One Day Wonder #224

For 1 horn, 1 trumpet and 2 trombones.

This piece doesn’t come off too well in its robo form. What’s supposed to happen is that the trombones are using plunger mutes, and the only way I could express that was to use the Harmon mute patch for when the mute was in and the regular trombone patch for when it was out. The playback sounds a little silly, but it gives you an idea of how much plunging and de-plunging the trombones will have to do. You know, about 100 pieces ago, I had this silly notion that the newest version of Finale would take me away from all of this muting madness by providing many more patches for muted brass. It did not. And what’s more, it ended up being far worse than the version I’m using now – Finale 2005. It’s not that 2005 is the devil I know; I truly like this program, though it’s not without its bugs. Printing full scores is a nightmare and part generation is very dicey. There’s always a chance that whatever is up there on the computer screen won’t make it to the printed page, so you have to review everything many times. I’m told that these problems are taken care of in Finale 2008. Even though I owned it for a brief time (it has since been returned to the mothership), I didn’t explore that area because the playback and interface were so terrible. I converted a few of these brass pieces over to the 2008 version and was horrified at how it sounded. I tried to write something from square one on it and it took me forever to get notes down. And I’m not even going to talk about how bad the Garritan Personal Orchestra was. Anyhow, my point is that I have no good muting options, but that doesn’t mean I can’t still write with my limited selection. There are lots of mute types and I’m just using the most basic. The only problem is that they all come out as a Harmon-muted trumpet. I really wish it wasn’t so, but it is. Well, with that said, I have to say that this piece is a fine little invention with a processional quality to it. Sure, it’s kind of a workout for the trombones; they’ve got to play notes and manipulate the plunger mutes at the same time. But these kinds of things get trombone players excited, so my work here is done. I wrote a piece and I got trombone players excited. Over and out.