Congratulations, Marc, that’s wonderful news! Best wishes for the three of you!
Congrats Marc!
Yes congrats Marc. Funnily enough, only yesterday my son and I were discussing his birth 22 years ago. He’s autistic so it’s the first time he’s asked about it which brought back lots of memories. I don’t know if you’ll be able to convince your partner that ‘Dorico’ would be a good name for a boy …or ‘Dorica’ for a girl …though the times we live in maybe the gender neutral ‘Doric’ may be more apt for some. Whatever, listen to your own bodies and guard advice from others and definitely consult the internet about all matters related to health. Best of luck.
I don’t know the originals of these pieces but you have some excellent arrangements there. Is this for some kind of educational setting?
I play in a trombone quartet. We have been in hiatus since February, actually since before Christmas. We decided it would be safe to play outside today on a sunny patio with plenty of separation. That actually was very nice, as it was at a coffee house that adjoins a popular bicycle path that had only opened last Friday. There was a railing to keep the adoring fans at a safe distance. OK, it was a little rough playing at that separation with the noise and with 5 months apart, but we had a good time.
I decided to write a new arrangement for the occasion, which also gave me a good reason to jump into 3.5 with both feet. This is a somewhat obscure jazz near-standard written by Wayne Shorter and played most notably by Art Blakey called Sweet 'N Sour. I already had done a lead sheet, so it really didn’t take that long to turn it into a full quartet arrangement. I got side-tracked digging into some new 3.5 things. Otherwise I think I spent under 3 hours on the thing. I could never have done this in other notation programs in twice the time.
Here is a rendering using NP, then doing a little polish in Cubase. No real editing.
https://app.box.com/s/cspyxkn5x3mio0uogae28nrihhjs5zfa
I recorded the live group, but I think I need to give the gang a chance to get back into the groove before saddling them with a public recording. 
I’m planning to expand this to a jazz octet (5 horns) and then to a full big band.
Nice arrangement! I love that tune!
Thank you. Anything touched by Shorter and/or Blakey is good as gold, IMHO.
Thanks! No, it was suggested by my daughter and I did it to test Dorico and my setup/workflow (still testing… searching…)
No problem, man. I have almost no complaints about the Spitfire Symphony library, which deserves all of the accolades that it’s received, to my mind.
I will identify two things about it that I find annoying, though:
- Some (Many?) of the percussion samples’ dynamics aren’t engineered in the standard fashion, requiring manual edits of controller #1 to effect changes in dynamics. The tambourine sample that plays in my score is one example; it didn’t respond to dynamics markings in the score, so I had to plot points on the (ironically named) automation lane.
- Speaking of the tambourine, the shake sample starts late. I can fix this easily by editing the notes in Dorico’s Play tab, but I’d prefer to do it in the Kontakt interface, so I never have to worry about it. So far, I haven’t figured out how to do that (if it’s even possible).
Overall, though, I consider the (expensive) Spitfire library money very well spent. (I cannot say the same of the Cinematic Studio library, by the way! Besides having too garish a sound, it’s just not well-suited to playback via notation software.)
Today is Christian McBride’s birthday. For those who don’t know him, he’s one of the most amazing musicians I know, 6-time Grammy winner, one of the top bass players in the world, hosts radio shows on NPR and Sirius, the Artistic Director of Newport Jazz Festival, etc. We were supposed to have several gigs at the Apollo this week, but obviously those are all cancelled. To celebrate his birthday remotely I wrote an arrangement of his tune “The Shade of the Cedar Tree” (in Dorico of course) and recorded it virtually with the rest of the sax section from his big band. To point out a couple of the guys playing, Steve Wilson is one of my favorite soprano sax players, and many of you might recognize Ron Blake (who takes the tenor solo) from the Saturday Night Live band. Anyway, hope y’all will enjoy it, it was fun to write and produce!
https://drive.google.com/file/d/1sC6BDkj4muqmAxnIREjcYpVIYFNeQKNU/view?usp=sharing
(I think I have the permissions set correctly, but let me know if that link doesn’t work.)
Those permissions are indeed set correctly, and that’s glorious. Thanks Todd!
Thanks Leo!
That’s sensational on every level. What fun. I bet Christian was moved by this.
Thanks! I haven’t talked to him yet, but his wife posted on my FB page. I miss playing with those guys!
Lockdown still on the go where I live so I arranged this for fun. Based on the version performed in the film “Brassed Off”.
Sounds rendered using NotePerformer and video made using the free version of IceCream screen Recorder.
Hi, GeoffBob,
Great arrangement!! I enjoyed it, thoroughly.
Looking forward to listen to more of your music.
Cheers
Hi Marc,
Hearty congratulations & much happiness to you and your family.
Cheers
Florence Price’s “The Goblin And The Mosquito”
https://youtu.be/q7CRjdpYNTc
I’ve been going through IMSLP to find fun, short pieces to re-engrave. I thought it’d be cool to record the process, or possibly stream it! What kind of nerds would tune in for live streamed music engraving? Who knows. I mean…I would but I’m weird.
There’s some neat staff crossing in this piece and some rather dated notation.
I show some of my 3-Part, 4th species counterpoint examples using Dorico here (at 1:42):
Hello Frank, impressive examples, I love the sound, too.
I noticed you are using ties and slurs alternatively, shouldn’t it be all ties?