This is an item for the discussion of marching music.  There doesn't 
seem to be another in this conference.

23 responses total.

Yesterday I bought a couple of CDs of marching music at Borders.  I know 
I generally like marches, but I don't even know the names of the songs I 
like.  The CDs are:

1.  The Stars and Stripes Forever
Sousa Marches and other American Classics
University of Michigan Band, directed by Dr. William D. Revelli
copyright 1968, 1986

2. Greatest Hits -- Marches  (A collection from Sony.)

I like these CDs quite a lot.  Among other things, marching music is 
wonderful for blocking out the distracting sounds of others working 
around me.  I hope it isn't also blocking the phone; that would be a 
problem for me.  I'm listening on my computer CD player at work.  

It's also bouncy, uplifting music.  It was just what I needed, except 
now I need more of it.  There's quite a lot of repetition from one disk 
to the other.  A lot of Sousa (The Stars and Stripes Forever, King 
Cotton, Washington Post March, The Thunderer).

Oh, well, I'm having fun.

Before I bought any CDs, I looked all over for an on-line radio station 
specializing in marches.  I couldn't find one.  The best matches I found 
were for classical stations promising "no marches".  Hmmph.

Am I missing something?  Surely there are some other nuts out there who 
want marches over the Internet?

Did Charles Ives write any marches?  If so, then we could say "Beware 
the march of Ives."

Heh.

Are there any CDs of fight songs for colleges, preferably compiled from 
performances by the marching bands for the actual colleges?  After 
listening to "On Brave Old Army Team" and "Anchors Aweigh" a few times 
recently, I think I'd like to acquire some more of these.

I'd be willing to bet that Ives indeed wrote a march or 2 in his day. 
Certainly there must be something on the web to search for.

Classical music stations saying "won't play marches" are snobbish, as would
be the audience not wanting to hear marches, considering marches nothing more
that stuff that the military can march to.  That point of view totally
dismisses the elements of style that are certainly present in any good march.
And the same could be said of ragtime pieces.  The band I play in has as its
staple a lot of marches, and the occasional rag.  I'm not going to argue that
a march is as sophisticated as a symphony, but to dismiss it as not worthy
of being played on a classical music station is bunk.

BTW, when WQRS was around and classical, they used to play a "get your day
started" march each morning, probably around 7am.

Anyone want to list marches by such classical composers as Mozart?  There used
to be a fad for writing music that imitated battle scenes, starting off with
marches.

Many classical composers have written marches.  They may not be in the
"standard" format of Sousa or King march, but so what?  Some favorites of
mine:  Marche Slav by Tchaikovsky; Procession of the Nobles by Rimsky-Korsakov
(and in 3/4 time to boot); Tannhauser Fest March by Wagner.

French Military March by Saint-Saens, a fussy but catchy little thing.  
I used to have an old LP of classical marches, including that and (I 
think) all of the ones that Kevin listed.  CD equivalents could 
probably be found, what with the mania for clever repackagings these 
days.  If there can be "Classical Music to Eat to", "Classical Music to 
Snuggle by," and "Classical Music to Raise Your Kids' Grades" (to name 
a few only semi-fictional titles), why can't there be "Classical Music 
to March to"?

Yep, forgot about Marche Millitaire Francaise - shame on me!  :-)

As a former horn player, it is nice to see marches being discussed. (although
truthfully, I enjoyed playing in the orchestra much more than the marching
band. It did get me out of phys. ed., but I digress)
I have a wonderful CD by Frederick Fennell with the Eastman Wind Ensemble,
entitled "British and American Band Classics" which contains, among others,
Gordon Jacob's "William Byrd" Suite, opening with "The Earl of Oxford's
Marche" & Wm. Walton's Coronation March ("Crown Imperial"). These are just
2 of my favourites. 

What, a horn player complaining about having to play an entire march where
his part is all off beats, and he has to transpose from Eb?  ;-)

Not really complaining about it (this was over 15 years ago, now. Gak.) but
those offbeat parts did get rather monotonous. :) Truthfully, I seem to
remember that our marching horns were pitched in Eb, or something like that.
It didn't seem like I did a lot of transposition until concert season, and
then many of the horn parts needed transposing.
The highlight of my marching band 'career' was during my Senior year, when
I got to perform a nice solo in "Don't Cry for Me, Argentina". ;-~

Did you keep your promise?  ;-)

The low point of my band career was playing fourth clarinet in Prokofiev's
Troyka, where the first clarinets get the nice melody and the others are the
off-beat bells (bells do not change pitch) on the sleigh.  After my first year
in the band, everybody with any training was promoted to first clarinet
because the band leader wanted more warm bodies so taught all the aspiring
cheerleaders how to hold instruments and march around tooting offkey on them,
with mittens.  A friend of mine who played violin even joined the marching
band, and played triangle in it.  Since we were not interested in football,
several of us used to try to learn the other people's instruments during the
games.   I never could get the trumpet to make a noise.  Is it harder to get
a horn to make noises?

That is definitely a low point. I'm truly sorry that anyone had to endure
something like that. I began my career as a 'band geek' in the fifth grade
on 'cornet'. Even in my small school, we had a surplus of trumpeter-wannabes.
I couldn't read bass clef at the time, so I asked if there were any other
instruments I could play, and discovered a disused, very basic, Horn in the
closet. I played the heck out of that thing from 6-9th grade. :) I remember
when I went to high school in the big city (we're talkin Amarillo, here,
folks) and saw my first double Horn. I took lessons, and discovered that my
tone and range were improved when I used a larger mouthpiece than standard.

I apologize for this self-indulgent reminiscing... to answer your question,
yes --- It was harder for me to control the sounds coming from the horn. There
are many overtones close together, and with all that tubing, pitch is
notorious to control. Of course I still have never been able to make sound
on a flute or oboe....

Re: #13 -  Heh. I seem to remember the judges saying I was 'flat'. So, yeah.
But they kept their distance. :-)

While the cornet has a "cup" (shaped) mouthpiece, while the horn has a
"funnel" mouthpiece.  So, while being able to produce a *noise* on a horn
shouldn't be any harder than on cornet :-) producing a pleasant tone is often
perceived to be more difficult.  Plus the hand in the bell thing!  ;-)

A horn player told us there were different forms of mouthpiece for different
uses.  Can you elaborate?  How does a cornet differ from a trumpet?

I'm not aware of different "kinds" of mouthpieces for the horn.  The cone
shape might be slightly different, the circumference of the opening, the
thickness of the rim.  Are those simple variations or different "kinds"?

The trumpet is a cyllindrical bore instrument, similar to the trombone.  The
tone is thought to be more sharp, clean even, and I have found that producing
a tune to be more difficult than on a cornet.  A cornet is a conical bore
instrument, similar to a tuba, and produces a more mellow tone.  In the "olden
days" there used to be more specialized separation of duties for the trumpet
and cornet, but in this day and age, that distinction is mostly lost.  And
both are pitched in Bb and have the same range, so they are considered
interchangeable in terms of who can play which part.  Still, I'd imagine that
most players probably own trumpets.

Well, maybe it was the oboe part that the clarinets had to transpose.  Our
band was composed mostly of violins and clarinets and flutes.  When did people
stop writing for cornet?

Except for certain specialized pieces or circumstances, it's probably a good
guess that most composers and arrangers stopped writing separate trumpet and
cornet parts in what, mid 1900's?  I'm shooting from the hips on that one...

There's a site with a *lot* of fight songs on it:
http://www.fightsongs.com.  Some of the quality for downloaded music is 
very low, but the selection of fight songs is *huge*.

I found I can load CDs onto my hard disk using RealJukebox, which I 
downloaded for free.  Then I can string the music together into 
playlists that include or exclude whatever I want.  I have playlists for 
college fight songs and for marching music; I just brought in a CD of 
pipe organ music and am going to create a new playlist for it.  It's 
kind of cool for what I do, which is to play music over the headphones 
on my computer at work.  It takes a lot of space, because I store all of 
the songs on my hard disk... but I have a large disk anyway.

Re 18:
There are many different styles of horn mouthpieces, variations on things
like rim size and cup deepness.  Most horn players experiment with different
types, but eventually will find one that they like and stick with it:
constantly using different mouthpieces that force you to use slightly
different muscles in different ways can mess with your embouchure in a
negative way.  A mouthpiece with a shallow cup will make hitting high notes
easier, but will be more difficult to use in the low register and will make
the tone thinner and more trumpety (which makes sense, for it is shaped more
like a trumpet mouthpiece).  Of course, if a player is experienced enough on
any mouthpiece, s/he should be able to overcome its shortcomings.  Generally,
unless a player is some sort of specialist, s/he will pick a
middle-of-the-road mouthpiece, one equally strong in the high and low
registers that produces a tone that is neither too thin nor too thick.

Response not possible - You must register and login before posting.

- Backtalk version 1.3.30 - Copyright 1996-2006, Jan Wolter and Steve Weiss