Hey Folks. I'm Tsubaki and I compose for mainly Marching Bands and Sectional Fanfares, or smaller ensembles, lol. I'm not a novice in the area of composing/arranging, nor am I intermediate/expert. I do popular songs, mainly under the RnB/ Hip-Hop genre. But I like all kind of music, especially jazz. Being a composer for a urban marching band, their is not much variance in my music(except accents and FFFF's, lmao). So I also do concert song, under the gospel genre, most times, ha. But, I'll just post two incomplete Marching Band songs right now(since I can't find my flash drive with the other things on it)

Just Fine- is a song by Mary J. Blige. And although I don't really like the song, it's really popular, so yeah.

She Don't Have to Know- An old song by John Legend, he's awesome. The song is more orientated for a Jazz Band, but my band already plays a marching rendition of it(which no one seem to have the part or score for so it's constantly being changed). So I'm redoing it with my own changes and stuff. I know the percussion part it pretty lame but oh well, for now.

Since those two tunes are incomplete and underconstruction, all critique is welcome. I hope to learn a lot from this forum, so yeah.

Welcome to Ichigos. ^_^

Well to start off I'd like to address you doubling of instruments. Yeah it has to happen in a marching band setting, but I feel from what I have listened to you have done to much doubling. I feel you need more harmony in there and more counter melodies.

Also, where is the skill? From what I have looked at and listened to, the musicianship is pretty low for these two pieces. Don't water things down. Make it a challenge to be able to preform. That's what makes the great marching band great. That and...

...A powerful brass section. If you look at the great marching bands, they make use of the brass section to wow the audience. If I were to give a feeling to how a brass section should sound during a field show, it would be anger. From the first to last note, the brass section needs to be in your face. I really didn't see this happening thus far in your compositions. There are times when the brass section is not in your face, but this happens seldomly and when it does happen it's not for long.

It's nice to see someone that does marching band music around here. Keep posting! ^_^

Welcome to Ichigos. ^_^

Well to start off I'd like to address you doubling of instruments. Yeah it has to happen in a marching band setting, but I feel from what I have listened to you have done to much doubling. I feel you need more harmony in there and more counter melodies.

Also, where is the skill? From what I have looked at and listened to, the musicianship is pretty low for these two pieces. Don't water things down. Make it a challenge to be able to preform. That's what makes the great marching band great. That and...

...A powerful brass section. If you look at the great marching bands, they make use of the brass section to wow the audience. If I were to give a feeling to how a brass section should sound during a field show, it would be anger. From the first to last note, the brass section needs to be in your face. I really didn't see this happening thus far in your compositions. There are times when the brass section is not in your face, but this happens seldomly and when it does happen it's not for long.

It's nice to see someone that does marching band music around here. Keep posting! ^_^

Hey, thanks for the advice. Glad to be here. Well, I did a lot of doubling in order to avoid missing part when sections are downs. I would of created more harmonies and countermelodies, but where I'm from, you gotta keep it as close to the original context as possible, or people won't recognize, unless they understand music(this is probably where I went wrong, I should know to broaden my horizon, that I'm not always playing for one group of people).

I understand on the second part too, I spent too much time making sure the chords were downpacked that the melody wasn't full audible. I tried to also keep the melody as close to the rhythm of the song as possible, following what I said above.

And by powerful, you mean loud?

Thanks for the critique thus far, I'm glad to see someone correcting me on my mistakes. I'm always welcome for more.

Err, I messed around with She Don't Have to Know, resulting in a change of the ensemble, from Marching Band to Jazz Band, it's still not done, and I'm still fixing things, but I'ma put it on pause for right now, to work on other stuff. So yeah, bring more criticism!

I would bring the tenor saxes down an octave on page 3 at the triplets. F is the highest note.. G's and A's? woowee. Too high!.. ( in She doesn't have to know)

Ah, I see. Thanks. I saved the song in concert pitch(they're actually playing high C's and D's ), but you're right, they're still too high.