{"id":50,"date":"2009-11-30T14:08:00","date_gmt":"2009-11-30T14:08:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/localhost:8888\/spblog\/2009\/11\/30\/couple-of-years-ago-i-wrote-piece-for\/"},"modified":"2018-02-09T22:25:40","modified_gmt":"2018-02-10T03:25:40","slug":"couple-of-years-ago-i-wrote-piece-for","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.spindrift.com\/blog\/couple-of-years-ago-i-wrote-piece-for\/","title":{"rendered":"Black Bear Dance, first horns, then clarinets"},"content":{"rendered":"

A couple of years ago, I wrote a piece for horn ensemble and community drumming group called Black Bear Dance<\/strong><\/a>. The notes about the piece say:<\/p>\n

“In Black Bear Dance<\/strong>, I indulge my love of drumming, which really energizes the horn sound. The title comes from a line in the text for my choral piece Weaving the World<\/a><\/strong>: “and black bears roam the woods unseen”. The choral director rehearsed it a lot, and the image of a secret dance of bears stuck in my mind. Then on the Internet I found the Bear Dance painting of William Holbrook Beard. Aside from the fact that he was mocking stock-market bears, the image was just right.” [Update in 2015: try searching for the painting. I can’t find a stable URL]<\/p>\n

Charlie, a friend who plays in a clarinet ensemble, suggested I arrange it for his group. At first, I wasn’t inspired to make the adaptation. The mapping of parts doesn’t easily match, and the piece is low-pitched – what would I do with the high Eb clarinet? And what about the drums?<\/p>\n

Well, after a long wait, I revisited the music and was more in the mood to see the possibilities. Since there are five instruments in his group, I put the drumming rhythms into the clarinets, moving it around the ensemble so one player doesn’t get bored being the drone. I took advantage of the wide clarinet range and added a few extra bits where the drums had played alone. I think the result is energetic and fun, like the original but different.<\/p>\n

Charlie’s group has the parts and they’re trying it out. In the meantime, I made a virtual-instrument mockup with Quantum Leap Gold and Kontakt’s Vienna Library. Have a listen (Black Bear Dance<\/strong> at SoundClick<\/a>) and let me know whether you like it and whether it’s a good simulation of clarinets.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

A couple of years ago, I wrote a piece for horn ensemble and community drumming group called Black Bear Dance. The notes about the piece say: “In Black Bear Dance, I indulge my love of drumming, which really energizes the horn sound. The title comes from a line in the text for my choral piece […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_themeisle_gutenberg_block_has_review":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[124],"tags":[38,13,15,85],"class_list":["post-50","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-composing","tag-clarinet","tag-composing","tag-horn","tag-virtual-instruments"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.spindrift.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/50","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.spindrift.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.spindrift.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.spindrift.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.spindrift.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=50"}],"version-history":[{"count":7,"href":"https:\/\/www.spindrift.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/50\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":533,"href":"https:\/\/www.spindrift.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/50\/revisions\/533"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.spindrift.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=50"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.spindrift.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=50"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.spindrift.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=50"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}