Thought I'd post two song arrangements I made in beepbox on here. The first one is The Moon theme from the Ducktales game and the other is Toad Town from Paper Mario: The Origami King. Both are for wind quintet, but have slightly different instrumentations, listed below.
If you play any of these instruments please give instrument specific feedback, specifically about range if you could, or any general feedback is appreciated, positive or negative!
The Moon repeats infinitely eventually so don't listen to it forever haha
Blue is flute
Yellow is oboe (seriously no yellow text?)
Redish Orange is clarinet
Green is bassoon in the The Moon and French Horn in Toad Town
Purple is Bass Clarinet in The Moon and Bassoon in Toad Town
Tip for better viewing experience if you've never used beepbox: At the bottom of the screen next to the volume slider, there's a magnifying glass. Press that.
This is by far my longest piece of 2023! The piece is inspired by the famous painting "The Garden of Eartly Delights" by Hieronymus Bosch.
It begins with the exterior which depicts the third day of creation in the Bible. When opened, the piece follows the panels from left to right.
The first panel takes place in paradise, where God presents Eve to Adam in a pristine landscape, meanwhile some weird-looking creatures roam the land.
On the second panel, the Fall of man has taken place, and all the people take part in lustfull activities with each other and animals, both natural and mythological.
The third panel - The Hell - is the result of humanity´s sinful behaviour. The city is burning, the river is frozen and naked souls are tortured by grotesque demons.
I have the pikmin introduction songs ready (sorry for the cheesy affects, I edited it in iMovie 😭)! Briefly: Rose pikmin are thorny and have a rose flower, and Dirt/Ground/Dig pikmin (WIP) dig. That's enough for the context of the intro songs to sound right I think.
Each type is represented by a different instrument in a woodwind quintet, and they should be color coded, but here they are:
Reds are flute, Yellows are oboe, Blues are bass clarinet, Roses are clarinet, and Dirts are bassoon. (They're brown in game, they're only purple here and in the song because they don't have brown)
And if you didn't see my last post: the first person to comment on that one decides what I'm revealing next from the previous poll!
Can you recommend some favourite woodwind pieces? Like quartets and so on. Maybe something from the Haydn / Mozart era, or maybe not! I've been meaning to listen to more instrumental music. Thank you!
the haydn london trios (written for 2 flutes and cello but i've played it them on oboe before, chamber music of the period was often written to be played with interchangeable instruments; fl/vln/cello is also common)
adolphe deslandres pièces en quintette (mvt 1 2 3) (this is later romantic, not classical, but i have a fondness for it, plus i think it's lesser known)
beethoven oboe trio op 87 (mvt 1 2 3 4) and variations on la ci darem la mano
mozart oboe quartet (mvt 1 2 3)
mozart clarinet quintet (mvt 1 2 3 4)
strauss serenade for winds (also late romantic. includes brass but gd damn i love this piece)
dvorak serenade for winds (mvt 1 2 3 4) (i'm only really familiar w mvt 1 but it's dvorak so the rest of it has to be good too)
the telemann canonic sonatas (baroque, not instrument specific but this album is two flutes)
basically this whole album (oboe quartets by fiala and krommer) (can you tell what instrument i play yet)
J.J. Johnson: Master of the Trombone and Architect of Bebop
Introduction:
In the annals of jazz history, certain names resonate as pioneers and innovators who shaped the genre’s evolution. J.J. Johnson, born James Louis Johnson one hundred years ago today on January 22, 1924, in Indianapolis, Indiana, stands as a luminary whose virtuosity on the trombone and groundbreaking contributions to bebop transformed the role of his instrument. Also known as Jay…
There aren't a lot of books written before the current century that I still really hold dear. Obviously, the Wheel of Time is up there. The Neverending Story was there as well, though I'd grown less familiar with it over the years. Not all, but some of Madeleine L'Engle's work was available at my local library, and it Spoke To Me in a way few other books did when I needed it most.
Though the series started in 1962, and the final book is actually the end of a second-generation series as well, the Time Quintet's first four books were extremely my middle school shit in the 1990s. They're coming-of-age stories, with fantasy, and science fiction, and science, and God, but not the CS Lewis kind of God, like, this one's more of a force of truly universal love and less of a preachy lion. (L'Engle was a Christian Universalist, and made no secret of her beliefs in her stories.)
I'm not going to be able to do a very good job of selling this one to a new reader. Partly, this series gets WEIRD in a delightful and occasionally horrific way. Partly, it's too close to my heart to push it away far enough to be objective. I can't even guarantee that if you've liked the other books I've covered, you'll enjoy this one. But, I'd be real honoured if you'd give it a try.
(Necessary caveat: I've still never read the fifth book in the quintet. See above: the point about it being second-gen. I read one of the second-gen books and it sat with me in my heart deeply, but I never got as far as An Acceptable Time because my library never had it, and it never felt like a high priority to finish anything about the series after Many Waters. So, we'll see if I add it to this post when I get closer to it.)
A Wrinkle In Time 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7 | 8 | 9 | 10 | 11 | 12
An arrangement of the Halberd theme, specifically the one from Kirby's Epic Yarn, for wind quintet! Blue is flute, yellow is oboe, red is clarinet, green is F horn, and purple is bassoon.
Hope you enjoy! (the three people that will end up seeing this, including my singular mutual ❤️!)
We are the song of the universe. We sing with the angelic host. We are the musicians. The farae and the stars are the singers. Our song orders the rhythm of creation.
— A Wind in the Door (Madeleine L'Engle), pub. 1973, USA