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 discussing
Excitation March by Rob Grice. Cheers to starting
the conversation. This is an adorable little
grade one march that would be great for a sub
-non -varsity band, a beginner band to introduce
march style, anything like that. It's in the
key of concert B -flat. It only uses the first
six notes of the concert B -flat scale. It's
in 2 -4, 90 seconds long, very limited percussion,
no split parts whatsoever. We have snare, bass,
tambourine, timpani, and bells, but the bells
doubles the flute part the whole time, so if
you don't have enough players, you can eliminate
that. And even the timpani part, it does have
some important features, but you could have your
tambourine player double it on a low tom if you
have limited percussion. There's lots of options.
Yeah, you could mount the tambourine and they
could play that with a mallet while they also
play the timpani with another hand. Lots of options,
yes. Excitation is defined as an elevation in
energy level above an arbitrary baseline energy
state. In physics, there is a specific technical
definition for energy level, which is often associated
with an atom being excited to an excited state.
So it's like a verb. Excitation means you're
getting excited, a new state. So it's just got
a cute little name. You know, you could teach
that to your students and put a little science
into their band day, too. There you go. You know,
so. As Laura mentioned, it's nice march style,
just. good old 120 on the metronome starts out
with everybody that's the upper voices doing
staccato staccato accent ta ta ta ta ta ta ta
ta ta and then you wouldn't want to breathe between
four and five everyone in the ensemble has a
half note at the end of measure four except for
the percussion so that's a real obvious place
for younger students to breathe and don't let
them do it. Yep the low voices have just accented
half notes changing the chords underneath that
and then as she mentioned the snare drum is a
little bit more active throughout the piece but
only with just eighth notes and quarters not
even a sixteenth note. So once we get to five
the whole band has a Starts softer and crescendos
up for four measures to nine And everybody has
the same rhythm So this would be super easy to
just play on a concert F first To get the style
aligned like Laura mentioned March style is some
this a great introduction Everybody has the same
thing and then at the end we end with a half
note Before the melody goes on at nine now. I
just personally I would be cautious with a younger
on about overdoing the stylistic things, like
accents, of course, you want to work on getting
emphasis to the front of the note, but I would
not stress space after the note with a young
ensemble. Just a little more, like I tell my
kids, start the note with a capital letter, right?
We just want it to have a little more emphasis
at the front. And even on the staccatos, if you
were concerned about having the students really
make them crispy and put space in them, you can
actually just tell them, hey, why don't we treat
the staccatos as softer than the accents. notes
around them. Just do what you feel like is going
to be best for the group of students that you
have in front of you, but I would be cautious
about introducing too much space in their sound
if it's a really young band. Agreed. So at nine
the melody is in flute, oboe, clarinet, trumpet,
and everybody is marked mezzo forte. Of course
you want to make sure you go in ahead of time
into their parts and rewrite their dynamic marking
so that way the other people are or not on the
melody will come down even more. This is great
introduction to melody, harmony, bassline, so
that all the kids can understand the function
of their part and when it shifts, they understand,
oh, that's what I'm gonna do. And so that way
they know what a traditional march is written
like. Again, there's little percussion, but you
do want to make sure they don't overbalance the
band in any way. If you were to program this
and you had more percussion than only the four
parts that are written, then it might be, or
five parts, it might be a good idea not to double
or to double like snares off on a snare. But
you wouldn't want them to... you know, overpower
the band. For sure. I love that this is written
like a real traditional march, so it gives you
an opportunity to teach about march form, like
a first strain. So measure nine, which is repeated,
this would be the first strain. You can even,
if your group is mature enough to handle it,
you know, work on some, okay, the first time
at measure nine, we're gonna feature this group
of instruments. We want the woodwinds to be more
present. The second time at nine, we want the
trumpets to come out and take the lead. So just
giving them a different listening. assignments
I think is a great way to train them young before
you get to music that's more overly complicated.
Totally. Also it would be worth noting that you
want to try to train them to do eight measure
phrases since it's in two -four time. If for
some reason they could not handle that then just
give them a breathing assignment so that that
way they know where they would be allowed to
take a breath and that way they don't get into
the four measures take a breath four measures
take a breath deal that most young love to do.
Yes. The articulation at nine on the first strain
is not marked as accent or staccato, so now we're
just playing normal articulation. There's a couple
slurs in there which is nice. Right before the
end of the phrase there are staccato notes, so
it's long and connected like a scale. So the
end, sorry I sang the note but ta ta ta it does
change style just a tad at the end of the phrase
so make sure that that would be coming out of
the mix for a performance and that way they're
getting used to that differentiation in the style.
At 17 dynamically it changes it comes up a notch
we do start to see a little bit more of the staccato
now we have the eighth notes coming in in the
melody still very very very very simple at the
end of this phrase we have similarly to the end
of the phrase before and we have the staccato
notes but we have some accented quarter notes
leading into it ta ta ta ta ta ta at the very
end. So I love because this rhythm is there's
basically two rhythms going on in the ensemble.
I like that that like Katie mentioned before
that it's a great opportunity for you to take
the notes away and just focus on style and make
sure that that's consistent throughout the young
ensemble. And then at 25 we start our second
string. Yep. And again, like Laura mentioned,
the good thing is you can mess around with whatever
you want to do on each string for this next one.
Same thing. So now the whole band has gone up
to fortissimo and everybody has a very block
rhythm and style it's accent two staccatos accent
accent accent so one two and one two one then
it's percussion one two and one two one so just
making sure that everybody in the whole ensemble
is agreeing on accents is so critical because
like I know in our young band we like to make
accents too short yeah and we talk about that
a ton like hey guys we've got to all match just
this past week we were talking about accents
in our music and our bassoon player was really
good at doing them so we had everybody else all
the low brass hold off and listen to him play
yeah and then we got a chance to hear good style
and then it was like he was the model and we
were all trying to match him so you could do
that to pick your best kid that's doing the best
accent and make everybody march that. I like
this in the snare part too. While the snare part
is a little bit different than what's happening
in the winds here, the accents line up with the
accents in the wind part, so making sure that
your snare player actually does that, and more
importantly, makes the unaccented notes softer
and low. And that they don't rush, because the
rhythm is easier. At 33, we continue the same
thing with the percussion. It's just back and
forth. And then at 37, we have a four measure
phrase now. It's kind of the same thing, but
at the end. One, two, and one, two, one, two,
one, don't breathe. Then the full band at 41
has one, two percussion. One, two, percussion.
This is where timpani is a little more important.
This is the section we were referencing early
on. Yep. And then just one percussion, one percussion,
one, two, one, two. Then 49, we're back. So this
is kind of like, I don't know, would this be
the dog fight section? Yeah, I think so too.
That's exactly how I would think about it. And
in a typical dog fight, it's more like woodwinds
versus grass. So this time it's band versus percussion.
Yes. But I mean, still same deal. Same concept.
and they're playing the same note. It's a concert
B -flat, which is awesome because then the band
can make sure I'm hitting the right note. It's
in unison, and that's a good teaching tool too.
Can I hit, as a brass player, the same note with
the same consistent tonguing over and over? Yes,
absolutely. completed the dog fight and at 49
we're back to the melody and the upper people
again. The lower people are being softer as they
have the bass line. This is just like what we
had earlier. Now there are a couple of places
in this. I just want to point out where the horns
go pretty low. They go to an A below the staff.
They do have the horns get up to an A in the
staff as well, so I would just treat that like
play that by ear. If your horn players can sound
really good in that low register or in the upper
register, you may need to modify that octave
for your horn players depending on what ability
level of band you're playing. I do like though
that it doesn't have the French horn going up
real high. I do too. Then we get to 57 and it's
now the low have chords again and the uppers
trumpet flute oboe clarinet they have the melody
and it's back to non accented so strong just
regular tonguing ta ta ta short short ta ta don't
breathe ta ta ta ta ta ta ta ta ta ta. So it's
again, like Laura said, it's the same rhythms,
just kind of in different ways. And then everybody
at the end has the same last four measures, kind
of like the very beginning, like the intro. That's
the conclusion, accent, scato scato, accent,
accent, accent, accent, accent. Those are the
only eighth notes that are accented, I believe,
in the whole piece. Yep we didn't even have that
at the beginning. So the second to last measure
has accented eighth notes for the band. But very
simple. It is very simple. This ending is probably
the most challenging thing for the brass because
for some of the brass it has a pretty big skip.
Yeah it's got a skip of a fifth. So just making
sure that your brass can feel that and that that's
really secure. But this is a it's so simple.
Yeah. It's really easy but it's a great teaching
tool. A great teaching piece for sure. your kids
sound really good. Yeah and then they go, oh
my first March was successful, I get it. Like
then when you give them a different March they
go, oh I remember it's just like what it was
in the other piece. That's right. Yep. Alright
well we hope you will consider programming Excitation
March in the future and thank you for joining
us on this episode of Band BFFs.