Welcome to our podcast, Band BFFs. The podcast where we make your music selection less complicated.
On today's episode, we're going to be continuing our fall concert series with our medium to
medium difficult choices. Today, we are going to be discussing Dark Ride by Randall Standridge,
Toppin Races by Jason Nitsch and Zombie Tango by James Meredith. Cheers to starting the conversation!
Our first piece today, Dark Ride by Randall Standridge, is in the key of concert F or D minor.
It's about two minutes and 15 seconds, two minutes and 20 seconds long. As it's typical of
Standridge, lots of percussion instruments in this one that are required. The trumpet range is not
extensive, though there are two parts. There are two clarinet parts. The clarinet never crosses the break
in this. So even though this has some aspects that we feel like makes it slightly more challenging than
some of the easier selections, very playable for a middle school or young high school ensemble.
This piece starts out mysterious and creepy as it says on the score a little bit slower and it's supposed to
emulate a mysterious ride through the forest in the dark and you're hearing things and you're getting
spooked. So you'll hear lots of effects. Yeah, you'll hear lots of effects throughout the piece to show that.
There's a prominent chimes part here at the beginning and some good mallet percussion parts. Of course,
tons of accessories later on too. So as she mentioned, percussion is pretty much non-negotiable.
You can teach your students about stagger breathing here at the beginning, which is always a great thing to
experience as a younger player. And then it starts out with a clarinet and bassoon melody, nice and dark
just woody sounds. That's really pretty. It's low-shalamo register for clarinet, which is great.
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
building the suspense. We have some notes against each other, some half steps and whole steps in here.
So it makes it sound even spookier. And then we have this ritardando going into 11 where it just
automatically gets faster, almost twice as fast, if not more. So you want to make sure that you guys
practice that tempo change. And we've got lots of excitement here. Lots of energy in the wind players.
The trumpets in the alto sax have the melody here. There are some articulation style, style markings
written on the notes. You're going to want to make sure you spend some time on that to really execute the
style that's written on the page. Because the clarinet part sits in the shalamo register, there's going to be
a lot of considerations for fingerings because we're in the key of D minor. So there's lots of F sharps.
That would be something you may want to consider marking in their parts. Beforehand, there are even
some times in this where you can't use, it would be a perfect opportunity to use a fork to be natural,
but you can't because of the lower notes that you're coming from. So make sure that you're looking at those
parts individually and it's a great sectional work for the clarinets in this.
There's also an optional harpsichord part and it turns into, like on a synthesizer and it turns into a voices part later.
I've never played it with the synthesizer part, but it sounds really cool. So if you have that in your band hall,
I would highly recommend adding that in. It just adds to the spookiness flavor.
Lots of trills and different things, tambourines, ratchets as we're kind of making our way to 19.
19, as Lara said, is where the clarinets have that shalamo register melody. You do have to be sure to mark
when it can and cannot be forked, be natural. And that's really, really important throughout this piece
so the clarinets aren't flipping. The same thing comes back in the alto sax part later on.
So just make sure you're going through one measure at a time and pre-marking your parts as much as possible
for the students so they can have success the first time. There's some cool effects in trumpet and
vibra slap and all kinds of neat little things here and there.
And making sure that we pay close attention, this is a repeated section at 19. So making sure the students
understand if they play the both times or if they only enter the second time, just making sure that they're aware of that.
That's the new part, yes.
And we have some accidentals that carry through the measure. Again, that's one of those pre-marking the parts
for students can really help them be successful quicker.
The low person part, low read tuba is pretty important in this piece. They often have like one and two and three
going into the next section. It comes back over and over and over. So each time they have that working
on making sure that that sounds really nice and also staccato, but that it just sounds cool for them
because it gives them a little something to look forward to. As we go into 28, the trumpets have the melody
here and there's a cool little like harmony part with sax and horn. We're not as tooty here.
We're thinned out a little bit just making sure you're talking about balance.
This is a little more flowy. I feel like this section because there's less to new to staccato accent.
This is just a little more flowy in this section.
And then the flutes and oboes get to come in to join the trumpets for a little bit.
And then we have some forte piano and accents on one and three here as we're coming into 36.
Again, with the three and four and one with tuba low read, but this time with accents instead of staccatos.
As you can see in the synthesizer part, now we've got the voices sound to make it sound spooky if you use that.
And then the fluton obo have that part and it's this cool little like chromatic moment on top of the trumpet melody.
And it continues on and on for a while.
And you want to make sure I know when I have played this, my students that chromaticism is really cool.
It's the new part. It's what's new and different.
But because of how it's orchestrated here, it can be overpowering and really dominant in the ensemble.
So making sure that your students understand. Yes, it is the new part.
It is really cool, but it's meant to be in effect and does not need to cover up the melody.
And this again is a great teaching opportunity for you as a band director to review all those chromatic fingerings for your woodwinds.
And also like the alto sax part says E sharp in it in measure 38, getting a chance to review like in harmonics.
And what is this note and what does this mean?
You can do it as the whole band.
It's like a good like theory review at the beginning of the year, which I think is pretty cool.
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.
And then trumpet and sax bring the melody back at 52 and you go faster.
So it's an automatic just quicker by about 12 beats per minute. It's like, oh, I'm getting scared.
More. That's right. You're running faster. You're running faster.
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.
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.
You get this cool effect in the mallet two part was scraping on the bars of the time. This is such a cool part.
My kids loved it playing this part. It is meant to sound cacophonous.
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.
But this is all building this forte piano layering on top of each other and the glissandoing and the trombones.
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.
But it also is building the suspense going into the ending.
Then we have another forte piano here at 62.
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.
With the Zylo Bliss as well. Yes. Zylo.
And we want the trombone and the Zylo phone to really lean into that.
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.
Congratulations. We love Dark Ride. Dark Ride is a great piece, not overly challenging, but lots of really good teaching opportunities for your ensemble.
Next is Coffin Races by Jason Nitch. And this piece is really fun.
It's written to be based on what are actually called the Coffin Races, which happen in Colorado every year.
And it's goes along with the Raising of the Dead Festival.
And literally they like have coffins like rolling down a hill.
So it's kind of a cool thing just to kind of teach your kids about too.
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.
It's in the key of G minor and 4-4 throughout. Again, there is quite a bit of percussion.
Your snare player is going to be really important in this and your tambourine player.
They're going to play upbeats.
It's going to be very, very important.
A lot. Yes.
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.
Just a quick suggestion. If your tambourine player is having trouble keeping all of those upbeats in time,
you might consider mounting the tambourine and having them play with their, the downbeat on their leg
and the upbeat on the tambourine so that their hands are playing 1 and 2 and 3 and 4 and,
but if you mount the tambourine, then you can do that.
And again, I would only do that if your tambourine player is struggling,
but that is an option to make that part a little bit easier for them.
Just like Dark Ride, this has an important ratchet part as well.
So just some other little accessory parts that are important to cover in the percussion.
Then it starts out with a high E in the trumpet one part and a lower E in trumpet two.
So make sure you're...
The trumpet range on this is pretty high.
High E and F some of the time. Yeah.
Clarinet range isn't as significant as the trumpet range it does.
Same thing about E to F, I think.
It does play over the break, but it's not, it's not a crazy range for first clarinet.
But that trumpet, first trumpet is starting on high E.
You gotta make sure you have a solid trumpet section.
Yeah.
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.
And then we get the tubas get a trill.
I mean, they lost their minds the first time I played this.
Like, oh my gosh, we finally get to do what the woodwinds do all the time.
So it's fun and then you get the one and two and one and two and that Laura was talking about.
Tambourine's got a hold down those up beats.
Then we have adding in the melody part with like trumpet oboe clarinet.
And then we kind of have an echo and the tenor voices and you really want to focus on the style here.
Ta ta ta ta ta ta ta ta ta.
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.
Then we have a clarinet melody at 13 with just a great easy rhythm, fun articulations here.
Low people are going to lead us going into 21.
Yeah.
And I would have the clarinets lean on the first note of the slur.
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.
Just lean in on that a little bit to help keep that melody driving forward.
Totally.
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.
And so we want to feature that and bring that out.
And it's got some fun rhythms, a little bit more challenging than dark ride had.
And I'll notice on the clarinet part, the clarinet parts are really independent of each other.
So the first clarinet part is playing more that like counter melody that's happening in the tenor sax and horn.
And the second clarinet is playing that original melody we heard.
So there's a lot of independence there that you want to make sure that your clarinet section is comfortable with.
Then we have everybody coming into measure 29 with some contrary emotion.
We have some people going up in pitch, some people going down in pitch.
So just bringing out the lower voices as much as possible.
And then we have this cool part in the trumpets, one and a three.
And then you have one, blah, lee, three in the horn part.
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.
And notice that the xylophone part is different.
They do not have the two sixteenth notes on the upbeat.
They have a sixteenth triplet on the upbeat.
So I'm just making sure that is correct.
And we do want the xylophone to lean into that and bring that out.
It's easier, obviously, for them to do that than the wind players.
So how, you know, that is correct.
Don't shy away from it. Have them lean into it.
Absolutely.
And the triangle part has the same rhythm as the horn and middle voices in 30.
So they can kind of bring that out too.
They just have like matching parts there.
Then we're back to the same thing we had at the beginning.
Now the low people have the melody.
So we're going to let them come out middle to low horn.
Sorry, trombone and euphonium, no tuba.
And then after they get their little moment in the sunshine,
we add back in with that same little counter melody part in the flutin' oboe.
But now the trumpets have added in.
And then we have another cool part in euphonium and alto that can be brought out.
And I love that combination, that color combination of euphonium and alto.
So, you know, obviously making sure that your altos are coloring that euphonium sound.
Have your euphoniums play that nice and strong, but that's a cool color combination.
Yep.
The flutes get a little higher here in this moment.
So you may even want to consider like having some of them play it down an octave,
or maybe just not all of them playing the high Fs and Gs,
but that's kind of up to you in your flute section.
Then at 53, we're back to what we had at the beginning,
but now we are, oh nope, it's exactly the same.
Then we add in some trills in the flute and oboe along with the same da da da da da that we had before.
61, same melody again in clarinet and alto.
More trombone glissandos, which, you know, we love all of these effects.
This is like, I think a fall concert is a really good time to get to explore some of those cool effects.
Yeah, for sure.
And teaching like flutes and oboes about different trills.
Look, we have like different trills on different notes, so they get to learn that stuff.
Then we have really cool part at 69 with flutter tonguing in the trumpet section.
Speaking of cool effects.
Yeah, they think that this is really fun to play.
And then, and of course, if they can't flutter tongue, they can just play it straight.
And listen, if you're having trouble getting your trumpets to practice, I guarantee you.
If you teach them how to flutter tongue, they will spend a ton of time practicing to master that.
For sure.
Then this is kind of like the beginning where we have one and two and three, four, and then we have the ending trill.
And then the percussion break for two measures 82 brings it all home again.
We've got flute on that first melody part and then trumpet on the second melody part.
So we're just kind of all mixing it in here trying to layer it so it's not too cacophonous.
We have a nice trill into the end.
So it's got a pretty easy finish. And like Laura mentioned, it's pretty repetitive.
Just you have to be a little bit more intentional about balancing to the right parts throughout the piece.
All right. And our final piece in this episode is zombie tango.
This piece is in G minor as well for four throughout.
I love this piece. I think this is so fun.
Kids love it. It's extremely programmatic.
I suppose like a lot of the fall concert music we're discussing, but it's extremely programmatic.
So I mean, you are literally picturing two zombies tangoing.
So fun.
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.
Bongo, Bongo, clar base, we're all kinds of fun percussion that I do think is really important.
The percussion are featured a lot in these little punctuated moments to help kind of add to the cool.
Castanets are important. But this piece is great.
It's got a lot of great style to teach to and and like differences, right?
So we have like staccato accents.
We have tenuto accents here at the beginning.
So teaching the students about how does that sound different than just a regular accent or a regular tenuto?
Not difficult rhythms, but just teaching some, you know, and beat rhythms.
We have a fermata going into five.
Now in the introduction, because it is 2D rhythmically for the whole ensemble, this is an opportunity for you.
Like I spent time with my group really working to make sure that the chord balance was appropriate in this.
It's easy for the balance to sound off.
The whole band is playing the same rhythm here.
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.
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.
And then at five, we have same tempo.
We have the clarinet melody along with the trumpets.
Much softer here.
Yes, quieter. We're starting the tango.
We've got all the percussion instruments coming in.
We've got like lows coming in featuring going into eight.
One, two, three, four, and kind of leaning on those accents when you see them to make it feel like a tango.
Over and over again, you'll see some little interspersed four and a one coming in throughout the piece in different instruments.
So just bringing that out when you hear it.
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.
But kids like it. They see 16th notes on their music.
And they think this is hard.
This is a hard piece.
But the technique of it is not as challenging as you might think.
We've got, like she said, some like interspersed percussion effects at 12.
Then we have the shaker coming in at 14 with the trumpet melody.
And now we have a different style.
So just bringing that out, making sure the accents are brought out whenever the students have them.
The lows have like tenutos, four leading to one.
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.
And being real intentional about which notes are slurred and which notes are not.
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.
So just being real mindful in the melodic parts especially that the slurs are executed correctly.
We have some like beat one, two, three and four entrances as we're going into measure 23.
And then again the four yanda one and that comes from most of the band.
Then we have them doing the upper woodwinds kind of have that same effect over and over here.
And we have all the brass joining and with the trumpets on that little melody part.
Trumpets are written up pretty high on that trumpet one part.
So just be aware of the range and the clarinet one part is much higher here going up to high A.
Yes.
So might need to be something where it's more soloistic or you have just one person play here.
But just make sure that you're matching as you go into the upper register.
At 27.
I love that there's an opportunity for a flute or clarinet solo if that is something that suits your ensemble.
If you're trying to train a soloist and preparation for contest season, this is great practice.
It certainly does not have to be a solo.
You can have your entire flute section or have it be a little trio or a clarinet section on that.
But I like that this little section right here just changes just a little bit still with the cool and the percussion.
What's going on in percussion here is really important.
So making sure that that's really solid before we get back to measure 35, which is more of the same.
Like what we had before.
There's a cool little timpani part here that sounds like something like stopped or dropped off the zombie.
Like he lost an arm or something.
Like it's got the little...
They get a gliss.
Yeah.
So that's kind of a fun effect.
Then we go up a little bit higher in the trombone euphonium part two going into measure 38.
So just be sure to spend some time on that making sure that they're totally in tune on their upper D's.
But this is a lot of the same thing.
45 clarinet and sax get to have the important part here with a little weirdo and vibra slap coming in.
And that kind of things out overall.
It does.
And that this because this is softer and we have the first clarinet and the alto part up high.
The first alto part up high.
This can be a little bit of a tuning issue here.
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.
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.
Trumpets get to come in with a little interspersed moment along with flutes as we're going through this little more soloistic type section.
Everything stylistically, it does change a lot.
So you have to just kind of watch each section.
It's not the same all the way throughout.
But you basically get to teach every marking through this piece, which is pretty cool.
Then we have a little bit of like a like divided part in trombone with a gliss downward.
Just lots of cool effects in here.
And then 60 we're back to the same melody again as the very beginning.
And we're just kind of driving the whole piece home.
It's kind of repetitive here.
It goes kind of on and on.
Trumpets are still at pretty high in the first trumpet part.
This conversation kind of between the trumpets and then the upward winds and two and three and and two and three.
So making sure that the balance of all of that is appropriate between trumpets and the upper woodwinds.
And then voices with the melody.
Yep. As we go into 72, same thing up higher.
So just be sure we're thinking about all of that again.
It's a lot of the exact same thing we've had.
Same thing at 80.
Now we're just adding in more accents to make it be more exciting leading into the very end.
Big finish.
We have a cool like trumpet divided chord here at 88.
It's a literally a four part chord, which is pretty cool.
It makes it sound like an eight like a honking horn or something like that.
Sounds cool.
The timpani gets to do their gliss up again.
That's right.
And then we just have a nice finish to the very end.
This is super fun.
This is a lot of fun again.
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.
Yeah.
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.
And great stylistic challenges as well.
So we hope that you will consider programming one of these pieces at an upcoming fall concert.
Thank you for joining us on this episode of Band BFFs.