Stars & Stripes Forever

ZonGuy · #1 07-05-2008, 06:28 PM

Sight reading job - they faxed the .pdf file for the Sousa favorite over yesterday morning mentioning they were adding it to the show, tempo 240 BPM. Hmmm...must be someting special.

Yes it was.

It was some clowns"Basses" part - obviously not a bass player - with 16ths in the front section and lots of 8ths in the back (at 240 bpm mind you). A real ball buster. Plus the registers were all screwed up with some parts written to Bb below the low B string (actually the part was probably intended at piano pitch instead of bass which is an octave lower than written. Spent a lot of time, getting the right register for each part, then adding the right fingering position notes, because you don't screw around with a piece like this.

Sure glad I opened the file and rehearsed it in advance or it would have been a train wreck. Took an hour to get it straightened out.

BassChuck · #2 07-06-2008, 05:05 AM

They gave you a tuba part. It would be written at pitch, so to play it on bass you'd have to take it up an octave.

A classic for the 4th of July. We played the Dave Wolpe arrangement of it for big band. There are a lot of different arrangements of this Sousa March. The fact that it was played with electric bass (or even DB) means that it was 'screwed around with' at least a little bit.

ZonGuy · #3 07-06-2008, 12:39 PM

Mine was the Brion/Schissel arrangement.

Tuba would explain why most of the piece was written in octaves. I tended to go with the upper register part which would have been the bass tuba part.

**Pacman** · #4 07-06-2008, 02:05 PM

Yeah, that "clown" is John Phillip Sousa, and 'basses' refers to tuba.

Widdershins · #5 07-06-2008, 02:07 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Pacman

Yeah, that "clown" is John Phillip Sousa, and 'basses' refers to tuba.

Don't you mean Sousaphone?

**Pacman** · #6 07-06-2008, 02:19 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Widdershins

Don't you mean Sousaphone?

Possibly, or even the helicon...

projectMalamute · #7 07-06-2008, 02:23 PM

The thing's in cut time, tempo is half note = 120.

In fact, Stars and Stripes Forever is a piece that has historically been played at a freakishly consistent tempo, if you ever need to find 120 bpm just hum it and you'll be pretty damn close.

Big Red Bass · #8 07-06-2008, 09:02 PM

Believe it or not but Sousa wrote string bass parts to most, if not all, of his marches. I have them.

ZonGuy · #9 07-06-2008, 10:06 PM

The arrangement is felt in cut time, but my arrangement is written in 4/4, not cut time, so its 240 bpm when you are counting the nasty 16th notes. And so it was played.

Funny both Sousa marches we played were exactly 240 (or 120, depending how you count)

Turns out, there was string bass part (much simpler!!) for the march. Perhaps if the part said "Tuba" instead of "Basses", the secretary would have sent me the right part.

ZonGuy · #10 07-06-2008, 10:07 PM

I also wonder, when someone else does an arrangement of a Sousa march, what was changed?

ZonGuy · #11 07-06-2008, 10:13 PM

And Mr. Pacman, we also played the "Salute to the Armed Forces". Nice straight forward part.

**Pacman** · #12 07-06-2008, 10:52 PM

Zon, I've played that more times than I can count. Although I usually play that on double bass...

BassChuck · #13 07-07-2008, 06:30 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by ZonGuy

I also wonder, when someone else does an arrangement of a Sousa march, what was changed?

Sousa tended to make the sound very full. The sound is excellent for professional and college bands, but in the hand of less experienced musicians it can sound dull and 'fuzzy' (remember that Sousa was director of the US Marine band 1890-1900, then had is own professional group. During WWI he was director of the Navy Band, and after the war had a professional group until his death in 1932).

What I mean by a very full sound is, for instance, the french horn parts are more rhythmic (long, short, long, short etc etc) rather than melodic, and tend to be voiced in full chords using 4 parts. In the re-arrangements, that part is often reduced to a two part harmony, or sometimes just left out completely leaving the percussion section to keep the rhythm. The low brass parts are sometimes simplified by reducing the number of parts. The same is true for the woodwinds. Instead of a complete and full voicing of the woodwinds as a section it is a clearer scoring to double the saxophones with the low brass rather than have them work as the low sound within the wooodwind section.

Of course all that is very subjective and part of the choices that arrangers will use depending on how and where the music is to be played and who the players are. There are very fine arrangements of the famous Sousa marchs that are very accessable to Middle School bands (it would be difficult to get a very good sound from kids that age using the original parts). David Shaffer is a fine arranger for that. And Fredrick Fennell did some good work arranging them for wind ensemble.. there were a good number of 'mistakes' in the original parts, mostly along the lines of editing expression marks.

BTW, Sousa himself was a violin player professionally before getting into the band biz.

onlyclave · #14 07-07-2008, 09:51 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by BassChuck

What I mean by a very full sound is, for instance, the french horn parts are more rhythmic (long, short, long, short etc etc) rather than melodic, and tend to be voiced in full chords using 4 parts.

As a french horn player for years I absolutely abhorred Sousa marches because of the 5 minutes of off beats I had to play.

boom-Chuck boom-Chuck boom-Chu-Chu-Chuck-Chuck.

If you've never had a cramp in your lower jaw, play that and see how you feel.

I think the faster Sousa marches are played the better. You get the over with sooner and the horn section won't fall over dead.

ZonGuy · #15 07-07-2008, 04:57 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Pacman

Zon, I've played that more times than I can count. Although I usually play that on double bass...

Yes, Salute would definitely sound better on DB.

ZonGuy · #16 07-07-2008, 04:58 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by BassChuck

Sousa tended to make the sound very full. The sound is excellent for professional and college bands, but in the hand of less experienced musicians it can sound dull and 'fuzzy' (remember that Sousa was director of the US Marine band 1890-1900, then had is own professional group. During WWI he was director of the Navy Band, and after the war had a professional group until his death in 1932).

What I mean by a very full sound is, for instance, the french horn parts are more rhythmic (long, short, long, short etc etc) rather than melodic, and tend to be voiced in full chords using 4 parts. In the re-arrangements, that part is often reduced to a two part harmony, or sometimes just left out completely leaving the percussion section to keep the rhythm. The low brass parts are sometimes simplified by reducing the number of parts. The same is true for the woodwinds. Instead of a complete and full voicing of the woodwinds as a section it is a clearer scoring to double the saxophones with the low brass rather than have them work as the low sound within the wooodwind section.

Of course all that is very subjective and part of the choices that arrangers will use depending on how and where the music is to be played and who the players are. There are very fine arrangements of the famous Sousa marchs that are very accessable to Middle School bands (it would be difficult to get a very good sound from kids that age using the original parts). David Shaffer is a fine arranger for that. And Fredrick Fennell did some good work arranging them for wind ensemble.. there were a good number of 'mistakes' in the original parts, mostly along the lines of editing expression marks.

BTW, Sousa himself was a violin player professionally before getting into the band biz.

Thank you for a very comprehensive answer.