Brinstar for brass quintet

[FunkyEntropy]

After a long hiatus, I decided to take another crank at one of the first arrangements I ever did, the Brinstar theme from the original Metroid. Definitely a lot more sonorous than the last time around, and I was even able to sneak in places for the trumpets to rest. Improvement! The ostinato in the tuba is going to be a pain to play, but I don't think it's going to be too rough.

Anyway, this'll go in front of the group the next time we rehearse. See how it goes then. If it translates as well as I hope it does, it might even make it onto the program that we're developing as part of a kiddie show for a non-profit outreach project (school performances where we play music from video games to get kids interested in music). Fingers crossed.

[Cash]

In general, I like the arrangement. I know you plan on putting this in front of your brass quintet, so I won't comment on the sample quality. I think this would translate well to your brass quintet, but my one comment would be that the first part of the track is rather repetitive. The buildup just plods along and seems to last forever, and actually gets pretty boring. Maybe it will sound fine when played live by the quintet.

[FunkyEntropy]

Thanks for the feedback. The repetitive nature of the first two minutes has been a concern of mine. I was going for a sort of minimalist-style buildup where small alterations build up over time until they demand change, and when that happens its a bit of a musical/emotional relief. The piece as a whole is sort of one big crescendo (sort of like Bolero, which is something we can mention as an educational tie-in, now that I think of it) but there's surprisingly little repetition in how the phrases are written.

Hopefully live performance will highlight the nuances so it doesn't sound so repetitive in the aggregate.

[timaeus222]

I think what you were going for was a gradual increase in excitement, but it turned out to be flat and then suddenly EXCITEMENT! at the last moment of the buildup.

[toptrump04]

Funky,

I thought this was cool, but as a fellow brass player, I would hate to be the tuba player haha.

[FunkyEntropy]

Funky,

I thought this was cool, but as a fellow brass player, I would hate to be the tuba player haha.

Yeah, I'm not looking forward to it. Not sure if I should write in breaths or not, but I already have planned out where they'll go when I need to take them.

[FunkyEntropy]

Update: Does not translate well, especially at tempo. Also, nuances were not brought to the fore. SIgh.

We gave it a try at a slower tempo, but that just exacerbates the issue of repetitiveness. On the other hand, on our second read-through we had mike doing improv over the ostinato and that was much more fun.

[Kanohi]

There isn't much to be said that hasn't been said, really. The buildup is rather long and in all honesty the crescendo wasn't as big of a payout as I had hoped.

That being said, I do like the arrangement and it's a very pleasant listen, very conservative but still quite nice