Brass Band - Tumblr Posts

Ok I realise literally no-one wants to listen to my little band kid ramblings but I realised that the 5 stages of grief map onto your reaction when you get a difficult piece in band.

Denial: “No, this can’t be what we’re playing! I mean look at it! What are those 7/8 bars doing there?”

Anger: “Screw this piece. Screw whoever wrote the dumb thing. Screw it’s stupid accidentals and chromatics and weird time signatures. It sounds weird anyway” *scribbles devil horns onto the composer’s name*

Bargaining: “Please can we not play this? I will play anything else, just not any more of this!” (bonus points if this is to the conductor, who naturally ignores it)

Depression: “I’ll never get this piece right.” *stares at music with empty eyes*

Acceptance: “Oh whoa, it’s actually not that bad once you know how it goes. Sounds pretty nice too”

Anyone else? Or am I just dramatic?

Christmas is weird with all my concerts cancelled. So for Second Christmas Day (or Boxing Day for you Britons out there) a little break from my usual work: this is an audio transcription of the soundtrack to Jazz Jackrabbit’s Candion, a.k.a. a wonderful interpretation of the classic ‘Carol of the Bells’. JJ was a big part of my childhood and this particular soundtrack was the first thing I ever fully audio transcribed (instead of just arranging it for piano). As always, while as close to the source material as possible considering I did this by ear, I’ve tried to write this down for life performance.

Original music by Mykola Leontovich, JJ soundtrack originally by Robert Allen & Joshua Jensen.