One Day Wonder #273

For 2 horns, 2 trumpets, 2 trombones and tuba.

I wanted to write something funky, but didn’t want a full-on funky march. I have my reasons. For one thing, the last word in funky marches was way, way back at #19. And come to think of it, I’ve also done a lot of non-march funkiness, so this piece is kind of an exercise in pulling one’s punches. And it sounds like it, too. I didn’t want for it to be too march-like or too funky. The trouble is that I had no reliable substitutes – at least none that I could think of in my limited time – so I just dialed back all the things that make the tune what it is and this is the result. Yeah, it ain’t so dandy. Well, it is pleasant, but I wasn’t going for that. Most of the time, these pieces become one thing or another by sheer force of my determination to finish this entire project. As I’ve said probably a million times before, some are good, others are not and some are so surprising and engrossing that I can’t be sure whether I can take credit for them. It’s like somebody piped a bunch of notes into my head and all I did was enter them in the computer. This piece is not one of those efforts. I would much rather write a bad piece than a mediocre one. That way, I feel like I’ve safely constructed a warning to myself for the future. All the bad stuff blares out at me for now and forever. With a mediocre piece, I can’t ever seem to figure out specifically what went wrong. If I could, it wouldn’t be a mediocre piece, see? Well, this is mediocre. I tried and failed to make it a real cool thing, but it just didn’t turn that corner.