Poor Butterfly

[rrayner]

The attached score was written in May, 1963. It was my first for this setting, i.e., jazz band w/strings, woodwinds and harp. The strings were voiced like horns, as my Berklee training did not include string writing (I enlisted in the Air Force after 2-1/2 years of school - they may have covered it later). And, I had never written for a harp before - this arrangement has a minimalist scoring for harp. Also, almost all of our school work for rhythm section was, "Give the piano and bass players the chords and let the drummer know how many measures there are in the song. They'll fill in the parts for you." So, you'll see that there is nothing in the piano part except places where there are chord symbols. Obviously, for Notation Composer's purposes, I had to write the bass and drum parts. I think I do fairly well on the bass lines, as they are another kind of melody, but my drum parts are learn as I go. Note that the bass part does transpose up one octave for printing the part.

There are separate staves for Flutes 3 & 4; four clarinets; and bass clarinet. These were actually doubles by the saxophone players, as I had the luxury of having altos and tenors who doubled on both flute and clarinet and a bari who doubled on bass clarinet. Sherry tells me that future versions of Notation Composer may incorporate instrument change within one staff, which will make this kind of scoring cleaner.

I entered this old score into Notation Composer as an exercise to refresh my memory on how I used to score, in an effort to get back up to speed with my writing. This was one of my four early pieces that either were never recorded or library personnel couldn't find a copy. So, after forty+ years, this was going to be the only way I could hear it. The format is one of the three primary formats I wrote for -- the other two being the 16-piece jazz band and my own working septet. I was hesitant about posting this one in Share Your Music, as there are places that I feel I've overwritten (too notey) some of the background lines. But, there are other places that I'm quite pleased with, so I decided to put it on out there, in the hope that some of you may get some benefit out of seeing the innards. Much of my past development, as well as future development, has/will come from looking at other people's music -- not as a source of plagiarism, but as a learning tool. So, if there is some benefit to you here, please enjoy. Hopefully you have a good midi instrument to export this to for sampling.

Ralph Rayner

[rrayner]

I reposted the song file for this thread today. I discovered that I was a bit hasty in making the post, as I had not thoroughly desk-checked my data entry. There were several transcription errors which my ear had not detected.

Ralph

[mgj32]

Hi rrayner,
The drums diminished a bit my enjoyment of the piece because they seemed too dominant; so I tried diminishing the volume (nv 50) and everything leapt into life. The instrumentation is particularly a pleasure and handled very effectively, and the harmony works extremely well. The harp arpeggio and the flute trill have a sense of the inevitable about them, which can only mean that the piece has and keeps its focus.
I used the Merlin sound font collection designed for my card.
all best,
mgj

[rrayner]

Originally Posted by mgj32

The drums diminished a bit my enjoyment of the piece because they seemed too dominant; so I tried diminishing the volume (nv 50) and everything leapt into life.

Hi mgj,

I appreciate your critique. Any and all suggestions are welcome. I'm a bit confused, though. I have two basic drum "feels" in this score. In the early section and ending (the two-beat feel), I have the bass drum at nv 47, the hi-hat and brush swirl at nv 79, and in the four-beat section, I have the bass drum at nv 31, the hi-hat at nv 95 and ride cymbal at nv 79. I tried to be consistent with this, but in scanning every note in every drum measure this morning, I found that in areas where I added syncopation after copying in the basic measure, that I had left some notes at the default nv 96. I have made these corrections so as to be consistent. The bass drum is below nv 50 throughout (after corrections), so you must be referring to either the brush swirl, the hi-hat or the ride cymbal. Of course, you may be referring to the several places where I left the default nv 96.

On my PC sound card, which has nothing fancy added, and on my Clavinova (my midi device), I don't detect an imbalance (beyond the above-mentioned corrections). Were there specific measures where you made your adjustment and which of the drum effects did you change? Or are you talking throughout the score? I am keenly interested in developing balance in this digital music media, and as I mentioned, I'm now trying to learn how to write effective drum parts. Those subtilties were usually left to our drummers, as for the most part, they knew best.

Sherry has offered me some sample sound fonts for my PC and perhaps I should look into this, even though my Clavinova is my final target. A sound font addition might help me to hear what you're hearing. After all, my first "listen" is happening on the PC.

I appreciate hearing your perspectives and your kind words on the instrumentation and the harmonies.

Ralph

[mgj32]

Hi Ralph,
I should have used the phrase "with my system." I have the Audigy 2 sound card, with which I have and still have problems, e.g., hardware synths A and B if used together produce a blue screen. I have to have so many resource hogging programs running during the day, that I won't be able to give you specific measures where I made the change until tonight. But I can say that when I had MS Wavetable active, the same piece in that sounded a lot different than it did with the Merlin fonts, and the greatest differences were in the winds, which sounded like toy instruments, and drums, which were too loud using defaults. My conclusion: to get as close to the sound you want, record it and save it as an audio file. I always keep a raw .wav file, but usually save as an mp3 for uploading, usually to soundclick.
all best,
mgj

[mgj32]

Hi Ralph,
The change I made was through section D. It was the lowest note, actually, that made the dominant sound, which on my machine is a very loud click. I'm pretty sure it is the result of my sound fonts. Thee are several (the wood blocks, for example) that I always have to tone down considerably. Midi is sort of like you pays your nickle and takes your chances, I guess. The important thing is that PB is a terrific arrangement.
all best,
mgj