Steben

My plan is to order Finale Academic, and redo the music I did in Noteworthy in Finale, then combine that with the drumline stuff that Rainman DX was awesome enough to arrange. Once I've done that and have a final version, I'll definitely send you a MIDI if you want to make a good sounding version. I'll send you a PM. (Hopefully I'll have it done by mid July... depends how long it takes me to get Finale I guess.)

Rainman DX is the coolest guy on OCR. I've been running my local NYLT course (Boy Scout leadership training camp) the past week, so I just now had decent internet access (aka better than using my cell phone as a modem). Once I get my own computer hooked back up I'll look at the parts more indepth, but they look sweet. The plan is to send my director whatever I can asap so I'll know the chances of AU playing this on the field. Either way, I think I'm going to bite the bullet and get a student copy of Finale, so I'll be caught up with the times. That way I'll also be able to directly use your drumline parts. More details as they become available! Thanks again, Rainman. I'll send you a PM if I have any questions. You've been great to work with - maybe we should do it again sometime? Let me know if there's something you're interested in collaborating on.

They had all disappeared by the time I went back to Target. I bet they're all here. :( On second thought, that's what I should have done. I had enough expendable money to buy a few of them... that's an easy $100 right there. Oh well.

Dunno if you heard, but the Nintendo DS Lite release date was broken. I was at Target earlier today (in Huntsville, AL), and they had them up for sale. I didn't buy one, but I'm considering going back tonight. I already have Feel the Magic (found it for $8 somewhere), but I'm thinking I'll want to get a WiFi game to go with the DS Lite. Which one would you guys suggest? (I'd get New SMB even though it's not WiFi, but my brother got it recently, so I've already played through a lot of it on his copy.)

I found a tutorial on how to make windchimes that might be of use. http://www.metalwebnews.com/howto/wchime/wchime.html

Haha, unless the L-block is a hidden character, I doubt we'll get Tetris stages. I could imagine having the Tetriminos as items.

I think we'll have to wait for a Game Boy with an analog stick. Super Smash Bros. isn't anything without the smashing. Double-tap. Press on the D-pad once for regular, double-tap for smash. Kirby Super Star and Castlevania: CotM used it rather well (only for dashing, though), so I don't see how or why it wouldn't be used in a SSB game for DS. Point conceded. I did like how the double-tap worked for dashing in Super Star.

I think we'll have to wait for a Game Boy with an analog stick. Super Smash Bros. isn't anything without the smashing.

Rainman DX is working on the drumline stuff. Double high fives to him!

That shouldn't be a problem. Finals are coming up, but I'm hoping to find time to wrap this up before summer starts - I have a few other arrangement projects in mind (not vg-related, mostly) that I want to feel free to work on.

The plan is to have individual parts available to whomever wants to use it for their high school band, once it's finished. (It'll probably only be available by request, since I'd like an idea of who's playing my stuff. But I can't imagine turning anyone down.) I'll try to remember to send you a PM when it's done.

School's kept me busy for the past month, but I'm almost done with this, I think! Latest score: http://steben.noplaceforatoaster.com/wip/kotraumb.pdf EDIT: seems I'm retarded and forgot to change the keys from concert to written... just ignore that! D: Latest sound: http://steben.noplaceforatoaster.com/wip/kotraumb.mp3 I've added in all the articulations that I wanted to do. (Note that the recording reflects this, although not realistically.) I've tweaked the instrumentation a bit more to my liking. With the exception of percussion parts, I think I'm done here. Speaking of which. Anybody out there know how to arrange for a drumline? It looks like I'm going to have to do it myself otherwise, but I'd prefer someone who actually plays percussion to do it. Send me a PM or reply here if you're interested, thanks!

I hope you put up a recording of your show! Also, it's hard to get high school marching bands (At least in Arizona) to play video game music. I saw one band last year do FF6 but for the most part the judges like that artsy crap. The bands who know they don't stand a chance are the ones who play the fun stuff. EDIT: Also, I just realized I have the AU recording of "Hey Baby!" Great sounding band! My high school marching band played it too but didn't sound as good. I've only heard one school do a video game based show at a competition, in 2004. It was called Play On! and featured every gimmick you could imagine, including an electric saxophone. It overall was kind of boring... straight covers of stuff from the Smashing Live! CD pretty much. Then again, maybe I was just jealous because I wanted to be the first one to seriously arrange video game music for marching band. Thanks for the good words about AU's band. If it makes you feel any better, I bet if my old high school played "Hey Baby!" it wouldn't sound that good either. EDIT: If Auburn actually ends up playing my arrangement, I'll certainly look into getting a recording. If possible I'd like to submit it to OCR, although getting permission for that might be a little difficult. Also, we only usually record our standard stands tunes, and the show tunes. So you might see it here someday... on the offchance we play Katamari on the March in a show, on the offchance it gets chosen for recording, on the offchance I get permission to submit it here, and on the offchance the judges think there's enough arrangement in the piece. And that'll probabaly be a year from now at the earliest! D: But I can dream.

I've actually reduced it to a single tenor sax part. I've been told there's a chance my school could play it on the field next year, so I'm arranging it with our instrumentation in mind. The original song has the synth bass playing a single note. I'm not really going for the sound of a complete chord. My reasoning for the octaves (instead of unisons) was that it'd be easier to hear in the stands. I was confused about this at first, but then I realized what you meant. The flute/piccolo line was meant to be played by either two parts of piccolos, or two parts of flutes, not both. However, I've also since axed the second flute/piccolo part, so it's not really an issue I guess. Again, I'm trying to stick with the original here. A tenor voice solo has that melody in Katamari on the Rocks, so I don't want any harmony there. That's also why the trumpets only play for a few measures at E - I didn't want to make the trombones play high A flats while marching. Range issues bar me from putting the 2nd trombones an octave below - they could do it, but it'd sound really muddy on a marching field. Again, I'm just really not going for the sound of a full chord here. Octaves are something to consider though. If anything, I may put in some 5ths... maybe I can plug that in and see how it sounds. I covered the confusion with the flute/piccolo line. At Auburn, we recently switched from flutes to piccolos, so I'm writing just for that instrument. However, I wrote flutes/piccolos since alternately, a flute line could cover the part. Thanks for the input, Sil. --- As mentioned above, I'm writing with AU's band in mind at the moment. When I officially release the score for people to download and use in their own marching bands, I'll definitely consider throwing in parts for a bari sax, and maybe a few other things. However, they'll probably only be doubling parts already written here. ---- Anyway, tonight was the rehersal for AU's pep band before they go to the SEC women's basketball tournament. I brought my WIP for them to try out playing. Only one person there had even heard of Katamari Damacy (when I said it was a Playstation game, someone blurted "oh, well, I have X-Box."), so they had a bit of trouble figuring out the tune at first. However, they seemed to get the hang of it after a couple run-throughs. So yeah, if you're watching Auburn women's basketball in the SEC tourney this week (God knows why you'd actually want to, though... our team kind of sucks), keep an ear out for the pep band. You might hear some Katamari on the Rocks.

Y'know, it'd certainly help that if I were to move the files on my webspace, to update the links that lead to them, eh? They're almost at the same place, just in a subfolder called wip/ now. I've updated the links to the latest versions of the score and recording. Thanks for the heads-up.

Working on this today, hopefully. My percussion guy said he'd be all for it if he "isn't hungover". So maybe tomorrow! >_< I'm sure I could get a recording. I was more curious as to whether I could get a recording good enough for OCR submission, or at least to post on VGMix. Problem with using $40 notation software is that sometimes you just can't always get what you want. The layering system (which I discovered between writing the 4th and 5th draft) is kind of clunky. What I do, is write each part on a sepearte staff, and then layer the staffs over each other. Which means I don't really get the choice of only having one stem on unisons. On the bright side, now that I have the parts written on seperate staves, I can print out individual parts easily. For an amatuer effort, I think a little bit of clunkiness in the conductor's score is acceptable as long as the individual parts are good. As for octave doublings, I could see a few instruments I could do that with at F. Other than that, I'm not sure there are any other places where I'd want to put any unisons in octaves, considering range issues and just the sound of the notes an octave up and down. Do you have any suggestions? Note that I'm planning on scrapping the second flute and tenor sax parts once I figure out how to cover their notes, so as to match a more traditional marching band instrumentation. (1 flute, 2 clarinets, 2 altos, 1 tenor, 3 trumpets, 2 f horns, 3 trombones, 1 baritone, 1 tuba)

Latest score: http://steben.noplaceforatoaster.com/wip/katamarimarch5.pdf Latest sound: http://steben.noplaceforatoaster.com/wip/katamarimarch5.mp3 After talking to the head of bands here at Auburn, I got a bajillion suggestions on how to improve the piece. I'm not done, but this is a major improvement from my previous drafts. Instrumentation is tweaked as to sound good on a marching field or in the stands, score order is corrected, the ranges of a few of the instruments have been adapted so as to be less taxing, and a few other things. I still need articulations and percussion. I'm going with Daniel up to the band room tomorrow to try a few things out, hopefully. Percussion should really help flesh out this piece, particularly the beginning.

Latest score: http://steben.noplaceforatoaster.com/katamarimarch4.pdf Latest sound: http://steben.noplaceforatoaster.com/katamarimarch4.mp3 Fixed some range issues for the piccolo. Also, I changed up rehearsal F to bring in the "nah nah" background earlier, so I could squeeze in Auburn's fight song in the background on the next phrase. Incredibly cheesy, which makes it perfectly fitting for the song, if you ask me. Also, piccolos and clarinets don't change up the "doo-doo-doodoo" part at B until C. Aaaanyway. Updates will probably slow down now. I only made this one because I wanted to show the head director of bands here at AU the latest revision, so I went ahead and posted it here too. Once Daniel does the percussion, I'll put it here for the world to see.

Just got back from talking to Dr. Good -- instead of my applied lesson we mainly listened to and looked over my piece, which is just as well considering I've been working on this instead of practicing! D: He totally hinted that our band may possibly play this on the field, in the same show as our arrangement of "Tank!" (of Cowboy Bebop fame). Glee! If it's in one of the shows, there's a good chance that it could be recorded for the band's CD. Legality issues aside (I'm not very hopeful that I could convince the powers that be to let me submit such a recording here), I wonder if such an arrangement would be accepted here? Any judges want to chime in?

Maybe someone else could chime in, but I don't believe there's a large precedent to do this in marching band charts. Also, my target audience doesn't exactly have much experience with "classical literature" - we're talking high school kids and non-music-major football marching band. But I have zero experience reading horn music, so what do I know? It's no trouble to force accidentals, so I can change it up no problem. I'm actually writing everything in concert pitch anyway, and converting it to written pitch before making these pdf scores. In any case, it may be a moot point. I might be changing it from a horn part to a melophone part in the near future - that'll put it in B-flat. Depends on whether or not Auburn's replacing the horn section with melos next year.

It was my understanding that marching french horn parts are written in F... why get rid of the key signature? I've fleshed out the clarinets and gave them two parts for most of it in the latest draft. Thanks for the heads up. All the part switching is pretty much implied, but I'll definitely pretty up the arrangement before giving it to people to play. I'll probably just write out each part individually, rather than force people to read with both parts on the staff. Yeah, I haven't gotten around to the articulations and such yet. Part of the problem is that the current version of the notation software I use, Noteworthy Composer 1.75b, lacks a symbolic cresendo, a symbolic diminuindo, and a rooftop accent, which I'd prefer to use over a regular accent and staccato. I plan on joining in on the public beta of 2.0 soon, so hopefully that will fix that problem. ---- Also, I've uploaded the latest draft of the score and sound. I'm printing this out to show to my band director (slash applied teacher) tomorrow during my lesson, so hopefully I'll get some good pointers from that.

Latest score: http://steben.noplaceforatoaster.com/katamarimarch2.pdf Latest sound: http://steben.noplaceforatoaster.com/katamarimarch2.mp3 Agghh... the sound is really grating. But it should give you the idea of how the score sounds. Changes I've made since the first draft: - Fixed ranges in the flute/piccolo and saxes - Fixed the key for the F Horn - Added new parts for the flute/piccolo and clarinets at rehearsal letters B-D and G. - Added trills for the woodwind parts (not heard in the sound) - Put in some placeholder percussion in the sound file (just a woodblock, not in the score, and pretty bland)

You're totally right, but I'm on it, dude. If Daniel (my friend) doesn't come through, though, I may be looking for someone 'round these parts who can arrange for a drumline, and maybe even the auxilary too. I played a bit of the keyboard instruments in high school with our percussion ensemble, but I was never really good. So if someone more familiar with the auxilary wanted to arrange it, I wouldn't make a fuss. So yeah. Post or PM me if anyone's interested in the drum parts. Depending on your experience and how soon you can have something arranged, I may go with you instead.

I've definitely raised the flutes up an octave. Having the clarinets play in octaves might be something to look into, since often I have them only on one part... The bassline at D comes directly from the original song. It's actually one of my favorite parts, so it stays. I should note that "Katamari on the March" is kind of a misnomer -- I'm only using it since it'll be played by a marching band. I'm not necessarally interested in making it fit the style of a march. Thanks again to all of you who've given your input thus far. I'll hopefully have a revised copy up sometime early this week for you guys to see.

Awesome advice - I'll look into it now. Thanks a bunch.