Regionals 2009: First Section Test Piece: Pentacle, Graham Cole

Only one perc comment for us too - perc not balanced (timps need to be louder) in mvt 3.

 

We won the Welsh Regions, and usually after a contest I never want to hear the peice again. This piece however everytime I switch my Ipod on I have to listen to it. I think I'm now verging on obsessed lol!

 

Your geography is really bad.......Barton is in North Lincolnshire, ie south of the Humber Estuary, the other side of the Humber bridge from Hull. I think we are about as far south as the North East region reaches

 

dear ruthless, did you not note the touch of sacasm in my post.
I know barton is in Lincolnshire................... just wondering how you managed to get into the north east area contest when I'm sure yorkshire area may be closer

 

Remind Geoff that he has to buy some harder timp mallets off Matt will you?

ta.

 

As far as I know Geoff was busy smacking hell out of something else at the time! Still at least the percussion section weren't bored in this piece!

 

So now we have all mastered (to a lesser or greater degree) Pentacle, how many bands are thinking of using it later in the year at an own choice contest?

 

We've already burned ours .....

 

what a waste of money - burning a piece that cost you so much money?

 

Ok so we didn't actually burn it but we did make the MD promise never to get it out of the library again. We did consider popping it on ebay but thought there may be too many others on offer to make any money out of it!

 

Pretty sure ours won't be used again.

Own choice you pick to your particular band's strengths, that's audience friendly, and to impress adjudicators without giving away your band's section. Pentacle doesn't necessarily fulfil those criteria.

 

I'm guessing it'll resurface at Pontins in a year or two...

 

oh dear........thats sad isnt it lol?? a pentacle obsessive!

 

well i have to say.... our perc section had glowing praise from david read......loved it!!
plus glowing praise from iwan fox of 4br!! i used wooden timp sticks in fire to bring the detail out........ ask our Eb basses and bass trom if they could hear it .........

 

what did he say? :biggrin:

 

Shut it you lol!! It's a great piece of music.

 

I played much of the piece using hard felt core sticks, which seemed to work well, however I must congratulate the timp player of Sandhurst, who used a mixture of mallets including wooden mallets at points, and out of all the bands I heard his part came through the best for me - I learnt a lot watching various players and especially him - thanks! I didn't use wooden mallets in fire because at f and ff I reconed they'd mawl the heads!

Having said that, I'm looking forward to getting down to playing music that requires more sympathetic timp playing, where we're after more than just the rhythms to come through...

 

I've had more fun talking about mouthpieces whilst watching paint dry.......

 

Well whilst I enjoyed the piece, my part is now nestling in the library never to see the light of day again.

It did its job as a test piece, but my feeling is that is what it was written as, only to be heard at a contest and not for the general public to enjoy.

It appeared to be an exercise in getting as many '5' references into 13 minutes and to prove that the composer had taken on board all he had learned during his studying. If that is the case it did exactly what it says on the tin.

As I say I actually enjoyed the piece. I would like to thank Mr Cole for actually remembering the BBb bass can be a solo instrument, (in better hands than mine!) something that is often overlooked, and wrote those solo lines in our comfort zone so as to get the best out of the instrument.

Its great to have new music written for the contest arena, but what would be better is new test pieces that are not so musically clever they can only be used in the contest arena.

 

I agree....but couldn't that 2nd movt. work on its own in certain concerts? It does seem a little special to me....