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Welcome to our podcast, Fan BFFs.

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The podcast where we make your music selection less complicated.

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In today's episode, we will be discussing Elizabethan Dance by Mark Williams.

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Cheers to starting the conversation.

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All right.

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This piece is about two minutes long.

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It's in the key of concert B flat and four, four throughout.

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It has a very easy range, a single clarinet part, single trumpet part, a doubled low brass,

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low reed part.

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This piece would be fantastic for a young band, even like an honor ensemble with your

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beginning band, something like that would be perfect.

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Percussion parts are pretty limited.

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Snare, bass, tambourine, and bells.

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This is something you could do with a very limited percussion section, maybe two students.

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If you have extra percussion that you're looking for parts to cover, you could even double

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the snare drum part on tom and double the bells part on marimba.

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You have lots of flexibility and options.

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This piece is super light and airy.

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It's a dance type feel and kids love it because it's pretty friendly.

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It's not got a lot of range like Laura said, and the rhythms are also very friendly.

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There's just quarter notes, eighth notes, half notes, and dotted half notes throughout,

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not even a dotted quarter note.

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While it is in the key of concert B flat, there are a few little accidentals thrown

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in here and there.

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You can use the opportunity to talk about accidentals and the rule of accidentals, how

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they carry through measures, that sort of thing.

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Very modal sounding with lots of A flat accidentals.

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It starts off with most of the piece being in the upper woodwind and upper brass for the

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melody.

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Low brass does not have the melody except for one and a half measures at the very end.

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If you have a little bit of a weaker low brass, low reed section, this might be the perfect

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piece for you.

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I would say the hardest thing is that the tubas have to go down to a low A flat several

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times in the piece.

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That's something to consider if your tubas struggle with range.

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The piece again is light and airy.

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It starts out at measure one with just one, two, and three, four, one, and you'll teach

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that the woodwinds need to phrase through and don't breathe there.

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Four and one, two, and three, and four, one, two, and then they can breathe there before

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their pickups into measure three, but the low people cannot breathe there as they keep

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the sound moving.

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Then it's very much the same thing till measure eight.

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This is a great piece for teaching that a dotted half note goes all the way to beat

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four.

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When you're marking in your parts like Laura and I have discussed on our podcast that we

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love to do, I would draw a vibrato symbol over every dotted half note for the flutes

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and saxes and an arrow and write off on four.

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That way the kids know that they have to push their sound all the way through.

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At nine, the clarinets get the melody now with horn and saxophone, so it's the mids

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of the group and the uppers get a little bit of a break, but it's the same melody and you

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talk about the exact same things with them as well.

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There's lots of unison rhythm, the one, two, and three, four, or one, and two, three, four

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happening throughout the ensemble.

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It would be real important with a young group to focus on matching the style, matching the

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articulation, and that would be something that I would even take one of those basic

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rhythms and put it on a daily drill exercise.

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Have them play it on a concert F, or you can play it on Remington, but just get them to

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really listen for matching the style, firm articulation, but lifted.

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And again, doing that and incorporating that into your daily drill will help them remember

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that and apply it to the music more easily.

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While the trumpet part doesn't go up above an A, the horn part does go up to a C, so

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that is just something to note if you have kind of a weaker horn section, but hopefully

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they can handle that.

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Again, it's a lot of the same throughout with uppers having the melody.

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There's like a new melody introduced at 17, and the flutes and the oboes, and the bells,

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and everybody else can kind of come down, but it is a very tooty piece like Laura said.

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So making sure you're talking to kids about balance, who to listen for, what the most

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important part is will be important, especially for your low brass and low reeds that do not

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have the melody the whole piece.

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They're going to want to just jam out, so make sure that they're playing softly underneath.

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At 25, we have a cute little woodwind choir with just the upper voices, not even low woodwinds,

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and it's flute only, no oboes if you happen to have oboes in your group, and they just

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have a little choir and very much like an Elizabethan type of piece.

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And then at 29, the middle brass come in with horn and trumpet, and then we finally add

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in low brass at 33.

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So I love that section.

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It's a great opportunity to showcase different colors in your ensemble and then talk about

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that with the group.

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At measure 33, we come back in with trumpets leading the melody, altos and horns are also

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playing along with them.

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The low brass are just continuing.

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They sit a lot on concert F and B flat in this.

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They're playing fifths most of the time.

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That's right.

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That's right.

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Or a little mini scale every once in a while.

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So those middle voices get an opportunity to kind of show off here.

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We add the upper woodwinds back in at measure 37.

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And again, low brass, their part does change a little bit here.

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They go from instead of playing half notes and quarter notes, they have some rest, just

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making sure they're counting their parts carefully.

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And again, matching style.

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This is such a cute little piece and great for the melodies.

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I think are really, what is the word that I'm looking for?

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Like that.

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I think that's right.

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That's exactly right.

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At 41, everybody's back in and we still have the upper people with the melody and it's

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back like the very beginning.

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We added tambourine a little while back too, so that just adds to that renaissance-y type

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feel.

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At 49, it's an exposed section with clarinet and saxophone only.

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And so you do want to make sure that your kids sound really good.

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It's just for three measures.

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But that's an important thing to look at.

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It's not like above the break in clarinet or anything.

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That just continue making sure that everybody moves together, articulates together and has

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the same style.

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And then everybody has pickups, three and four and one, going into 53.

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And then there's a little flute moment at 54 and 55 alone.

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And then it's echoed with the low brass and low reeds.

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That's their one little moment in the sunshine for a measure and a half.

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And then everybody ends the piece together with an accent.

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So throughout the whole piece, there's no style markings other than that last accent,

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which is good because you're just teaching the kids just light style all the way throughout.

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Almost like, not like march style, but kind of.

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It's just like a dance type style.

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I love at the end of this that the one and a half measures of low brass feature is cued

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in the trumpet part.

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So if your low brass can't handle the eighth note technique moving through that, you can

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actually cover it in the trumpets.

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And I think that's really smartly written for young groups.

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It is literally the only time low brass have to play eighth notes.

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So again, this piece is great and a piece that I have played several times with my sub

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non varsity band and I will consider in the future as well because no matter what the

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instrumentation is for your group, you can smartly hide things or feature different things

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that are really good for your group.

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So we hope that you will consider programming this piece, Liz a beat and dance in the future.

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And thanks for joining us on this episode of band BFFs.