want to consider like having some of them play it down an octave,

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or maybe just not all of them playing the high Fs and Gs,

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but that's kind of up to you in your flute section.

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Then at 53, we're back to what we had at the beginning,

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but now we are, oh nope, it's exactly the same.

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Then we add in some trills in the flute and oboe along with the same da da da da da that we had before.

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61, same melody again in clarinet and alto.

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More trombone glissandos, which, you know, we love all of these effects.

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This is like, I think a fall concert is a really good time to get to explore some of those cool effects.

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Yeah, for sure.

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And teaching like flutes and oboes about different trills.

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Look, we have like different trills on different notes, so they get to learn that stuff.

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Then we have really cool part at 69 with flutter tonguing in the trumpet section.

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Speaking of cool effects.

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Yeah, they think that this is really fun to play.

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And then, and of course, if they can't flutter tongue, they can just play it straight.

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And listen, if you're having trouble getting your trumpets to practice, I guarantee you.

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If you teach them how to flutter tongue, they will spend a ton of time practicing to master that.

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For sure.

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Then this is kind of like the beginning where we have one and two and three, four, and then we have the ending trill.

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And then the percussion break for two measures 82 brings it all home again.

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We've got flute on that first melody part and then trumpet on the second melody part.

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So we're just kind of all mixing it in here trying to layer it so it's not too cacophonous.

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We have a nice trill into the end.

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So it's got a pretty easy finish. And like Laura mentioned, it's pretty repetitive.

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Just you have to be a little bit more intentional about balancing to the right parts throughout the piece.

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All right. And our final piece in this episode is zombie tango.

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This piece is in G minor as well for four throughout.

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I love this piece. I think this is so fun.

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Kids love it. It's extremely programmatic.

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I suppose like a lot of the fall concert music we're discussing, but it's extremely programmatic.

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So I mean, you are literally picturing two zombies tangoing.

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So fun.

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So there's a lot of great percussion instruments in this in order to help convey that Latin tango vibe that we're trying to get.

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Bongo, Bongo, clar base, we're all kinds of fun percussion that I do think is really important.

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The percussion are featured a lot in these little punctuated moments to help kind of add to the cool.

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Castanets are important. But this piece is great.

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It's got a lot of great style to teach to and and like differences, right?

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So we have like staccato accents.

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We have tenuto accents here at the beginning.

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So teaching the students about how does that sound different than just a regular accent or a regular tenuto?

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Not difficult rhythms, but just teaching some, you know, and beat rhythms.

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We have a fermata going into five.

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Now in the introduction, because it is 2D rhythmically for the whole ensemble, this is an opportunity for you.

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Like I spent time with my group really working to make sure that the chord balance was appropriate in this.

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It's easy for the balance to sound off.

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The whole band is playing the same rhythm here.

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So you want to make sure that you get the right balance, that we have enough of the root and that the third isn't overpowering all that.

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So it doesn't take long to fix, but you want to make sure that you're aware of that with that 2D rhythm in the introduction.

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And then at five, we have same tempo.

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We have the clarinet melody along with the trumpets.

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Much softer here.

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Yes, quieter. We're starting the tango.

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We've got all the percussion instruments coming in.

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We've got like lows coming in featuring going into eight.

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One, two, three, four, and kind of leaning on those accents when you see them to make it feel like a tango.

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Over and over again, you'll see some little interspersed four and a one coming in throughout the piece in different instruments.

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So just bringing that out when you hear it.

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And I love that. One of the things I love about it is the technique and how it's written is actually pretty easy and very playable.

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But kids like it. They see 16th notes on their music.

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And they think this is hard.

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This is a hard piece.

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But the technique of it is not as challenging as you might think.

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We've got, like she said, some like interspersed percussion effects at 12.

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Then we have the shaker coming in at 14 with the trumpet melody.

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And now we have a different style.

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So just bringing that out, making sure the accents are brought out whenever the students have them.

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The lows have like tenutos, four leading to one.

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So the more you can really talk about style and make that be something that's obvious throughout all the parts that's going to make it just sound even cooler.

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And being real intentional about which notes are slurred and which notes are not.

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Like that is, I found with this one that because it kind of changes every once in a while, that students can get a little bit lazy and assume they know how it's going to go.

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So just being real mindful in the melodic parts especially that the slurs are executed correctly.

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We have some like beat one, two, three and four entrances as we're going into measure 23.

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And then again the four yanda one and that comes from most of the band.

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Then we have them doing the upper woodwinds kind of have that same effect over and over here.

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And we have all the brass joining and with the trumpets on that little melody part.

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Trumpets are written up pretty high on that trumpet one part.

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So just be aware of the range and the clarinet one part is much higher here going up to high A.

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Yes.

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So might need to be something where it's more soloistic or you have just one person play here.

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But just make sure that you're matching as you go into the upper register.

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At 27.

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I love that there's an opportunity for a flute or clarinet solo if that is something that suits your ensemble.

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If you're trying to train a soloist and preparation for contest season, this is great practice.

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It certainly does not have to be a solo.

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You can have your entire flute section or have it be a little trio or a clarinet section on that.

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But I like that this little section right here just changes just a little bit still with the cool and the percussion.

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What's going on in percussion here is really important.

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So making sure that that's really solid before we get back to measure 35, which is more of the same.

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Like what we had before.

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There's a cool little timpani part here that sounds like something like stopped or dropped off the zombie.

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Like he lost an arm or something.

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Like it's got the little...

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They get a gliss.

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Yeah.

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So that's kind of a fun effect.

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Then we go up a little bit higher in the trombone euphonium part two going into measure 38.

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So just be sure to spend some time on that making sure that they're totally in tune on their upper D's.

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But this is a lot of the same thing.

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45 clarinet and sax get to have the important part here with a little weirdo and vibra slap coming in.

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And that kind of things out overall.

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It does.

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And that this because this is softer and we have the first clarinet and the alto part up high.

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The first alto part up high.

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This can be a little bit of a tuning issue here.

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So making sure that the clarinet player and the alto player are keeping really snug corners on the mouthpiece and that air focused on the center of the reed.

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And again, I mean, if it means picking one clarinet player and one alto player that can play it in tune together, that's perfectly appropriate to do.

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Trumpets get to come in with a little interspersed moment along with flutes as we're going through this little more soloistic type section.

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Everything stylistically, it does change a lot.

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So you have to just kind of watch each section.

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It's not the same all the way throughout.

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But you basically get to teach every marking through this piece, which is pretty cool.

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Then we have a little bit of like a like divided part in trombone with a gliss downward.

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Just lots of cool effects in here.

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And then 60 we're back to the same melody again as the very beginning.

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And we're just kind of driving the whole piece home.

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It's kind of repetitive here.

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It goes kind of on and on.

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Trumpets are still at pretty high in the first trumpet part.

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This conversation kind of between the trumpets and then the upward winds and two and three and and two and three.

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So making sure that the balance of all of that is appropriate between trumpets and the upper woodwinds.

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And then voices with the melody.

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Yep. As we go into 72, same thing up higher.

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So just be sure we're thinking about all of that again.

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It's a lot of the exact same thing we've had.

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Same thing at 80.

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Now we're just adding in more accents to make it be more exciting leading into the very end.

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Big finish.

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We have a cool like trumpet divided chord here at 88.

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It's a literally a four part chord, which is pretty cool.

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It makes it sound like an eight like a honking horn or something like that.

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Sounds cool.

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The timpani gets to do their gliss up again.

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That's right.

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And then we just have a nice finish to the very end.

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This is super fun.

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This is a lot of fun again.

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I like the imagery that it kind of conveys with the whole idea of the zombies tangling and body parts falling off while they're dancing.

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Yeah.

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And all three of these pieces have that cool imagery that you can teach your students about and give your kids something to look forward to in your fall concert.

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And great stylistic challenges as well.

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So we hope that you will consider programming one of these pieces at an upcoming fall concert.

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Thank you for joining us on this episode of Band BFFs.