Octamarch (2019)

for concert band

 

As an educator I want to expand my students’ musical horizons. As a composer I to want to give them music that they will find rewarding to play. 

 

As band directors juggle the responsibilities of preparing their students for performance evaluations, auditions and testing, classroom time can sometimes feel insufficient.

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As a result, today’s band students are lucky to learn their twelve major scales. I wanted to do my part to help change that by writing a piece that deals with the octatonic scale, which of course has two variations. Teaching your students each version of this scale will greatly help them with the music!

 

A majority of the material (melodies and even some of the harmonic structure) in OCTAMARCH is derived from the octatonic scale and even pays homage to eight (wink wink) well-known marches ranging from Sousa to Yankee Doodle with some octatonic flair. While the music itself in this march might be nontraditional, the form of it is very traditional and even “adds a flat” at the trio (shifting from the Bb octatonic scale to the Eb octatonic scale).

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Commissioned by the Florida Bandmasters Association

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