Hello. My name is George Marshall and I am the founder of Any Old Music. I am a composer with over 10-years of experience, having completed work on 50+ projects for video-games, films and the concert hall. In 2020, I completed my doctorate in Music Composition. My PhD was on constraint and how it emerges in creative projects. For example, team discussions in video-game projects. If a video-game team presented a mood-board and certain briefs, these constrain and challenge the composer to compose in a particular way or style. Less quantifiable than, say, the application of serialism, but probably just as (if not more) constraining and creatively directing. It was during my PhD that I realised that there would only be two outcomes for me as a composer: I became a professional composer who needed to compose lots of music in not enough time. I became an amateur/hobbyist or semi-professional composer who needed to compose less music but still with not enough time. With this in mind I eventually opted for something more along the lines of semi-professional, but with an ambition of setting up Any Old Music as a means of helping similarly time strapped music makers. Particularly those in the second group, the hobbyists and semi-professionals, whose composing competes much more for time against other aspects of life. Composition is incredibly rewarding. You never stop learning and developing as a composer. Furthermore, many of us boast renegade autodidactic personalities to a certain extent. My hope is that Any Old Music’s self-paced composition courses can help composers to continue growing, by learning through creating and doing so in their own time.
Why I transposed the whole arrangement
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A simple but significant change has happened in my Winnie the Pooh arrangement. The whole piece has been transposed down a tone (major 2nd) and the arrangement is now beginning to take shape in full concert band score, having reached a level of detail in the condensed sketch that felt solid enough to build from. So today, I thought I would share how that move is going: what seems to be working well, what seems less convincing, and why. Down a toneFirst, the decision to transpose the score down a major 2nd. There was one main reason for doing it, though the change seems to have brought other benefits too. The main trigger was the trumpets in the chorus. In the earlier version, the chorus pushed the trumpets up to a top C (they are in B flat, though written in concert pitch here, so the previous top B flat became a C natural): A top C is not unplayable, but it does sit in a part of the instrument where the timbre changes quite noticeably compared to the note (Bb) just a tone below. The sound becomes more intense, and depending on the player, potentially more strained too. For this piece, that did not feel ideal. Taking everything down a tone seemed the simplest way of placing an important section of the music in a more comfortable and appropriate register, without creating fresh problems elsewhere. In fact, the change may even have improved the piece more generally, as the new key (with more flats) arguably suits concert bands better too. Moving into full band scoreHere is a link to the scores and audio again, in case you would like to compare: https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/1-JQ9Zy1dKgFNlpgxu7HQcHAHLOZQdBnI?usp=drive_link Rather than crowding the email with large images, having the scores and audio should make it easier for me to refer to particular bars in the score. Most of my following comments relate to the full score, which is really a snapshot of where things stand at the moment. The beginning and ending are still somewhat fragmentary, while the inner sections (verses, chorus and middle-section) are now largely assembled. What is working best: the chorusMuch of the piece has transferred very nicely. The chorus (bars 35–43) is the section I am most pleased with at the moment, both in how it has carried across from the sketch and in the extra detail that the fuller scoring has allowed. For example, the flutes, oboes and clarinets now have decorative triplets that I hope add colour, energy and character. There have also been some more practical redistributions. Harmonic support that had been sitting in the clarinets has now moved into the saxophones and horns. That may not be the final answer. At some stage, the whole score will need a proper audit, especially because the saxophones and horns currently have rather a lot to do. But at this stage, it feels more sensible to leave material in place and remove it later if needed than to thin things out too soon. This section has also gained an extra bar before the “composed” middle section. The reason was simple: the full weight of the chorus felt as though it needed a little more time to pull on the reins before stepping into something lighter. That added bar gives the orchestration and rhythmic energy just enough room to scale down, so the middle section arrives more naturally and with less of a jolt. So far, then, this whole passage is both looking and (at least in playback) sounding promising. What is working reasonably wellThe verse variation (bars 27–34) is not far off, though it still needs a little attention. The main question mark at present is the short “dabs” in the saxophones and horns. Musically, they do what they need to do. They are very much in line with the sketch. The uncertainty is really one of colour rather than content. There may be more interesting instrumental combinations available here, and that is something I would like to explore. At the moment, quite a lot of the scoring still works in blocks of instruments rather than in more mixed combinations, which is perhaps one consequence of working outwards from a sketch. Even so, that approach often works very well in concert band writing. Instrumental sections tend to blend naturally, and players usually feel more comfortable when they are not left too exposed. What still needs workThe verse (bars 11–26) needs some refinement when it returns at the dal segno. The secondary melody line is something I would like to keep, because it gives the return a pleasing sense of variation. The difficulty is that it currently sits in quite a crowded middle register. Ideally, I would rather not rescore the whole section just for that return, so the question is whether it will work well enough as it stands, whether the secondary line should be removed, or whether the section needs adjusting more generally so that the line has room every time it appears. That is probably something best settled with real players, hopefully in the spring. The other areas that still need attention are the opening, which is not yet doing quite what I want, and the ending. The ending, though, feels less worrying. It is more a matter of getting it fully written out and then making a few adjustments once everything can be properly seen on the page. Have a good weekendAnyway, thank you for reading. I hope this commentary has been interesting and useful, and I hope to share another update before too long. As always, if you have any questions or comments, please do get in touch. Regards, George P.S. I am considering running a Sunday evening live-online course again, like I did a few years ago on orchestration. I'll be in touch to gauge interest and thoughts on topics etc.
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Any Old Music
Hello. My name is George Marshall and I am the founder of Any Old Music. I am a composer with over 10-years of experience, having completed work on 50+ projects for video-games, films and the concert hall. In 2020, I completed my doctorate in Music Composition. My PhD was on constraint and how it emerges in creative projects. For example, team discussions in video-game projects. If a video-game team presented a mood-board and certain briefs, these constrain and challenge the composer to compose in a particular way or style. Less quantifiable than, say, the application of serialism, but probably just as (if not more) constraining and creatively directing. It was during my PhD that I realised that there would only be two outcomes for me as a composer: I became a professional composer who needed to compose lots of music in not enough time. I became an amateur/hobbyist or semi-professional composer who needed to compose less music but still with not enough time. With this in mind I eventually opted for something more along the lines of semi-professional, but with an ambition of setting up Any Old Music as a means of helping similarly time strapped music makers. Particularly those in the second group, the hobbyists and semi-professionals, whose composing competes much more for time against other aspects of life. Composition is incredibly rewarding. You never stop learning and developing as a composer. Furthermore, many of us boast renegade autodidactic personalities to a certain extent. My hope is that Any Old Music’s self-paced composition courses can help composers to continue growing, by learning through creating and doing so in their own time.
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