Bill,

I've always enjoyed this piece, largely because of how different it is from your big epic works. I've associated it in my mind with your Ye Olde Days of Future Past groove but I really like this interpretation (which I'm sure, since you wrote it, is what you meant in the first place). Your cinematography really tells a story. When you take a hike, even in as spectacular a place as the High Sierras, much of the time your attention is on what is close...a flower beside the trail, light through the trees, your steps on the trail itself. You stop to look at a bird for a few seconds before it moves on (my favorite part, BTW).  Finally, you arrive at a spot where your gaze reaches out to the high peaks. But it's not a big climax with a sweeping crescendo and a modulation; it goes with the flower, the bird and the steps.

Great stuff, Bill. Thanks for sharing it with us. 

Dave and Bill,

You fellows are too kind. As you know, I am a big admirer of both you guys, not only for your wonderful music itself but also for the fact that you are actually doing it...putting in the hours, busting your humps to create the very best music you can. It's the kind of inspiration that could ultimately get me to get over myself and join the party.

Bill, your thoughts on the need of composers to actually understand the nature of the instruments they are writing for is right on. Rimsky and one of his buddies (can't remember who) made a point of learning to toodle a bit on every instrument of the orchestra, just to get a feel for how they made music. Last I heard, he was considered a pretty fair orchestrator   I like to say that good orchestrators give the instruments parts to play that match the temperament...the personality...of the instrument. This means a lot more than keeping the part in the useable range and keeping the limits of the ax's caprice technique in mind. It means that if you're going to write a horn part (for example), no matter how original and unlike any that have come before it, it still needs to be "hornistic." In Don Juan and Till Eulenspiegel, Strauss asked the horns to produce licks that had never been dreamed of in an orchestral setting, but the parts were perfectly hornistic (it didn't hurt that his dad was one of the top hornists in the world).

As Bill points out, the world of virtual orchestration is a place where the composer really needs to watch it, because MIDI is perfectly happy to grind out any stupid lick you may program for any instrument...even though the "wrongness" will be obvious to anyone. There is a chap who used to hang around this list...you know the guy; bit of a piece of work, fancied himself a provacateur...who put together an impressive collection of unknown classical works by unknown composers and put them online. When the VSL Historic Winds release with the natural horns came out, he found a couple of little-known horn concerti by a worthy named C. F. Abel and dutifully cranked them out. I was digging his effort...the strings were tight and nicely balaced with a clean, chamber orchestra sound, the horn solo was singing along with nice phrasing. Then...the closing allegro arrived. His tempo was so brisk that the ghost of Punto himself would have cried "Uncle!" This cat Abel must have been a cracker-jack virtuoso (or was working with one); his chart is chock-full of arpeggiated figures climbing to the highest register of the Eb horn; real show-off stuff. But at my man's computer-assisted tempo they popped out with a blatantly artificial perfection; every note absolutely centered, no discernable difference between the stopped and open tones, runs and arpeggios rattling out with machine gun precision. It was, to me, comical. Despite the fact that he was working with an actual historical piece of music, written by an actual performer of the era, and despite his obvious skill with sampled orchestra production, my man had rendered his work unhornistic.

Dave,

As an avowed fan of your music, it must seem odd that it has taken this long for me to address such an important new composition. Suffice it to say, I have listened to it several times and every subsequent hearing reveals something new. This is an eloquent, deeply personal work and you have bared yourself through it in a way that took some genuine courage (at least that's how it comes off to me). Your MIDI performance is getting better all the time, BTW; I think I can say that this is the best effort on that front that I have heard from you. Congratulations!

As to why it took so long for me to even show up...I have come to realize that I am the very embodiment of point 4B from your earlier post:

"Also, many hobbyist composers will feel ill-equiped to offer any kind of real insight in to the music, and would rather leave it for others to do"

That's me. Essentially, I'm a poser. I have composed exactly one piece of concert music that has been performed. I do not own a single VSL product; I just show up on the website and drool over it. I am in the enviable position of having a dear friend who is the conductor of a decent adult wind ensemble who has told me that he will program anything I write that is reasonable and playable, but I can't make myself write anything new. I'm sort of the obnoxious kid brother standing on the sideline wanting to get into the game with the big kids. Maybe that's why I didn't have anything to say about When Doubt Arises...it hits too close to home.

Tom

Another great tune, Bill. You told a big story in just a few minutes and swept me long every bit of the way...although for some reason, just listening to it made my lip swell up. Man, you know how to write gnarly horn parts! I would purely love to take a crack at 'em, but I would probably be like the horn player in the first reheasal of Don Juan, who asked Strauss what he had done to deserve this!

I know you've heard this from me before but I really think this piece would work beautifully as a wind band composition. First off, it's a dramatic concert overture, which is absolutely the wheel house of symphonic band literature. Most of the main themes are carried by winds and percussion and the string sections would translate beautifully to woodwinds. I realize that writing for band doesn't have the cachet of writing for symphony orchestra, but we do have one small advantage for the contemporary composer...we actually play new music! Bands don't have centuries of standard repertoire that is the only thing our audiences want to hear. If a tune is good, we'll program it.

Actually, I'm being selfish here. I'd love to play more of your music. Also, I would absolutely love to hear you bring the full power of your MIDI skills to bear on a wind band tune. I think it would jump to #1 on my play list. (WARNING! Mini-rant!!) Have you noticed that, in the vast VSL Demo Library there is one...count it, ONE...movement of one...count it, ONE...piece for band: an old Jay Bacal rendering of the March from the Holst Eb Suite. And as much as I admire Jay, this isn't even one of his best efforts. It seems that this is a market that VSL has very little interest in. They have all the necessary instruments, at least, which is more than I can say for the brass band instrumentation that is so poular in the UK. For that, they have next to bupkus. (End of Mini-rant)

I sure hope you get lots of performances of this excellent overture, but I can't help thinking that the odds of this would be higher if it existed as a wind band composition.

Tom

(BTW, I got your email and I'm working on an answer. Stay tuned!)

Wonderful piece, Dave, and beautifully rendered. Somehow, you keep improving. Best wishes on the big pieces.

OK, with a handwritten score, that makes sense (did you write it with a quill and inkwell? ). I have one tune that I wrote in Finale for which I only have the printed paper copy, no Finale file (don't ask how that came to pass ). If I ever feel like resurrecting the chart, I can at least let OCR have a crack at it. Handwritten would be another kettle of fish altogether. My condolences.

Bill, you sure have a way with an epic adagio! But then, what else would I expect from an admitted Bruckner freak. I've listened to this big, somber piece several times on Spotify...usually because I left it playing after listening to your symphony...and I always enjoy it; a fine entry in your impressive catalog.

Your description of the struggles you undergo to get your MIDI pieces into a notated score leads me to believe that I misunderstand your process. I thought that you started with a score that you created in digital notation...either in a dedicated notation program like Finale or in the rudimentary notation tool in your DAW...then converting that to a MIDI file. After that, I figured you pains-takingly massaged the parts to get them musical and not just a mechanical reproduction of the notated rhythms, on and on through selecting the articulations and velocities, stretching and humanizing, etc, etc until the parts sound the way a human performer would play it. If you tried to have the MIDI file trancribe a notated score after this process, its own mother wouldn't recognize it, but you would have started with a straight-forward notation version of the score that could be sculpted into the parts you wanted. Am I completely off base? Did you start with a hand-written score then played the parts into the sequencer from the keyboard? Enquiring minds want to know. Please forgive my ignorance of this very basic concept.

This thread has proven to be cat-like in its quantity of lives, so I'll not feel too weird about re-re-resurrecting it. This has been a most entertaining and thought-provoking discussion on several topics, with input from several musicians whose work I greatly admire. I have opinions on most of the topics you have touched upon but I will have mercy and limit my comments to just a couple of points.

Which do I prefer: live performance or VSL? To me, it largely depends on the work. Dave's chamber works, in particular, always sound better to me when they are rendered by a group of skilled musicians playing the instruments, be they Dave and Becky themselves on the accordion and clarinet or these fine string players and pianist from the Detroit area. The reason, I think, is because other musicians than the composer are involved. Even with Dave and Becky's considerable MIDIstration skills, the quartet will not have the unique interpretation and interplay of these beautiful players. I once heard that the American Brass Quintet had commisioned a work that just didn't turn them on and it didn't make it into their rotation. It did get published, however, and they chanced to hear it performed by another quintet. Lo and behold, they liked it! These other guys heard something different and added something beyond what the composer had put on the paper. It gave the piece some magic that the ABQ hadn't heard.

Bill's titanic orchestral stuff is another matter. When the forces are multiplied, the number of factors that can go wrong increase exponentially. We don't just need 4 top-notch musicians, we need 70 (for his Berlioz-conducting-with-a-sword version of his symphony). And to get such a beautifully rendered recording, we'd need days in a world-class recording venue with these monsters, then time, talent, and equipment to do the final mix and production. I sincerely hope that Bill gets a performance by a good orchestra; he and the piece richly deserve it. But I think it is safe to say that we will probably never hear the work performed as sonically and musically brilliant as the version he created on his computer. I got a chance to perform one of Bill's smaller works with about 20 other players. We are decent amateur musicians but we had limited rehearsal and the chart was programmed in the middle of concert with a lot of other stuff that needed our practice-time attention. We did alright but, by any standard of measure, Bill's VSL version is a superior recording. So what is the value of getting a live performance if you can do it better at home? Well, about 20 musicians got a chance to read through the piece and a couple hundred folks in Colorado Springs heard it and enjoyed it. I think that counts for something.

Originally Posted by: William

This of course brings up the question what is the difference between a bull and a symphony orchestra. 

I hate to admit it, but there are a few conductors, after being subjected to some of my attitude, that would swear that both items are in the back (as anatomically impossible as that may seem).

Originally Posted by: William

"...clutching a decrepit french horn in my gnarled talons..." - tchampe

Isn't that what you already do?

 

 Oh, absolutely! I just haven't keeled over in mid-afterbeat yet (quite).

Originally Posted by: William

Also, I should not be taunting a horn player.  It is well known in orchestral circles that horn players are, well... different.  And they can have a short fuse.  Of course I have no personal experience with this.   But why this is true is unclear, although it has been conjectured that it is a result of the very high and close partial series the instrument normally plays in.  Over time, this can have psychological effects. 

In my case, it never made me particularly mean. It just totally removed whatever controls I may have had on my Midwestern smart mouth. At this point, I judge the quality of a conductor primarily on how well he/she can tolerate it. 

Originally Posted by: Acclarion

As for returning to composition, I think all musicians suffer from the Godfather reality:  "just when I thought I was out, they pull me back in."  :)

Truer words were never spoken. I think when my time comes, I won't keel over in a sunny terraza in Sicily. No, it'll be at the end of a community band concert, clutching a decrepit french horn in my gnarled talons, right after the final stinger of the Stars and Stripes Forever.

Dave and Becky,

This Scherzo is one of my favourites from your Acclarion albums. I think I still prefer the accordion/clarinet incarnation but this string orchestra version is great, too; very right for the idiom. Your arrangement is spot on and Becky's MIDIstration is superb. And VSL is to be commended for offering so capable a library at such a modest cost. Speakling of VSL, it's great to see your work featured as one of their demos. Congratulations!

If I say that I prefer your original version to this new one it has nothing to do with the veracity of the MIDI work. While I am sure that the expert critique you have received has merit, any sonic or stylistic weaknesses in the performance are quite beyond my ability to detect; I found the piece to be completely convincing. Musical and wonderful.

Glad to see action again on this fascinating forum and you right in the thick of it, Dave. Keep up the good work!

Tom

Originally Posted by: William

p.s. - I hope you noticed the high C just before the end for the entire horn section on the bellowing counter melody.  They were struggling to be heard over the entire 6 Trumpet - Flugelhorn/5 trombone-Bass Trombone/Tuba section but I think they succeeded. 

Yeah, I caught that. Made me smile and think, "It's the last few bars of a 38-minute blowfest of a chart and he's got all 8 of 'em screaming out a high C against every known instrument and the kitchen sink. That's the Bill we all know and love!" That being said, I'd give my eye teeth to sit in with a good orchestra and attempt to play it...as long as the rest of the horn section was certified in CPR.

Bill, 

I've listened to your symphony numerous times, now in the Supersized rendition. It is a masterful work, clearly your magnum opus, and I am thankful that you created it and put it out there for those of us who love great concert music to enjoy.

As for your MIDIstration, I will eschew my usual habit of blathering on and come straight to the point: This is the finest example of a virtual performance of an original, large-scale orchestral work that I am aware of. To me, its greatest strength is the fact that you are such a fantastic orchestrator. Even with your advanced MIDI skills, great ear, and the finest orchestral samples, the GIGO principle would strike in a hurry in a gigantic piece like this if those myriad parts weren't right. They are right.

Congratulations on this marvelous accomplishment and again, thank you for sharing it.

Tom

As always, a fantastic piece of music, Bill. I look forward to hearing that you have gotten a perfomance; it richly deserves to be heard. As for your MIDI, I can only say that you are probably attempting to do something at the current limit of virtual musicianship: play a convincing romantic andante on a solo violin or cello. The range of nuance that a beautiful violinist can bring to a tune is unparalleled in musical instruments. It is as close as you can get to singing a song without using your voice. And please note that we're talking about an andante here...high, fast, and loud gets a rise out of the peanut gallery but it's the "sad" part that truly separates the men from the boys (and women from girls). One of the greatest music lessons I ever had came at a Maurice Andre concert I attended when was 19. He was touring with a small chamber orchestra, playing nothing but baroque oboe concerti on his piccolo trumpet. Everyone swooned and cheered when he danced through the allegri with his effortless technique and clear, singing tone. But about halfway through the gig, I became aware of the fact that he was playing the andantes so slowly they were practically largos, but you never felt they were dragging...every phrase absolutely swung. There's no other way to say it, they swung. He would play phrases so long he had to use circular breathing, not as a gee-whiz show-off trick but as a tool to accomplish his musical ends. The life and variation in every note, every transition, was mesmerizing. Maurice taught that the final step in becoming a master wind soloist was to study with a singing coach, and it showed. Violinists live in the same world. They can crank a zillion notes an hour, but they really show what makes their instrument the ultimate when they slow it down and sing a song. All that to say this: You are absolutely one of the greatest practitioners of this art of which I am aware. I listen to your music all the time on Spotify and the big, everything-AND-the-kitchen-sink orchestrations never fail to satisfy. They feel as if they were recorded by a vast crew of studio musicians on a sound stage and I doubt that actually hearing it done that way would be a hugely more satisfying musical experience. Even the wind solos are astonishingly realistic and soulful. But when we get to a solo violin, that ineffable magic may not be possible to completely reproduce through current technical means. By all means, keep tilting at that windmill...it may just be a matter of time. Who would have thought that we could hear such incredible simulations of orchestral music as you, Jay Bacal, and a few others can do? But in a way, I'm glad that there is still a world that can only be touched by people who can take a beautifully sculpted wooden object and wring a song out of it with their hands.

Very cool stuff, Bill. I was thinking that it reminded me of Franz Waxman so I went back and listened to the Bride of Frankenstein sound track. I decided that I must be thinking of something else. Was there a particular one of the old time film composers that you were inspired by in creating this score?

Ditto what William said. The easy way to remember it is to think in terms of the transposed F horn parts. You have 2 octaves of notes below the treble staff you can use. The first one, down to about written F or Eb, you can use anytime you want. It won't carry very well, but is fine for the bottom notes of chords or melodies that drop down there. The second octave, down to the next written F, is a special use situation; the domain of 4th parts in horn quartets or section unisons trying to sound like Wagner tubas. Up top, as soon as you get into ledger lines on the written F horn part, things start to get squirrely. Don't avoid it outright, but use judiciously as a special, exciting effect (often as a section unison). Anything above the written high C is rarified air that almost no one would program.

Originally Posted by: William

Though I am a complete hypocrite constantly writing lip-pulverizing parts that I would quiver in terror just looking at, let alone playing... 

As for you, William, I love the story of your college band performing your Concert March. You must have been thrilled...until you found yourself staring down the gun barrel of one of your own screaming horn parts. Instant karma! Of course, in those days you were young and foolish and probably said, "Yes! Bring it on!"

Paul,

A beautiful, evocative piece, as always; I especially loved it when the fireflies came out. Thank you for sharing it.

I saw something in your reply to William that caught my eye:

Originally Posted by: Paul McGraw

I had an interesting comment sent by PM on another forum about the first two movements of this symphony. The PM was from a horn player, who....thought I was being too conservative on horn range. He felt the first horn should go up to high C or D (concert) and the 4th horn should go down to a low A (concert).

I try to limit my horn range to a high B concert for first horn and a low E concert. for fourth horn.  Am I being too conservative?

I know you weren't asking me, but I was hoping to get some clarification on a couple of points and then, if I may, offer some thoughts. 

I'm wondering if we are all talking about apples here or if there may be a few references to oranges mixed in. When we in the horn biz use the term "high C," we are usually talking about the written C above the treble staff in our transposed F horn parts. This is actually F5 concert. So, if your correspondent is suggesting that you consider extending the upper range of your horn parts to a high C or D concert, he would have to mean the notes a fourth and a third lower than this. The C concert (F horn written G on the top of the staff) is a common note that any competent hornist can expect to see at any time. The D concert a step higher is getting a little more interesting but is still commonly seen.

The other end is not so obvious. Double horns have the strange ability to go chromatically right down to the pedal notes, but these get virtually unplayable below a certain point. Most books that assume you are playing a double horn expect you to get down to Bb1 concert, but I've seen G concert below that in some tunes.

I've known freaks that can extend the top end to F6 and the bottom into the true pedal range of the F horn, but this stuff is rarely called for (for good reason!). So, what really sounds good for horn? I think that our ears tell us "Yes! The voice of the horn!" when they hear melodies singing in concert pitches from about F below middle C to about an octave and a step above middle C. Venture higher than that for really plaintive solo stuff (Pavane for a Dead Princess) or go all-hands-on-deck for goose bumps at the end of something spectacular (the 2nd statement of the famous theme in Don Juan). The lower notes tend to have 2 uses: the bass voice in a horn quartet (this is something of a specialist position) or all four in unison for a gnarly, mysterious, growling melody (Shostakovich's 5th, Finale). The latter effect is best written for Wagner tubas, if available.

I hope this is of some value. Others may think I'm all wet on this; these are strictly my opinions from long years in the saddle. Again, I really enjoyed your walk in the woods.

Sincerely,

Tom

I'm resurrecting this old thread to let eveyone know that our brass and percussion ensemble, along with Mr. Gerald Von Dusseldorp, organist, performed William's Triumphal March in Colorado Springs on March 10. I became aware of this piece via this forum thread. Our musicians enjoyed playing the march and it was well-received by our audience. Thank you, William!

Jacques,

Allow me to add my compliments to those of Crusoe for your work on this marvelous music. The playing, the interpretation, the recording, the beautiful final mix with the VSL instruments...all superb! It makes me think that this an area with huge potential for these virtual orchestral libraries that very few people have explored: creating parts to fill in the missing pieces of ensembles where the lead voice(s) are recorded live then skillfully blending them into a complete performance. It reminds me of the old Music Minus One records, but those were always accompaniment tracks to well-known solo pieces...sort of Klassical Karaoke. Your work is different; important voices in a small ensemble, sculpted to interact so fluidly with the recorded parts so as to be virtually indistinguishable from the "real" voices. The result is a very worthy performance of this elegant music. I'm sure old Boccherini is smiling to know that, 200 years later, his music has such a talented and enthusiastic advocate. Bravo!

Tom

Dave and Becky,

Such exquisite, timeless music! I listened to it as I do all music: hoping to hear what the artists felt in creating it and what they were trying to say to me. Frankly, I usually can't tell. So much of what I hear seems like it was created to fill a particular need...evoke a certain sound, touch some specific emotion...whether the musician ever felt it or not. Oh, I can admire or even enjoy such stuff if it's well done, but it's not what I am hoping for when I click PLAY on a tune I've never heard before. Your music never disappoints.

Interestingly, in this work, all I could feel was the Rapture. I'm sure that's my weakness as a listener coming through; conditioned by a lifetime of minor tonality + slow tempo = sad. But if it was easy for me to sense the joy, wonder, and love that you put into this piece. You guys are rare talents, destined to have a voice that is not really of this time and place. I'm sorry that such a relatively small number of people will ever experience it but I'm happy that I am one of them.

Thanks and best wishes,

Tom

This is really cool, Bill! I especially like the cranked-up humanized intonation on the Wagner tubas. Those things are gnarly as it is, but making them bend into the pitch positively turns them into lurs! As always, terrifically cinematic. Thanks for sharing.

Tom

Beautiful piece! Thank you for sharing it with us.

I'm very proud of my service days but I need to fill you in on a detail that Bill may have been confused about: I served most of my military time with the Air Force Academy Band in Colorado Springs, CO, not the main US Air Force Band in Washington, DC. If they were the Big Leagues we were the AAA affiliate. Not that this means much to anyone outside of the little world of GI bands, but if any of them found out I was allowing people to believe I had been a member of THE US Air Force Band...well, let's just say they know where I live.  

Bill's tune will be performed by the Rocky Mountain Wind Symphony in March as a direct result of my having found the link to his realization of it on Soundcloud on this forum, so I'm glad the forum is still here. Looking forward to performing Triumphal March.

Don't brag me up too much, Bill. You haven't heard me play your Triumphal March yet!