Welcome to our podcast, Band BFFs.
The podcast where we make your music selection less complicated.
On today's episode, we are going to be discussing The Thunderer March by Sousa, arranged by David
Shaffer.
Cheers to starting the conversation.
This fabulous arrangement of The Thunderer is great for a younger ensemble.
It's about two minutes in length.
It's in the key of concert E-flat throughout, so it does not change keys, even at the trio.
It is very, very playable, split clarinet parts, split trumpet parts.
Everything else is pretty easy.
You really need five percussionists for this.
So it's just really basic percussion, bells, timpani, snare bass, crash.
And really all of those parts do need to be covered, but the bell part really just kind
of...
You could do it without if you had to.
If you had to.
Right.
So this piece starts off at just a nice march tempo, stays the same all the way throughout.
As Laura said, it's very accessible.
Starts off with a dotted quarter note rhythm, one and three and one and two and three.
So like the normal march, but then it goes into like half notes and quarter notes for
quite a while on the melody and then on the bass line.
The piece does have style of mostly staccatos written in to kind of keep that lighter march
style going, but you want to make sure obviously that the kids aren't like clipping the notes
or making them too short.
I think because of those stylistic considerations, because they are written in, this isn't something
that I would do with a super young band.
Like Katie and I feel pretty strongly that the younger the ensemble, the less staccato
you need to do, just have them work on full value notes and sustaining their sounds.
So you want it to be an ensemble that has established that and understands that and
can play staccato notes maturely and correctly.
We don't want it to be something...
With all cracking and squeaking and things like that.
And we don't want it to be something that gets in their way.
But this is so great for introducing traditional march to your band.
First Strain, Second Strain, Trio Dogfight, the whole thing.
Great for balance and all of that.
It's really well written, really cute.
So at the first Strain at measure three, the snare drum part is a bit more active comparatively
to other parts.
So you would just want to keep that in mind.
Very minimal slurring going on just a little bit in the melody.
There's an accidental written in just in a few parts.
Little timpani solo every once while on four one.
Four one.
So you do have to have the timpani player.
It is different than all the other low brass parts.
At eleven, the melody continues on but now with flute and trumpet.
And the trumpet two part is pretty much the same as trumpet one, except it just splits
for like harmony on a chord every once in a while but they're playing the melodic part
together.
Yeah, they're doubled.
Yeah, and it's just tongue slur, tongue tongue tongue.
So that's not like ridiculous.
There is a tie, tongue slur, tongue tongue hold, two, three.
So you just have to teach the tie going through the measure but that's it.
It's not like a ridiculous rhythm that a younger band cannot achieve well.
And then really just focusing on making sure that half notes are sustained all the way
through.
This is a piece that definitely this is something that I would want to go through and make sure
that phrase markings are marked in and everybody is in agreement on that.
That is one thing that can make it sound immature.
So you want to make sure that you're really focusing on phrasing.
Even in the like low brass, low reed part, same thing about the immature breathing.
We want to make sure that they're not breathing at all at the same time.
Like the easy place to breathe would be after a half note on a bar line.
And so talking to the kids about, you know, you are going to breathe after beat two in
this measure and you're going to breathe after beat two in this measure just to like
split up your groupings.
So they're not all breathing at the same time.
I think that's totally worth the individual part marking or doing that in sectional time.
As we're getting towards the next little part at 19, we have another little one accidental
in the horn and clarinet part, one in the upper flute part and that's it.
And a cymbal crash so low and then the lows get to take over at 19.
So we're going to start the second strain idea and I like the way it's written here.
The trumpets and trombone euphonium are actually by themselves with snare, but the part is
cued in your low reads and tubas.
Now when I have played this, we played this with a non varsity band and when we played
this, we had our low reads and tubas read the cues just because personally I liked the
thicker texture and the octave having that lower octave in there really kind of filled
it out, but you have the flexibility to do whatever you choose.
I love that even though it's a relatively simple and straightforward March, the low
voices have an opportunity to kind of shine here.
Right?
So they often in easier music don't get chances to show off and they do in this one, which
is really cool.
Right.
Like there's no woodwind part playing if you don't read the cues.
It's just trumpet and trombone and euphonium.
So that is cool because they do get featured.
So this is like they get the melody part and the trumpets are kind of like the countermelody
kind of in the background.
Lots of accents here.
So talking to the students about that, every single note is accented.
So it just wants to be like a nice firm tongue.
And that continues on till the next box number at 27 where we pick back up again with flute
and trumpet and oboe on the melody and on the harmony part.
They now have accents on all of their part and the lows go back down to playing the same
thing, but we layer them down.
They're not as important as they were before.
And the tuba and the low reeds join in no matter what at 27.
That's right.
Even if you didn't do the cues.
And they're carrying over the same melody that the trombones had, trombones and euphoniums
had before.
I like this section at 27 because now everything comes all together.
So we have what the low voices were doing.
We have the cool countermelody that the trumpets were doing.
And now we add the upper woodwinds in with another thought.
So it's a great opportunity to teach priority.
And you have the ability to kind of make that how you want it.
What do you want to be the most important line here?
And it's great for that.
The range in this, I failed to mention this at the beginning, but the range is very playable.
Clarinets don't cross the break.
Trumpets are not ever getting really high.
Low brass don't go above B flat.
Yeah.
Trumpets it looks like just goes to C. Flutes go up to B flat.
And not above that.
The range is very, very playable.
So this really is more about balance and exposure to good music.
To an actual march.
That's right.
I mean, you could play like the reel, the thunder for the children and they'd be like,
see, this is cool, right?
Now listen our version.
They'll be like, oh, it's so easy.
But it is easy, but it's like your first step into big boy literature, as I call it.
We're continuing on in this section.
It keeps on with the style of the accents.
And then we all have a rest going into 35.
Now we have our first like different rhythm.
There is dotted eight, sixteenth notes, but that's on the same note the whole time.
So it's one, a two, and three, and one, a two, and three, and so that's not crazy difficult.
Right.
Because you're not changing your fingers while doing that rhythm.
It's unison note throughout the ensemble for the people that have that.
It's usually just, it's just the upper voices that have that.
So making sure that we're articulating really clearly.
It's easy because they're staying on the same note and it's easy to make sure that that
style aligns, get lots of clarity and strength on the sixteenth note and that rhythm of that
dotted eight, sixteenth.
But this, this is the only like slightly complicated rhythm.
And the, like the low voices come in and join them on three and so one, a two, and three,
and everybody plays that.
So if you did have a woodwind player who could not tongue that fast for some reason, you
could just modify their part to either be rest, two, and three and, or they could do
rest, rest, three and and play with the lows.
You know, like you could easily modify that part if for some reason that was too much.
Then it's just like the beginning again.
So in trail one and three and one and two and three rest.
And then we got a cutesy part again.
That's right.
While we get to 39, this is where like the, the upper woodwinds get to take over, you
know, like the cool little obligato part here.
So they do have dotted eight, sixteenths in this.
The melody is really happening in the brass.
We've got the brass, like the trumpet, the horn and trombone phonium that are playing
the melody here, and then the tuba and some of the low reeds are your motor part.
And then we have the cool counter melody or obligato that's happening in the upper woodwinds,
which is the, the flute, even the oboes do not have all of the moving technique that
the flutes do, which I think, you know, Schaefer writes really, really well.
So it's the flutes, the clarinets and the altos that are actually doing the moving part
here.
Another great opportunity for teaching, you know, hey, now this is something new.
Let's bring out this new part right here.
Right.
And it's one and two and three and four and one, two, three, four, a one.
And now we are changing notes, but they're slurred.
So it's two, two, two, two, two, two, two.
So again, it's not like you're having a tongue fast and move your fingers, you're moving
your fingers and doing the slurring.
So there are options for if that's too much for your students, they could just leave out
the dot eight sixteenths and play one, three, one, three, four.
That would be totally appropriate.
Now when we did this with our group, one of the biggest challenges I remember in this
section is making sure to tongue the quarter note after the dotted eight.
Right.
That was their tendency.
Ta, ta, ta.
So making sure, and you know, again, that's something you can help prevent by pre-marking
parts and marking T's over those tongue notes, because you know that's going to be something
that they anticipate.
And that's it.
We stay with the same little idea, building all the way to the very end, close out in
these last four measures.
This is such an adorable march.
It's written really well.
The range is fantastic.
It's very playable, but still has lots of cool, I think, teaching opportunities for younger
ensembles.
For sure.
I hope that you will consider programming the Thunder Arranged by Schaefer in one of
your programs in the near future.
Thank you for joining us on this episode of...
And BFFs.
Later half hour.