SKU: A0.784335

1 Octave Scale Studies in 15+ keys for 4-part ensembles of like or mixed instruments

If this is your first exposure to these scale studies, you are in for a treat! Donuts, if you make a mistake!

The initial incarnation of these studies were written for trombone quartet and we would play them in the Tennessee Tech Trombone Choir with the challenge that whomever made the first mistake had to buy donuts for the rest of the ensemble. Since then I have brought that version to several clinics and warm up sessions. One time before I got to explain the title, a fellow trombone professor said, Oh, I get it! Don’t step in the holes!

I only wish I had thought of that myself... Since we have one of the best donut shops in TN here in Cookeville, treating the studio to sugar coated goodies was always my intent.

As with those initial exercises, you can vary these as much as you’d like.

·     Choose a tempo.

·     Choose a dynamic.

·     Choose an articulation/style.

One way I like to play these is to have one person be the model, playing the entire scale over and over while everyone else plays the fragmented versions. That helps everyone to keep on track and stay in time. Double or triple up the parts for ensemble cohesion with a larger group.

Practice one key, gradually speeding it up to improve fluidity, or choose a variation and take it through all keys, playing version A, B, C, or D then skipping to play the same set in a new key.

If you want an additional challenge, play them in different octaves or change the key. Play the F Major set in f minor (all forms), different modes, etc. Players really have to be on their toes to remember if they are playing melodic minor in the ascending or descending form! For jazz players, try swinging them in dorian or mixolydian modes.

The variations are endless!

If you are using these with transposing instruments, 1) is F Major in Concert Pitch, 2) is Bb Major in Concert pitch, and so on. When you reach a scale that is enharmonic for another key (Db/C#, Gb/F#, or Cb/B), they are presented in both keys for each instrument so Trumpets can play in Eb while the Flutes are playing in C# with similar examples for all keys.

All Donut Etudes with the same volume number are compatible so you can play them in mixed quartets or large ensembles with one or more instruments/people on part 1 and a different instrument on part 2, etc. Since the quartets are all identical, conductors/coaches can use any of the scores to tell which part should be playing at what time. Once you have played a scale with one set of parts, everyone can rotate to a different part and play the same scales again!

Enjoy!

SKU: A0.1018950

Programme Notes:

 This composition was written to be considered for pairing alongside Ludwig van Beethoven’s Symphony #3, the Eroica, but can stand on its own virtues as an intense and slow meditation on heroism. The music is like a boiling pot on the stove that’s just began to overflow its bubbles.

 The first part of the title, kommos, is a Classical Greek term from Attic dramaturgy, literally meaning striking but specifically referring to beating oneself up during lamentation--ripping at the hair, gouging out the eyes--like Oedipus--slapping the forehead, and other acts amid moments of extreme emotional turmoil. For example, from Aeschylus's play Agamemnon, a character bewails: Apollo, Apollo! God of the Ways, my destroyer! For you have destroyed me-and utterly [...]What is this fresh woe [...]what monstrous, monstrous horror, beyond love's enduring, beyond all remedy? And help stands far away! We can easily imagine physical accompaniment to the script; rather than bottling up the pain, the hero lets it all explosively come out.  

 The second part of the title, When the world moved on, is an epigraph taken from American author Stephen King’s The Dark Tower epic. The primary setting of the novel, a world similar in many ways to our own, is experiencing a dark age where the glorious past is all but a distant memory and all good things are referred to wistfully as occurring, When the world moved on. Yet, the main protagonist, Roland, the last gunslinger, emphasizes that it is not just a figure of speech, but the literal distances between destinations have increased, the positions of the stars have changed, as well as the occurrence of other unnatural phenomena. The world has become a gulf of isolation from all corners.

 Taken together, this piece is a lamentation for when the world moved on. Truly completed on Yom Kippur during the Covid-19 Pandemic, being unable to fast or go to synagogue, this is my atonement.

About the Composer:

 Benjamin Sajo (b. 1988) is a Canadian composer of contemporary classical music, as well as an educator. Since developing a fiercely independent creative voice upon the completion of his studies at Western (2010) and McGill Universities (2013), he continues to find inspiration from the intersection of mythology, art, and nature upon the contemporary human experience. In 2019, he released his premiere album of original music, The Great War Sextet: Canadian War Poetry with Trombone & Strings, with support from the Ontario Arts Council. He is a member of SOCAN and the League of Canadian Composers.

SKU: A0.1359076

A classic hard rock anthem by the German band Scorpions. Released in 1984, it is one of the band's most well-known and iconic songs. A high-energy and electrifying example of classic hard rock. 
(Versions with and without chords available).

SKU: A0.1018951

Programme Notes:

 This composition was written to be considered for pairing alongside Ludwig van Beethoven’s Symphony #3, the Eroica, but can stand on its own virtues as an intense and slow meditation on heroism. The music is like a boiling pot on the stove that’s just began to overflow its bubbles.

 The first part of the title, kommos, is a Classical Greek term from Attic dramaturgy, literally meaning striking but specifically referring to beating oneself up during lamentation--ripping at the hair, gouging out the eyes--like Oedipus--slapping the forehead, and other acts amid moments of extreme emotional turmoil. For example, from Aeschylus's play Agamemnon, a character bewails: Apollo, Apollo! God of the Ways, my destroyer! For you have destroyed me-and utterly [...]What is this fresh woe [...]what monstrous, monstrous horror, beyond love's enduring, beyond all remedy? And help stands far away! We can easily imagine physical accompaniment to the script; rather than bottling up the pain, the hero lets it all explosively come out.  

 The second part of the title, When the world moved on, is an epigraph taken from American author Stephen King’s The Dark Tower epic. The primary setting of the novel, a world similar in many ways to our own, is experiencing a dark age where the glorious past is all but a distant memory and all good things are referred to wistfully as occurring, When the world moved on. Yet, the main protagonist, Roland, the last gunslinger, emphasizes that it is not just a figure of speech, but the literal distances between destinations have increased, the positions of the stars have changed, as well as the occurrence of other unnatural phenomena. The world has become a gulf of isolation from all corners.

 Taken together, this piece is a lamentation for when the world moved on. Truly completed on Yom Kippur during the Covid-19 Pandemic, being unable to fast or go to synagogue, this is my atonement.

About the Composer:

 Benjamin Sajo (b. 1988) is a Canadian composer of contemporary classical music, as well as an educator. Since developing a fiercely independent creative voice upon the completion of his studies at Western (2010) and McGill Universities (2013), he continues to find inspiration from the intersection of mythology, art, and nature upon the contemporary human experience. In 2019, he released his premiere album of original music, The Great War Sextet: Canadian War Poetry with Trombone & Strings, with support from the Ontario Arts Council. He is a member of SOCAN and the League of Canadian Composers.

SKU: A0.1359075

A classic hard rock anthem by the German band Scorpions. Released in 1984, it is one of the band's most well-known and iconic songs. A high-energy and electrifying example of classic hard rock. 
(Versions with and without chords available).

SKU: A0.1027883

Keras, was a musical instrument of ancient Greece. It was an instrument that was created from thehorn of an animal. It consisted of a perforated conical horn from which the bone core was removed and then baked in order to improve its sonority. The sound was produced with direct blow in the hole and the suitable lip technique. In this piece, the horn is treated like an ancient Keras, so, a lot of changes of the pitch are effected entirely by the lips without changing fingerings in order to produces them.

Before writing this piece, I researched the possibilities of the horn by comparing intervals to the harmonics and to the fingerings used by the soloist to produce them. I found out that the horn is capable of playing eight or more different microtones, within the space of a whole tone, in certain portions of its range (as shown in the example below).

Numbers below the notes are in cents (1/2 step equals 100 cents, octave equals 1200 cents). Above the microtonal notes there are the fingerings that the performer must use in order to produce the specific pitch.