Hello all!

Hope your Thanksgiving is going well!

I just finished arranging "Wexford Carol" for the family's annual Christmas project. I used all MIDI instrumentation:

bassoon, oboe, clarinet, flute, piccolo, harp, bass, cello, and some ensemble strings

The "Pocket Orchestra" samples do a good job in preventing playing out of range, but I was wondering if there were any other glaring symphonic errors. If you are near a decent pair of speakers (or ear buds), would you please give it a listen?

My daughter's voice will be replacing the oboe melody for the most part.

http://rfwmiller.com/audio/wexford.wav (58MB wave file, 44.1 16 CD quality)
http://rfwmiller.com/audio/wexford.mp3 (6.5MB mp3 file, 320 kbps good mobile quality)

That's a really lovely job, Robb.

Great MIDI demo, too.

I did orchestral arrangements of four of my songs a few months ago so I'm in tune with what you are doing here. I can hear this as a movement for full orchestra, or even a reduction for piano and organ plus soloist that you could market.

Really fine writing.

Excellent Rob. I don't know what you could do to improve it.

Happy Thanksgiving.

Don S.

Matt and Don,

Thanks. I am happy your experienced ears find it acceptable. I suppose I will move on to the next track until my dear daughter tackles the vocals.

Sounds very good, Robb.

Look. Whenever we present a work, just present it.

Don't say anything in front about any possible weakpoints that you may think or even know about the performance.

Just stick it out there.

Listening is a very human thing.

If you tell your audience to listen for a mistake, they will always find one, because you asked them to do so. Dig.

In the case of this performance, sure it is MIDI, but nowadays there are entire movie and tv underscores being done in MIDI, and yours could sell for that purpose handily.


--Mac

I would be happy to hear a longer intro. It seems so short now as to be unsymmetrical. 4 bars at least, with a sustained 1 chord to give the incoming lead vocal a place to stand.

I am thinking about how the cello countermelody at 1:00 will work with a high vocal. I am getting goosebumps already.

There seems to be a set-up here for a great whacking orchestral crescendo at the last verse. Good job avoiding that.

At 1:55 the harps arpeggio up to a dissonance, several times. Kinda left me hanging. I would find it more comfortable if the harps took part in the resolution at 2:17.

So maybe your orchestral samples are not the most authentic ever. So what? I am sure your daughter is prettier than all those studio cats put together...[8{>

To me, this is very impressive. I didn't try to listen to "mistakes." I just listened for pure enjoyment and thats what I got. Very nice!

It really is lovely. By the way, the slight dissonance was my favorite part.

Robb - that was ace!

If you are interested, there's a free classical music orchestration class coming up on Coursera. I'm signed up for it. I hope I can pull off something like what you did here by the end of the class.

https://www.coursera.org/course/classicalcomp

-Scott

Robb,

Simply beautiful a wonderful movement. I can't wait to hear the finish product with your daughter's vocal added. This is a very strong production.

Congrats!

Later,

Thanks for the kudos all! I am very happy that the many wonderful ears have found the arrangement pleasing.

@Scott: Thanks for the heads-up on the course, sounds interesting.

I paid a lotta money at one time for Composition and Arranging courses at the university level.

Imagine my thoughts when the prof told us that "everything that can be done for arrangement of the strings has already been done, so to learn that, go to the library and check out some of those mini scores and study them."

I did eventually do just that, and the advice was exactly spot on, but darnit, the advice could have cost a lot less of my money.

A word to the wise should be sufficient.


--Mac

+1, I thought it was beautiful Robb.