Autumn Nocturne Septet

[Sherry C]

Hi Ralph,

Very nice "goodevening" piece - I like it. Any chance you'd want to score it for big band? (wink, wink)

Originally Posted by rrayner

I am trying to build up my Clavinova repertoire where I will have a meaningful number of charts to play along with, so I have started entering in some of my old playing-days scores.

Thanks for gracing us with these

I have notated it as “Easy Swing” as most of the sections have a swing feel. There are a number of places where I intentionally use straight eighth notes. I marked these notes with the dash over the note head to indicate “no swing”.

Is that a "jazz standard" notation form? I'm asking, because I see tenutos sometimes on my bass charts for the big band, but have generally understood them to be more in the way of added emphasis or "fullness" as opposed to "straight" vs. swing. In my little Alfred "Essential Dictionary of Music Notation" it does say that the tenuto is "flexible in its application". Is this one of those 'flexible moments'? I'm asking in ignorance, because my main musical background is a play-by-ear musician, so I'm not as familiar as more seasoned musicians with some of the finer nuances of articulation markings.

My only regret is that I can’t find a way to smooth out the legato phrases, like at letter A, where the three horns play a spread voicing background. This problem is not as noticeable in the ensemble (soli) at letter D. I have tried reducing the Velocity, and that helps, but the transition between notes still sounds very “chuggy” to me. I have lengthened the duration of the notes in these legato phrases to the full time value, and this also helps, but it still doesn’t smooth it out enough.

Have you tried lengthening the notes so that they overlap by a tick or two? There are caveats of course (1) you'd need to do the duration adjustments with the Piano Roll/"Edit as-performed" "ON" and (2) you can only do it for adjacent notes that are different pitches (ie. you can't make such overlaps with adjacent notes that are on the same pitch). That "chugginess" will also differ depending on the MIDI playback device. The note-on "chuff" is fixed for some devices, but can be manipulated in other devices (eg. Garritan libraries, and others.)

By the way, this lengthening of notes to their full value is something I have started to do for phrasing. I know this is not the way that Mark designed Notation, but I contend as a horn player, the sound of any individual note does not end when the player changes to another note, be it by pad or valve, therefore, I do not want the gap between notes, unless it is for phrasing and breathing.

You're right Ralph - the default note lengths were actually determined by the analysis of many "live recorded" MIDI files, and the average lengths for each note value was used as the default table. Fortunately, the table is editable (as are individual notes), so Composer has the flexibility to accommodate most needs/desires

I noticed that you used Free Text to put chord names in for both the Piano and the Bass (I noticed that in the Conductor's Score.) I don't know if you know it or not, but just for others who may be looking, the "real" Text/Chord Name tools will allow you to show or hide chord names for each individual part of a score as well as show them transposed for the particular instrument on that instrument's printed Part.

For example, if you used Text/Chord Names to add chord names to the score, it will show the concert pitch chord names for the conductor's score, and any other instruments that play concert pitch (eg. that first "C" chord for Piano and Bass parts). For other parts (eg. Trumpet) for that Part, the chord names will show up in the instrument transposed pitch (eg. that first chord is a "D" for the trumpet), or you can choose to hide the chord names for the Trumpet part if you don't want the chord names printed on the Trumpet part.

ttfn,
Sherry