151Music

I Gotta Feelin

2009-08-21 15:44:14

Another hip-hop tune for the 2009 marching season. It turns out that it's a pretty generic sounding tune when it doesn't have actual words along with it. But overall I think it's usable.

Alumni, Support your Bands

2009-08-06 23:53:19

Some athletic bands have the luxury of being loved and appreciated by their communities. Unfortunately, most athletic bands are little more than an after thought or background noise to the sporting events they perform at (a lot like cheerleaders if you will). This apathy and lack of attention often turns into neglect and a lack of appreciation. As some of you may know from reading the "About" page, I was a member of the University of Florida Marching Band for several years. For most of my tenure we practiced on Pony Field during the week and on the practice field (the same one used by the football team during the week) on Saturday morning. Then, changes started to happen. We were moved off of Pony Field onto Norman Field. Norman field was already used by several club sports teams and students who liked to play Ultimate Frisbee. No one thought much about it until we realized that adding daily marching band practices would be the straw that broke the fields back. After a couple of months the field degenerated into a dust and dirt covered mess filled with potholes and pitfalls (some big enough to put a small person in). We suffered through it with the understanding that the UAA (University Athletic Association) would deal with the field conditions in the upcoming year. After all, this was 2006, the year the mighty Gators would win the BCS and reap all of the financial benefits that come with it. The next year came (I had graduated by this point) and the band did get new uniforms, but the field was even worse. Several students complained of the dust and dirt in the air on the field and reported coughing up "Darkly colored black and/or brown mucus" after being on the field for prolonged periods. On top of that, the band no longer practiced on the football team's field on Saturday mornings. It may not sound like a big deal, but that was the band's best opportunity to set it's formations correctly since it has professionally marked lines. Instead, they stayed on Norman with the lines that students had to try to mark off themselves on the rough turrain. This year (after winning another BCS championship) the University tried to work with the field a little more by pressing down the dirt with heavy machinery and buying new sod. In an almost comical twist, the university had enough money to purchase the sod but not the labor to install it. So, the students had to install the sod themselves. Unfortunately, this happened in the same week that the University announced they were making the head football coach the highest paid coach in the conference. Now with all of this said I should clarify some things:

Most of the students doing this work are members of Kappa Kappa Psi and Tau Beta Sigma, service organizations that are dedicated to serving bands. These students are usually looking for large service projects like this to take on.
I don't think UF is doing anything wrong by giving a coach who won 2 national championships in the past 3 years a raise.
The economy is bad
The band program at UF does get a lot of things (new uniforms and a new building for one), the issue is that they do have a lot of other legitimate needs.
I think the band should get more but I don't think it should come at the expense of other programs. What's more the old debate of who's more important, the team or the band/cheerleaders/etc is just pointless. The idea isn't to make one flourish at the expense of the others but to try to do what's right by all of the programs.

So what's left? If there's a finite amount of money how does one program get more without hurting other programs? The answer is simple, alumni donations. Alumni are one of the financial lifelines of a University and they can feed whatever organizations they deem necessary. I think that's the only real way that these programs will get the things they need. In some cases outside sources will make donations, recently George Steinbrenner donated a large amount of money to the school of music which allowed them to build a new building. But a lot of outside sources will only start to make donations if they see a good product or if they are somehow solicited with a good pitch. The catch is that building that good product takes money and other resources, so what comes first the chicken or the egg? What I believe should happen is that alumni, who have been through the program and know about these needs, should be the first to try to donate to their program in order to build that good product that other outside sources will want to support.

Fire Burning

2009-08-02 09:49:43

There is currently no description available for Fire Burning

The Pretender

2009-07-31 22:33:26

The first in a series of arrangements for the end of summer 2009. This is my take on the new song "The Pretender" by the Foo Fighters. The opening requires a sextet made of 3 trumpets, 1 trombone, 1 baritone, and a French Horn / Mellophone, but as soon as the time change hits everyone's back in for the rest of the piece.

The first version is pretty long, as it includes the first verse, chorus, and bridge of the real song ending on the chorus a 2nd time. There will be a shortened version coming soon.

New Feature: Scores and Parts

2009-07-05 14:07:47

A new feature has been added to the website. If you are a registered user you can now download a zip file that contains the score and parts of the piece you are viewing. It will take a little time for all of the pieces to have zip files posted for them since it requires formatting all the parts for the piece. But right now about 50% of our pieces have been scored and formatted. Remember, if the piece you want doesn't have a score, you can always click the "Request score and parts" button and send a direct request for the score and parts you want.

I'm on a Boat

2009-07-05 13:27:59

This is the comedy song "I'm on a Boat" done in what a friend of mine called "Rick Roll" style. It starts off trying not to sound like what it is (really over dramatic) and then kicks in at T-Pains part of the song. This may have been the death of any "artistic integrity" I had.

One of a Kind

2009-03-27 11:16:52

A framework for a pep band piece based on the professional wrestling adaptation of this song used for Rob Van Damme (RVD).

Our League

2009-03-27 11:16:45

The NFL theme "remixed" as a hip-hop beat.

Site Updates

2009-02-15 18:13:55

Hello All,

151Music.com is not dead yet. You may have noticed that there's been a lack of new music produced on the site recently. There have been a lot of bumps that have caused a delay in the production of any new arrangements.

A little while ago (a few month's really) I mentioned that I was going to go back and score all of the music and parts on the website. That's taken a lot longer than I initially thought it would. On top of that, I've had to start using Windows Vista. The big problem there that is that the sound card drivers on vista won't allow me to record MP3s the way I did in XP. So even if there were new arrangements I'd have no MP3s of them to post.

But, now I've got about half of all of the arrangements printed to PDF and compiled into zip files that contain scores and parts. These zip files will be made available soon. I am currently implementing changes that will allow registered users to get these files with the click of the button. Once that's done there are a couple of more site changes to be made and then, it's back to posting new music.

So, I hope you bear with me while these changes are taking place. There may be a new piece that goes up every now and again, but for the next couple of months the site is going to be slowly undergoing changes. I suggest that anyone curious about when new pieces will be released should sign up for the RSS feed.

Thanks for your patience,
-151Music

Another Way To Die

2008-11-16 00:38:38

The opening theme from the new James Bond (007) movie: Quantum of Solace. The entire thing is about 1:15 and would make a good stands tune or addition to a secret agent themed show.

Again this is not the normal 007 theme. The theme from this movie was written by Jack White and performed by Jack White and Alicia Keys.

Green Light

2008-10-25 16:38:29

This is probably my favorite hip-hop song out right now. It's in the key of G and usually the key would've been changed to something that's more "marching band friendly" since marching band players love flats. But for this arrangement the key was left as it was. This means a lot of Gb which can be a tricky note for tuning, but it's a trade off for maintaining the association to the original song.

The playback s the long arrangement that has the first two verses a short bridge and closes with the chorus. There is a shorter version that only has the 2nd verse and the chorus. All in all it sounds fun, and up beat like the original song. But it's fast and certain instruments (mellos) have high parts that can make it a little hard on the chops.

**P.S.**
Ok, so after writing all of that I did go back and transpose the piece into the key of F and decided that the difference was pretty negligible. So now, I have both versions readily available. The playback from the "Download MP3" link is in the key of F, if you want to compare you can listen to the one in the key of G here

Monsters

2008-10-05 10:02:19

This is the Fourth installment in my series of Guitar Hero arrangements.

"Monsters" is a bonus track on Guitar Hero three so you may not immediately associate it with the game, but I assure you it's there. Originally, I didn't even think about doing an arrangement of this song, but after listening to it a few times it started to grow on me and I started to hear ways that I could "fit" it for a marching band piece.

There are lots of things in the music that don't get picked up in the MP3 playback. The most notable is the trombone progression after the initial melody. The idea is for all those slurred notes to actually glissando into each other, but Finale just couldn't handle that in the playback. You'll be able to see everything in the score.

Even so, I really like the way this one came out. And I should warn you, it gets louder at the end.

Miss Murder

2008-09-24 02:59:34

This is the third installment in my series of Guitar Hero arrangements. A.F.I.'s "Miss Murder" was a pretty popular song a few years ago, just long enough to be forgotten until I picked up the Guitar Hero game. Energy and dynamics make a big difference in this piece. I don't usually notice if I record the playback using the dynamics but in this case it made a big difference in how the piece comes across. If it's not played with the same aggressiveness of the original it almost sounds like a groove type of song.

Celestial Evening

2008-08-27 14:38:10

I wrote this piece in response to a request for an original woodwind work. The original intention was for it to be played by a group of varying woodwind instruments, listed above as the alternative instrumentation. However, the original scoring was for a clarinet ensemble, since that is a more common group. "Celestial Evening" is based on the story of an Anime (Japanese Animation) called "Trigun". Here is a brief synopsis of Trigun from Wikipedia:

The story, known for its Science fiction Western theme, follows the life of "The Humanoid Typhoon" and two insurance company employees who are ordered to follow him to minimize the damage caused by his activities. Much of the damage attributed to "Vash" is caused by the activities of bounty hunters who are after the "60,000,000,000$$" (sixty billion "double dollars") reward on Vash's head for the destruction of a city called July. Vash does not clearly remember the destruction of July, and only wants "love and peace", as he puts it; though he is a gunfighter of inhuman skill, he uses his weapons only to save lives wherever he can.

As the series progresses, more is gradually learned about Vash's mysterious history and the history of the human civilization on Gunsmoke, the desert planet the series is set on. The series is often humorous in tone, but at the same time it involves very serious character development and especially in later episodes it becomes quite emotionally intense. Vash is occasionally joined by a priest, Nicholas D. Wolfwood, who is almost as good a gunfighter as Vash himself, and later is targeted by a band of assassins known as the Gung-Ho Guns for reasons which are mysterious at first.

Trigun evolves into a very serious discussion of the nature of morality, posing questions such as: What is the nature of morality? Can we judge different moral codes? If a person is forced to betray their moral code, does that betrayal invalidate that moral code, and can the person still try to live up to that moral code? Can the person find redemption from their wrongs, and if so, how?

In the story Vash, who is a skilled gunslinger, also values life greatly and has vowed never to take another life. During the course of the story Vash is placed in a situation where he is literally forced to choose to either kill a man or to allow that man to kill two women. After killing Vash retreats into himself, changing his identity and effectively going into hiding. He is found later by the two women that he saved and is in state of great depression and emotional turmoil. He is not able to forgive himself for violating his own convictions, believing that there had to be another way. At the apex of Vash's emotional struggle, he begins to sadly sing a song which was sung to by a woman named Rem Saverem when he was younger. She is the influence that led Vash to have the beliefs that he does. This song is referred to as Celestial Evening, Rem's Song, or most accurately, "Sound Life". This is the English translation of the song:

So... On the first night,
a pebble falls to the earth from somewhere.

So... On the second night,
The pebble's children hold hands and sketch a waltz.
Sound life

So... On the third night,
The children of the waltz cause ripples on the
face of the world

So... On the fourth night,
the children of the wave spray the shore.
Sound life

So... On the fifth night,
those shards strike the face of the earth over and over.

So... On the sixth night,
those signals bring travellers together.
Sound life

So... On the seventh night,
a weightless ship races to the sky.

So... On the eighth morning,
a song from somewhere reaches my ears.
Sound life

Well then... A song that has recorded everything
echoes to the new sky.
Sound life
Sound life

The phrase night is sometimes translated as "Celestial Evening" which gives this piece it's name. The main theme of the piece is the same melody from "Sound Life". This piece draws from several elements of the story. The pulsing polyrhthyms and almost dance-like syncopation in the introduction are inspired by the futuristic old western style of the show and it's music. As the piece progresses it moves into a more somber feel, which reflects a period where Vash is struggling to come to terms with his own ethics, commitments, and transgressions. This struggle leads into dissonance that culminates with the triumphant restating of the main theme, representing Vash's conviction to carry on with his idealistic ways, despite his mistakes.

Get Money

2008-08-27 14:30:30

Another hip hop chart. This one had been bouncing around in my head for a little while and I finally remembered to put it down on paper after seeing the music video. If you are going to play this and haven't heard the song, I suggest you listen to it so you can get a feel for the sound of it. Also don't play it to straight, get loose with it.

NOTE: The Alto Sax, Horn and Trombone are the only instruments with first and second parts. I only did this to make certain sections easier to read. Other instruments have split parts for chords even though there is only one part in the score.

Knights of Cydonia

2008-08-27 13:28:51

One thing that has irked me over the past couple of years is these "Guitar Hero" themed half time shows that several bands have done. It's not that I have a problem with the show itself. What I have a problem with is the fact that these aren't really Guitar Hero shows, they're re-hashed classic rock shows. I keep thinking, "If you're going to do a Guitar Hero show you should do the songs that make the game worth playing, not just worth listening to." I know that it's a little impractical but I think doing some of the fringe titles from the game franchise would be great. It would give the performers something new to play that's at a higher difficulty; and the audience gets to hear something new as well, but also something they'll recognize (maybe).

To this end I've done the first of what will probably be a series of "Guitar Hero" arrangements. "Knights of Cydonia" by Muse.

Guitar Hero Sheet Music

2008-08-27 13:28:51

One thing that has irked me over the past couple of years is these "Guitar Hero" themed half time shows that several bands have done. It's not that I have a problem with the show itself. What I have a problem with is the fact that these aren't really Guitar Hero shows, they're re-hashed classic rock shows. I understand that band directors have a lot of things to do, so if you can serve something familiar in a new package, it's not a bad idea. Still, there's a part of me that keeps thinking, "If you're going to do a Guitar Hero show you should do the songs that make the game worth playing, not just worth listening to."

I know that it's a little impractical but I think doing some of the fringe titles from the game franchise (as well as songs that aren't normally played by a marching band) would be great. It would give the performers something new to play that's at a higher difficulty; and the audience gets to hear something new as well, but also something they'll recognize (maybe).

To this end I've started a series of "Guitar Hero" arrangements. I'm starting with songs from the most recent release "Guitar Hero III." If time and interest permits, I will start to go through the older versions of the game. So far I've already done "Knights of Cydonia" by Muse, "Bulls on Parade" by Rage Against the Machine, and I'm thinking of starting on "Through the Fire and Flames" by Dragonforce.

-Brice Olion
151Music.com