Welcome to our podcast and BFF's the podcast where we make your music selection less complicated.
On today's episode we will be discussing rippling watercolors by Brian Balmages.
Cheers to starting the conversation.
This is an absolutely beautiful lyrical piece.
It is in the key of concert E flat 4 4 throughout.
It's about four minutes in length.
It has split clarinet parts, alto parts, trumpet parts and trombone.
It calls for five separate percussion parts.
While the percussion parts are not technically demanding they are extremely important to
the overall effect of the piece so you do need all of the parts covered.
And because the percussion is kind of limited in the amount of participation they have
in the piece we feel like this is a piece that if you choose to program it it should
be paired with something else on your concert that does challenge the profession a little
more and keeps them a little more actively engaged.
So this piece is absolutely gorgeous and it is a short rippling piece.
It's only 58 measures but again four minutes in length.
So this piece is so slow the whole time and it's beautiful but you have to make sure that
you are teaching your children an internal sense of pulse in order for this piece to
stay together and be effective.
Right before we started recording this I was talking to Laura about the fact that I've
played this piece before and I wish I had told past Katie to come up with a cool thing
to do with the kids but it's called rippling watercolors to think about how when you paint
with watercolors how the colors kind of bleed together and things like that it would be
really cool to program an activity with your kids in band class where you give them a little
watercolor palette and talk to them about if you put one stroke of watercolor down and
then the color just bleeds out and then you put down another color and it bleeds out and
then they bleed together.
That'll just give them an actual visual representation of the beautiful music that Mr. Balmages has
put onto paper.
That would be a really cool thing to do because it's just what a beautiful piece.
The color combinations that he writes are really stunning.
So it starts off with just clarinet and bass clarinet beautiful color family and then we
add in, no we don't add in, we just have chords now in the first clarinet part, the second
clarinet part goes down to a low E so it's just like beautiful this clarinet moment.
It's the first paint stroke on the watercolor page.
Then euphonium and horn come in with this beautiful voicing underneath them and throughout
this piece basically on every single beat sometimes on and beats new voices and colors
are coming in.
So a strategy would be to bop certain moments so that your kids all can hear those different
voices coming in and the alignment as well.
It might even be worth taking all slurs out at the beginning of learning the piece to
make sure that everything lines up because that's really important.
There's no pulse underneath from any kind of percussion instrument throughout the piece.
It's just really important that kids have a good sense of pulse as well.
Once the precision is locked in or better and you're adding those slurs back in like
Katie was talking about then I would relate this to like a flow study.
I'm looking at the euphonium part and so making your air stretch getting air between notes
and not making note transitions bumpy.
So treat it exactly like you would a Chick-A-Wit's flow study.
As Laura mentioned all the percussion parts are important.
The timpani often has these little hits kind of like I thought of them as like little heart
beats when I was teaching this to the students.
I don't know what it is but he just keeps playing like two and and then big timpani
roles too but they're important.
Then the tubas and berry sax and bass clarinet often get these beautiful moments.
There's even a contra bass clarinet part written.
I don't personally have one but if you do and you have a great player that would really
beef up this low reed sound.
It's just beautiful throughout.
And then at measure seven the the middle voices the trumpet and horn finally kind of come
in and we are all building up and then we're getting softer again into measure 11.
And again just listening for different entrances and hearing there's lots of color chords and
trombone where they have like a D versus an E flat.
So just making sure you're really talking about tuning and stretching out your air like
Laura said.
And as we kind of day crescendo and you know the entire ensemble is on a whole note that
is piano.
I teach my kids to think about it like a like evaporation right.
You can't see water evaporate but we know that it happens.
That's kind of what we want to have happen with the sound right.
We just want it to kind of evaporate and evaporates all together on beat one of 11.
And then the clarinet one comes in again with this little melodic line and then the
flutes and oboes take over the melodic line with a little counter melody and alto sax.
So it's a big woodwind moment here and when I've played this with my group the flutes
have to just kind of play these half notes going upward and upward not high but to just
a regular concert F.
But because it's a long phrase and we're moving so slowly you just need to talk to them about
making sure that they're keeping their head up and keeping their vibrato going quickly
to help the pitch.
And I tell my flutes to do what I call a head up release where they just bring their head
up and then the sound just like Laura said evaporates in tune going into three four.
And it's marked right here it says holding back slightly.
So you have just this little three measure phrase that already is moving at 60 BPM and
then now you're wanting to hold back slightly.
So it is note wise and rhythm wise not challenging but definitely challenging to make it sound
mature.
There's a three four measure and it's absolute silence and then effectively grand pause.
And then at 16 we come back in and four four and it's all tempo so you're back to the original
tempo.
We have that little timpani heartbeat again and now the percussion is going to get a little
bit more active.
There's this really cool vibraphone part that plays in triplets and then the bells part
plays in eighth notes back and forth as we get further into this section.
And the vibraphone part we just listened to the piece right before we recorded this and
you can't hear the vibraphone part very well in the in the stock recording.
I told my students to not play with soft mallets even though it says soft mallets because I
could not hear that color enough.
And I love it.
I think it's a really cool part so maybe experiment with your vibraphone player with different
strengths of mallets to see what you like with that color.
It's not it's not the melody but it's just really pretty.
Well it really adds to the rippling effect.
Yes triplet one lolly two lolly three lolly right it just adds to that rippling effect.
But you know experiment with what you think this part at 16 starts out with flute and
oboe and saxophone doing a three quarter note crescendo to a whole note and then the clarinets
have a response right after them and it's just really pretty.
Then they do the same thing again it's like this little rippling conversation between
the upper woodwinds and then we get to add in some like tenor sax and middle voices.
Then we have this rippling effect in eighth notes coming down at 21 where there's an eighth
note on every single beat.
This was a measure that we bopped a lot when we played it just so you could hear all the
entrances because there's a cool entrance in euphonium.
There's a cool entrance in the tuba where they play on the and a four and it leads into
measure 22 which is a big impact moment and then the trumpets take over the little melody
and bells bells right there like as the rest of the band sits on a whole note the trumpets
have a little a little moment but bells are playing two and three and four and with an
accidental and it's really pretty it's so cool.
Then the whole band releases on beat two in 23 and I would absolutely write that in on
the part cross out the eighth note right off on two.
Then we have an entrance on beat three right away with clarinets again while the trumpets
are holding the trumpets are the only ones who don't release right they sustain through
that measure on a low b flat so it's kind of its first trumpet only but you want to make
sure that that low b flat sounds really good because it's you know if kids are clamping
up their teeth or it's not very open sounding it can sound immature so you want to make
sure that's just a beautiful low sound.
Then the clarinets come in horns kind of back them up a little bit we're moving there's
a really pretty moment with clarinet two where they play all alone on three four one and
then everybody comes in most everybody at 26 again lows are back in.
I would mark in I know we've talked about this before but on an entrance where many
of the students have rest prior to it I would mark in a breath mark before they come in
obviously you know they're going to breathe before they come in but when they see the
visual breath mark it reminds them to breathe in time and that will help that that entrance
be more secure.
At measure 27 we have a little hit and then trumpets have this like quarter note bell
tone that is on the same note but it's like decreasing in volume as it goes through kind
of like a rippling effect with the vibraphone underneath then the horns have this gorgeous
moment.
This is such a cool horn part.
Yeah at 28 and it's horn and tenor sax but like I'm always like tenor sax let the horns
be important here it's not very difficult it just goes up to a D but it's a beautiful
moment and some of the low voices have beautiful colors underneath them too then it goes back
to the trumpet little hits going up and then they have an octave D at 30 so oh gosh tuning
is fun times there so make sure you mark in all the things in this section so the harmonic
structure starts to change a little bit.
And now we're going back and forth between the vibes doing triple a triple a triple a
triple a b a a a else so making sure your percussion really understand the differences
in the rhythms is important then as Laura said this portion is like just changing the
harmonic structure a little bit.
We have lots of entrances on different beats so listening and teaching the kids to hear
all the different moving parts is so crucial and again bopping it helps so that that way
they can hear each entrance as they come in and with pulse aligning and making sure everybody
moves those quarter notes completely together at such a slow tempo.
There's a cool little trombone part at 33 where they have this neat little G versus
a natural chord then it resolves to F sharp and A natural and then it resolves even further
to C and F. It's really pretty it's hard so I just wanted to point out that that part's
really cool as it kind of comes apart it's almost like again the watercolors are rippling
apart from each other.
Then there's this big timpani suspended cymbal buildup we're building up to measure 37 for
three full measures here.
There's hits back and forth at measure 35 between the lows and the uppers so tuba, berry
sax, bass clarinet and bassoon have one, two, four and this part's really important.
So I taught my kids to like literally play those like accented starts so that you could
hear that different pitch because or that different rhythm entrance because everybody
else has one, three, one, three so you want to hear that different part.
And then we have a humongous big hit at 37.
An arrival moment at 37.
And everyone is together on unison half notes here rhythmically not note wise but we're
on half notes here big full sound and then the horns get this horns and second trumpets
get this other really big moment the whole ensemble sits on a whole note and horns and
trumpets get the one and three, four big huge moment and percussion's doing all kinds of
fun stuff behind them.
They have lots of activity going on in the percussion section but this is a huge moment
for horn and second trumpet you want that to definitely be the dominant voice for a
full four measures for a lot of measures.
Everyone else is you know moving in half notes and whole notes and again that horn and second
trumpet that's that is it needs to be right in time together it needs to be accented.
They have to play accented triplet quarters you want to make sure that you work really
hard on that making sure that they're actually triplets.
And then at 42 there's this measures fun because most everybody plays on beat one but then second
trumpets play on beat two and first trumpets play on three and four so working that movement
of sound up like it's a rippling watercolor effect is fun for the kids but you have to
make sure that everybody else on the whole note gets in here that part happening along
with the percussion having fun underneath on some triplets.
Then the trumpets have a last little like moment two and three and then there's a fermata
everybody's playing together and it's this big moment so the horns are building up then
the first trumpet takes over continuing to build up there's even a divisi first trumpet
chord D versus E and then it resolves to D versus high F and it's huge this moment is
just like huge big big big then everybody cuts off and you come back in soft at mezzo
piano on beat three four with clarinet and flute going into 46 so now 46 this is like
a woodwind choir in this section same type of idea with these longer sustained you know
half notes some quarter notes whole notes lots of shaping you want to make sure that the
moving notes are brought out right every time with no bumps all of this is supposed to be
slurred lyrical very very pretty we arrive on a chord together at measure 47 and then
bells have a little hit underneath that that needs to be right in time that would be another
place that I would have my my bell player player breathe before they played that so that it
comes in in time and then saxophones and flutes we end up doing this conversation here between
saxophones and clarinets and it ends up ending with this clarinet choir much like we started
with at the beginning of the piece then there's a release on measure 52 with that clarinet
choir and the the clarinet one part is holding an upper G or not an upper G but just a throat
tone G for a while the tuning on that chord is really important so spend some time on
that and then at 53 it says stagger breathe because then a lot of people in the band are
going to be holding a note for a little while so make sure you teach them what that means
and then we get like we just had the like woodwind choir now we get a low brass choir
I love this low brass part it's a really pretty little like trombone euphonium beautiful everybody
again is moving on different beats you have trombone one going up euphonium going down
on three four then they all join in together at 54 on a whole note but trombone two moves
on two half notes downward then we have a new color cluster chord at 55 and then horn
changes the chord on beat three along with clarinet two and then the arrival at 56 of
everybody holding the chord it's finally resolved it's so pretty but it's so hard just to align
it and to make it sound mature and in tune but it's just gorgeous one of the other tools
that I would consider using in this Katie talked a lot about bopping for precision purposes
to make sure that we move in time together and I think that's really important and that's
a great tool I would also have your students subdivide this when they subdivide an eighth
note it's going to help them understand how to use their air more effectively and then
it makes them move change their fingers or move their slide at the last possible second
you have less time to move when you're subdividing eighth notes and so it helps to train them
on that movement with their with their fingers their keys or their slide for trombones but
again really helping them to understand how to use their air effectively which they need
to be able to do to make this sound beautiful yep at 56 again we are all arriving for the
last final chord and percussion ends out ends the piece so everybody holding the long note
here they need to be stagger breathing you need to have a plan with the students talk
to them about how that happens work on sneaky breathing and coming back in so like when
we've played this before I'll just have everybody play the chord and the whole band like I'll
just tell everybody to pick a note and tell them the chord and then we just play it for
I don't know a whole minute and it's just like our goal is to hold this chord where
it's piano and nobody sounds like when they're coming in back away after a breath mark so
and that's a hard skill for some kids right like to breathe and not come in and bump or
not come in and play louder than their neighbor so that's just a something again you can do
in your daily exercises to make that sound really pretty again the percussion is playing
all these cool things you got triangle you have the vibraphones playing again you have
timpani hits the the the eighth or sorry the triplet eighth notes that we have had in vibes
the whole time now slowed down to triplet quarter notes and that's the last thing we
hear and then all percussion plays on beat three of fifty eight while everybody's still
holding like Laura mentioned when we played this we breathe with our hands and with our
mallets and we all hit together it's very difficult for all the kids to hit at exactly
the right time and so you know that's that's something crucial to work on with your percussion
section so not one thing is like a teensy bit ahead that's right everybody plays right
together but it's a beautiful beautiful ending and wow what a gorgeous piece I love this piece
so much it's a piece that can really stretch your students musically we appreciate you
joining us on this episode today and hope that you will consider programming rippling
watercolors sometime soon thank you so much for joining us today on band BFF's