Welcome to our podcast, Band BFS.
The podcast where we make your music selection less complicated.
On today's episode, we will be featuring four of our favorite pieces from the TBA, Texas
Band Masters Association Music Reading Clinic.
Those are medium difficulty grades two to three.
The titles are Echoes of Time by Sean O'Loughlin, Always by Joshua Hobbs, Apex Predator by Michael
Orr, and Windpower by Robert Buckley.
Cheers to starting the conversation!
Our first piece we're discussing today is Echoes of Time.
This is a publisher grade about two and a half.
It is in the key of concert E-flat.
It is four four throughout and about three and a half minutes in length.
This piece has a fair amount of percussion.
You can get away with five to six percussionists in this.
Most parts do need to be covered if you needed to cut something you could get rid of the
bell part.
There's no solos or anything like that, but relatively simple percussion.
This piece follows the traditional like slow beginning and then it gets a little faster.
And it's called Echoes of Time because the composer wrote it as kind of like a nod to
John Williams music from Indiana Jones.
So it kind of has like this echo effect going on where like the wood upper people might
have a part and then low people might have a beat later or two beats later.
So this piece is pretty cool.
It's a little bit challenging with counting, but we really like the way that it sounds.
So it starts off in that slow mysterious mode.
And I like as you look through the score of this and listen to this, you'll find that
most of the parts like often what is in the woodwinds is somewhere doubled in the brass,
which for teaching purposes, you know, if you're talking about maybe a sub non-varsity
high school ensemble or a non-varsity high school ensemble, this would be something that
you could do earlier in the year or a varsity band at the middle school level.
It makes it easier knowing that there's often doubling between brass and woodwind instruments.
So at the beginning with the lyrical section, basically what happens is there's different
people changing on different beats.
So like woodwinds might change on beat one and two and then brass would come in on three
and then change on four.
So again, it's got that like echo nature to it.
Then at 13, it goes a little bit faster with a stately trumpet part.
The trumpet part does go up to like an upper F in the first trumpet and the clarinet part
does go above the staff in the first clarinet part as well.
The echo effects just kind of keep coming back and back, but no difficult rhythms.
Everything's just dotted half notes or eighth notes.
At 19, it goes just a little bit more maestoso with more accented nature.
And then it has a pickardy third, I believe is what it's called in 23 and 24 where everybody
goes one, three, one.
And it ends with like a nice fermata.
And then you go much quicker at 25 with a really fun melody part.
One of the things I like about the introduction, I mean, he has all of these tempo markings
in, but it almost has a rubato feel at the beginning.
So you know, great opportunities to teach watching the conductor, those types of things
for some of your ensembles at 25.
Now we pick up energy.
It's much faster.
It's marked at 144.
There's all these rhythmic statements happening, these punctuations that are happening in the
brass, these moving eighth notes, lots of articulation requirements in terms of technique,
moving tongue and fingers at the same time, especially for the woodwinds.
But it's not anything ridiculous.
Yes.
It's just like one and two and or two and three.
There's no sixteenth note patterns or anything like that.
Just some fast rhythms, you know, eighth note rhythms at a fast pace, some cool percussion
moments in here.
Again, like we said, not a ton of percussion parts, but when they do happen, there's kind
of some cool effects in here, that echo effect like Katie was talking about.
The horn and trumpet have a little melody line at 33 and it's in unison.
So the horns do have to go up kind of higher range, but it's not anything that would be
difficult for a high school non-varsity band or even a varsity middle school band.
Again rhythms are just super easy.
We're just having to make sure that we count and come in at the right time.
This continues on.
We have like a really fun punctuated section at 45 where the whole band has one and four
and then big timpani and like Tom's part.
So it's really cool.
It does sound like any Indiana Jones-esque.
A little bit of some syncopated rhythms in the brass part as well.
And then there's like a part with more lyrical in the upper woodwinds.
It's more like slurred and lyrical in nature.
And then the low brass and high brass are punctuating underneath them.
So it just sounds really cool.
It sounds like music.
And there's lots of style markings like you're going to see accents, you're going to see
staccatos, you're going to see tenuto.
So making sure that your students have that musical vocabulary and are ready to play that.
There are some trills in this.
So a couple of little effects.
Make sure that trills don't cover up, right?
The rest of the ensemble.
We get to 63, now the brass kind of have a little moment where it's almost this half-time
type melody and the woodwinds are moving eighth notes over it.
Lots of woodwind eighth notes making sure that they stay together, moving those fingers
together.
Again, more of this type, this echo type effect.
Yep.
And then as we get towards the end, there's like a real dramatic moment where everybody's
got a piano.
We're going to back down and keep going.
And then there's a, it kind of builds and builds and everybody plays on a different
beat.
One, two, three, four, one, two.
And it builds to a fermata and then a cutoff.
And then there's literally three beats of silence.
It's almost like a grand pause.
Yeah.
Except it's metered, right?
And then everybody comes back in and it has a really fun finish again with big timpani
and Tom's moments.
So this piece is fun.
If you're looking for a piece to like play maybe on a spring concert or even if you're
a conductor of an all region band, this would be fun to do with students.
It is just a lot of fun because it sounds like Indiana Jones, which is awesome.
It has a lot of energy, but teachable, great things that you can work on with your students,
but relatively easily teachable.
Our next piece is Always by Joshua Hobbs.
And it is also marked as a grade 2.5 on the PML.
So this one is absolutely gorgeous.
We love this.
This is written, I think this is a fabulous piece to introduce a younger high school band
or an older middle school band to really beautiful lyrical style.
I mean, lots of sustained phrases.
The title of this piece, the composer says, was taken from one of the most powerful quotes
from Harry Potter.
So for all of you Harry Potter fans out there, maybe you will catch that nod.
Admittedly, I do not get that.
But he says that it is about how he feels about his wife, that he will love her always
and forever.
So you can imagine the beautiful music that this conveys his emotions for his wife.
It's about four minutes in length.
It is pretty long.
It is in 4-4 in the key of concert B-flat throughout.
And I mean, just a ton of like, I think of taffy phrases in this like no seamless sound,
no breath sump bar lines.
I mean, you look at it and you see a bunch of white notes on the page, but it I think
is deceptively challenging.
Yeah, and it's absolutely beautiful.
So the percussion parts are not very difficult.
So just keep that in mind.
They're playing.
It's a little piece, but really you could play this piece with probably four people
or five.
And if you program something like this, I mean, always we recommend keeping your percussion
students in mind.
If you're programming this, you want to make sure that you're programming other pieces
that are challenging your percussion students.
So it starts off with like a beautiful mid voice melody.
Trumpets kind of take over a lot of like four leading to one.
Lots of hairpin dynamics.
We're going to do a crescendo, day crescendo has a beautiful alto saxophone solo at five
or it could be a solely as well.
And the clarinet part is talking back and forth with the saxophones.
Then the flutes kind of take over and have the melody along with the saxophone.
There's some challenging cross tuning here in the woodwinds between saxophone flute and
oboe all in the same octave with each other.
So something to consider for sure.
This is a bit more of a demanding piece in that the trombone euphonium part are not the
same.
They do not mirror each other most of the way through.
So you do want to make sure you have like more mature euphoniums that can count and
play their own part.
The horn line is really gorgeous.
Many times throughout this piece as well.
Lots of really beautiful eighth note phrases that are flowing in and out with the same
melody that comes back and forth so it's just like added an extra textural layer.
And it's so because this is so slow right here those eighth note moving lines that you
have that are between clarinet and alto especially is going to be like, you know, making sure
they're moving their fingers in time together.
Younger players are certainly going to tend to rush and compress those rhythms.
There's a lot of really beautiful writing for the euphonium.
And it a lot of times gets to be with maybe tenor or barry sax and bassoon.
So they don't have like one of those typical boring parts.
It is features like the color instruments a lot more, which I think is really makes
it a unique piece.
There's lots of different rhythms.
There's some triplet rhythms.
There's dotted eighth, sixteenth rhythms.
But again, it's a slow metronomic pace.
So it's not anything difficult to play articulation wise.
You have to make sure kids can understand like going back and forth between a triplet
feel and an eighth note feel in the same measures as well.
There's a cool chimes part, which you know, you don't always have that every day.
And then the horn line goes on alone with the melody and everybody else is backing them
up.
Then the euphoniums and trumpets take over with bassoon.
So again, he did a very like interesting color pairing on the melody throughout along
with clarinet one.
That gorgeous little horn feature in there is also cued in alto.
So it is not the range is not extensive for horn at all, but it is cued in alto if horns
are not a strength because they are literally the only people who play the melody in that
section there.
We start to add more people in doubling on that same melody.
We have this gorgeous counter melody that gets added in with the first trumpets and some
trombones, but we thicken up the texture with the woodwinds and the horns doubling what's
happening in the woodwinds.
More cool chime effects.
Otherwise, just a lot of effects in the percussion section.
And then this really interesting moment where there's it's like a woodwind and percussion
feature and you get some cool color statements from like the bassoon.
And again, it's cued in other instruments, but I really like his writing here.
At 39, it's back to thinned out in nature.
So the horns and tenor sax start off and then the trumpets come in and kind of thicken
it up a little bit.
Then we all crescendo with the ritardando and then hit a big moment at 43 with just
big moments.
Now everybody in the upper woodwinds and trumpet has that alto solo from before.
And then that cool counter melody line comes back in clarinet two this time bassoon, tenor
sax, horn and euphonium.
It's just gorgeous.
And it's like a conversation back and forth.
And then we all kind of lead in with another ritardando and now some accents hitting into
49 to 50.
So it's a big moment, a big cool low brass moment with euphonium, low reeds.
The euphonium part in this, I think is really, I think it's a really cool, really cool euphonium.
The timpani gets to play a really cool part as well while we just have some like trilling
and soft parts in the upper woodwinds.
And then it kind of thins out a little bit towards the end.
We end with like this really pretty like release, fermata eighth note.
And then everybody comes in on beat three and then softer into beat one.
And the end, I will tell you those last six measures or so I think might be one of the
most challenging parts of the piece, just making sure alignment is exactly in time,
breathing together, starting together, not bumping the starts of notes.
But a absolutely beautiful piece, gorgeous, highly recommend if you're looking for something
to stretch your students musically.
In a lyrical way, yes.
Our next piece is called Apex Predator by Michael Orr.
And this piece is rated as a grade two on the PML.
All right.
So Apex Predator is in the key of concert B flat and four four and three four.
It kind of goes or four four and two four.
Like it does a little bit of four and three four mixed meter in this.
Oh, you're right.
I apologize.
I'm missing and mixing the other piece.
So a little bit of mixed meter in this.
This was one of my favorite pieces from the new music clinic.
I thought it was really, really cool.
The percussion in this is awesome.
There are a lot of percussion.
You need six players minimum on this one.
And the most important vibes, timpani and the Tom part.
If you have more than six players, you can certainly split some of the parts and make
it a little bit easier on your kids.
But this is this piece is meant to represent that the predator at the top of the food chain,
right?
The lion, the one at the very top, the apex predator.
So such such a cool piece.
The whole piece starts off mysterious and slow with a very extended flute solo that
you could also make into a flute solely if you would like to.
And it's supposed to represent like the apex predator is like creeping in the bushes looking
for its prey.
So it's like very slow.
And then there's like these little like oney and a twoy and a three and a four, like from
different instruments in the clave.
It's get to have it vibraphone.
It's like little like what's happening over there.
Those kind of like cool effects.
There's trombone glissandoes down like, ooh, the apex predators on the right.
Oh, it's on the left.
So it's really neat.
The kids like the writing because it is so just effect driven.
Now, a lot of them don't play for a while.
So make sure you play it with a group that can can handle that.
Then there's an abrupt Allegro.
It changes to being about three times as fast or twice as fast.
And it's now in three, four time when we get to this section, I really, really feel like
there's this rhythmic ostinato that first shows up in the percussion and then it eventually
gets passed around the whole ensemble.
I feel like the percussion in this piece, it needs to be treated as its own ensemble.
Like I would strongly recommend even teaching it to your percussion separate from the wind
players and approaching it like it was a percussion ensemble, they need to be that confident in
their parts independently in order for it to blend well when it adds in with the rest
of the ensemble.
There's some odd syncopated things that if they aren't super comfortable with, it's not
going to align well with the band.
But the percussion part is so cool treated as its own ensemble.
It starts off with Marimba playing the ostinato and then the vibraphone comes in with the
melody, then the toms come in four measures later.
So it's like it's layering and layering different parts.
At 25, the flutes come in with the first statement of the melody.
And then the brass come in while they are finishing their melody with these little hits,
one and, and.
So it's really fun because it's like now that you're looking for the predator, he's coming
for you.
You hear all these cluster chords.
Yeah, yeah, it's really neat.
At 41, the flute, clarinet and oboe have the melody.
And again, we have these hits and brass, but they're not like the same each time.
So the kids have to be really good at counting and know when their hits are going to occur.
Then it goes back into four for and it's kind of lyrical in nature, even though it's still
fast with clarinet and horn having melody.
Then the trumpets kind of take over that melody.
And then it leads up again to where we have, we have a little percussion feature for a
second in the Tom's part.
And then it kind of dies back down.
And then we have a three, four part again with an ostinato and percussion.
And this is the melody again, but now it's in the mid voices, euphonium, trombone, horn,
alto and tenor.
And very exposed and very exposed.
There's nothing else going on.
So they have to really be able to hear their part and match and tune across the ensemble.
Then we're leading up again.
At 69, it's all the upper people again with the melody, including trombone one this time.
So sorry, trombone part this time.
So it does go up a little higher into upper D and E flat in this piece.
It's really thickly scored in the middle, but it's really exciting and fun.
77, we go back into four, four, and it's another little lyrical nod again with horn and alto
sax.
But now the upper woodwinds have a little counter melody on top, which is fun.
So in my mind, I hear this as I listen to it.
When the percussion are playing and aggressive and it's all of that stuff, that's like the
predator.
And then when we get this little flowy, the percussion drop out and you just hear the
cymbal stuff.
And it's more that flowy melody.
That to me is like the prey.
The thing being, yeah, the prey running and larynx.
And then it continues kind of this flowing nature for a while in the four, four time signature.
This is a great opportunity for you to teach where to breathe, not on bar lines so that
it's very seamless, that all whole notes go all the way to a rest.
Or if you have a half note, it goes all the way to four.
So if you're starting on B2, sorry.
But just making sure that the values are all the way through and people aren't all breathing
at the same time.
Just teaching that is really important.
Then again, at 93, we go back into three, four, much of the same.
We have like a more accented part at 104 and then a humongous active percussion part with
vibraphone being the melody.
And it's the only thing with the melody going on in the ensemble.
Yep.
At 109, we get all these like cool glissandos and rips from the band along with these big
hits.
So this is definitely like the prey and the predator fighting here.
This is the fight scene.
And it goes on for a long time with a big lead up in the trumpet too and horn part with
like bell tones along with clarinet too and alto too, big 2D accents.
Brass are going to be really important for giving this powerful effect.
And then it's literally unison rhythms with big power hits and then big rests.
So everybody has to know how to count their parts.
Not difficult, but it all lines up.
Then we kind of come down from there.
It's like the fight is over, percussion takes over again.
Then it ends with the flute solo, maybe like the prey died and the flute is sad.
It doesn't go back to being slow, but it's just more lyrical in nature like the beginning.
And then it fades out and it ends really quietly.
So this piece is so fun.
The kids love it because it does have like a yes, it has a cinematic or a programmatic
feel to it.
So it's fun.
You could program it with a with a top band in a middle school or in a non varsity or sub
non varsity in a high school easily.
Our next piece is called Wind Power by Robert Buckley.
This one is by far the most challenging of the pieces that we're discussing today.
It's a publisher grade three, though I really feel like it's a pretty challenging grade
three.
It's in the key of four or sorry in the key of concert B flat.
And in the time signature of four, four, it does have some two, four, some back and forth
between four, four and two, four at the beginning and elsewhere in the piece.
But for the most part, it is in four, four.
The percussion, there is quite a bit of percussion in this.
This whole piece is meant to convey the idea of what it says, wind power.
So lots of wind effects.
Because of that, I really feel like all of the percussion parts are really important
to convey that effect.
You're going to need at least six to seven percussionists to pull this one off effectively.
It is also the longest of the pieces that we've discussed so far.
It's about five and a half minutes in length.
So most likely something that you're considering programming more with a high school ensemble
or a middle school ensemble that has some chops that can handle the endurance of this.
Maybe at the end of the year, like a spring concert.
So it starts off with lots of power.
It's fast.
It starts off in four, four to two, four, four, four to two, four.
So it's got this really cool like nature to it, but it's got big hits and then long notes
from the upper people.
One end to hold, one end to una.
So it's got like just this neat like back and forth between lows and highs.
Then the clarinets and saxes have to play this part that's just, it's not difficult,
but it's just slurry little patterns and they have to play it 100% aligned with no percussion
help.
So everybody has to really 100% know their part and move the time in their fingers.
And it is not, it's not one of those eighth note patterns that is like it happens for
one measure and then repeats the next measure.
It is, it's a little melody in and of itself.
So it is really important that that would be like broken down and spend time on and alignment
on this.
And this happens several times in this piece.
So it is definitely, it's, it sounds like wind building.
Yes.
So the clarinet and alto started, then the flutes add in with them, then the trumpets
add in along with marimba.
So trumpets are moving their fingers like it would win speed here.
And especially, and this has three trumpet parts, three clarinet parts, two alto parts,
three trombone parts and you phony, you phony them and trumpet.
I mean, you phony them and trombone are not the same.
Yes.
And three trumpet parts.
So it's a little bit more beefy for sure.
Then we get to this little ostinato part in the low people at 17.
It kind of reminds me of just like, like a, like a wind power pumping, like the baseline
keeps going and then the ostinato comes in with another part.
So it keeps like kind of passing along with this like slurry part.
I like the baseline.
The euphoniums have to play an upper C and then an upper E flat over and over on an ostinato
on this little syncopated rhythm.
So it's pretty important.
You have pretty strong low brass players for sure.
And then we're continuing the little wind effects.
There's some tremolos in the clarinet two, three alto part.
And then we're, then we kind of like, we have the ostinato happening in the clarinets, but
then more of like a lyrical in nature mid part with like trombone and sax and trumpet.
So you're still getting that driving wind energy from that ostinato and the clarinets.
It's also being doubled in the mallet part as well.
And that passes throughout the band.
Most everybody gets a chance to play that ostinato at some point.
Yep.
Then we go back to kind of like the beginning with the 4 4 2 4 back and forth.
And then we start up again and at 55 now we've got the, the wind is still in the same people,
but it's a completely different wind pattern.
So it's not like Laura said, it's not like something where you'd have the same thing
over and over.
You have to do like little jumps and things like that.
And this, this part here, there are tons of hairpin dynamics in this.
So all of the, the, the alto and clarinet parts, like, like Katie said, all of that
eighth note moving together.
And then there's this long note value in some of the other woodwind instruments, bassoon
and 10 or some of the lower reeds that are happening underneath again, all that hairpin
dynamics.
And then these interesting little pops of sound that come in from some of the other brass
instruments and also some percussion too.
Then we're continuing this little section.
It's just, it's kind of intricately written where not everybody has the same thing.
So this is a pretty mature piece.
You're going to definitely have to make sure you've got good players on all the parts like
trumpet two and three do not always double.
And like again, the euphoniums have a higher range on this piece.
So do trombones, clarinets go up above the staff often.
So all of your woodwinds need to have good technique.
Then we get to this bell tone section.
It's like the wind has been building up and then it is one, three, one, three.
So it's cool.
And then percussion is kind of jamming underneath them.
The percussion part here are putting in all of these little, these little punctuated statements.
It's not just like they're setting the pulse for you or not.
They're adding these effects, which is super cool.
79 comes back again with the same little wind effect in the upper woodwinds.
Then we have like a tenudo melody in the euphonium and trombone one and two line.
Trombone three acts almost like a baseline.
And then they continue on with the ostinato and the, and the different wind effects.
It kind of goes on and on more bell tones, same little percussion effects here and there.
Clarinets are going up to a high D above the staff, then we have the same thing from the
beginning where we have an alignment issue where nobody else is playing except the woodwinds
on the eighth notes, but now we have more of them.
So this is kind of tricky if you don't have kids that can play on a steady pulse on eighth
notes at 140.
Yeah.
This is all three clarinets moving eighth notes, all the flutes, all saxophones, like
just, just making sure again that technique is, is appropriate.
It slows down a little bit at 103 and everybody's got to watch really carefully.
Then there's these really cool like little pizzicato hits from the low reeds and low brass
while we continue the hairpin dynamics and the flowing nature from the upper woodwinds
and upper brass.
At 21, there's a conversation between upper woodwinds and trumpet and then it descends
into horn and euphonium.
We start to add more low brass in on some of those little interjections here.
Yes.
So each part is very individualized, so kids have to be really good at counting.
Then we go back to the faster speed with the ostinato and again the, the woodwindy type
of nature.
It's very much the same.
Like what we had.
4, 4 and 2, 4 again.
And it all ends with everybody playing a 2D rhythm at the very end, some tremolos and
then upper woodwinds ending it.
So this piece is really cinematic and it's fun and the kids would definitely be able
to like feel the wind when they play this piece.
It's high energy.
It is a really, really cool piece.
Just be prepared that, you know, your ensemble needs to be able to handle the challenges.
We hope you'll consider programming some of these pieces in your future and thank you
for joining us on this episode of Band BFS.