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Classical & Jazz Guitar Pieces

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ChristopherSchlegel

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I have placed recordings of some of the tunes I did for my junior & senior recitals on my website.

This first page is music by other composers. I arranged the Beethoven pieces, the Rossini & the jazz pieces. The others are standard solo classical guitar pieces.

Recital Pieces Page 1

A word of warning: the last 2 on the page of Beethoven & Rossini are "rock instrumentation arrangements" (i.e. guitar, bass, drums) & are definitely NOT for everyone. If you like that sort of thing, then download & crank it up!

This second page is original music. I wrote both of these sonatas in standard classical form. The first one (A Major) is the more advanced of the two meant to showcase my skills. The second (C Major) is a "simple, beginner" sonata written for the purpose of creating a piece that I am working on getting published as a study piece for guitar students. Both are "first-draft" demos I created while writing, so the quality isn't exactly perfect. I intend to re-record them sometime in the near future.

Recital Pieces Page 2

Happy Listening!

Christopher

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Those were really great Christopher!! Fantastic Guitar playing! I hope that when I get my MalletKat I can record some of my marimba compositions and put them on here. They won't be anywhere NEAR your skill level though.

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Those were really great Christopher!!  Fantastic Guitar playing!  I hope that when I get my MalletKat I can record some of my marimba compositions and put them on here.  They won't be anywhere NEAR your skill level though.

Thanks for listening & commenting (favorably at that!). I appreciate it. Also, since you are a musician, I encourage you to create all you can. If you are willing & able, please do post links to them. I would love to hear it.

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I Have a couple pieces I can post, but I don't have an MP3 hosting site. I tried soundclick and another one, that just didn't seem to work. And Myspace dropped my one MP3 hoster and I can't seem to get it back. If you know of any good (and EASY) sites for MP3 hosting, let me know, and I'll gladly post some stuff.

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I Have a couple pieces I can post, but I don't have an MP3 hosting site.  I tried soundclick and another one, that just didn't seem to work.  And Myspace dropped my one MP3 hoster and I can't seem to get it back.  If you know of any good (and EASY) sites for MP3 hosting, let me know, and I'll gladly post some stuff.

The three easiest places to work with are:

http://www.myspace.com

http://www.garageband.com

http://www.musicianmp3.com

All them offer a free basic service for hosting your mp3s & info about you as an artist. Not sure what happened to your previous myspace account; why not just sign up again?

Hope this helps; best of success with your music.

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  Not sure what happened to your previous myspace account; why not just sign up again?

Hope this helps; best of success with your music.

When I tried to sign up under a new name, I never got the band option. Maybe I'll try again. I haven't heard of those others, so they might be an option as well. I'll check them out this weekend (hopefully) otherwise, the next couple weeks, I'm on tour with the army.

Thanks for the sites, though...I really appreciate it.

Edited by Styles2112
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Nifty.  Where are you going?  What are you doing?

Well, I'm with the band, so we'll go up to Devens for a week. Do some "Army" training and rehearsing, then the second week, we go on tour all over New England playing a lot of Independance day shows and parades. It should be a lot of fun (Except maybe the parades...I hate marching... :D ).

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Well, I'm with the band...

Every Army (or military) band I've ever seen was either very good or outright excellent. What is the size of the band & instrumentation involved?

...then the second week, we go on tour all over New England playing a lot of Independance day shows and parades.  It should be a lot of fun (Except maybe the parades...I hate marching... :dough: ).

Like Sousa & such? & all the military branches theme songs?! Good stuff!

I once talked to an Army conductor (10 years ago) after a performance. I was impressed with the band's ability to perform classical pieces without strings. He was very open & friendly about it. Upon my asking he even pulled out the conductor's score & showed me the techniques used for scoring brass instruments to successfully mimic string sections.

I was really impressed & learned some good stuff that I still keep in mind when writing for brass. I asked, "So who wrote these arrangements?". He smiled & replied, "Well, I did." :worry: Don't remember his name but it was an excellent meeting/conversation; he was clearly a man that loved his job. :D

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Every Army (or military) band I've ever seen was either very good or outright excellent.  What is the size of the band & instrumentation involved?

We're "decent." We could be a lot better, but the main reason for that is that we are heavily understaffed, and there are just gaping holes in our instrumentation. At full strength we are 41 soldiers (40 musicians, or NCOs, and 1 officer, conductor/musician). However, right now, we are playing with about 19 soldiers and that's just not enough to carry a concert band sound, or just about anything else that we do. Plus, lack of practicing soldiers, does not make for a strong brass section. Our percussion ensemble (when we finally get it going) will be awesome.

Like Sousa & such?  & all the military branches theme songs?!  Good stuff!

I once talked to an Army conductor (10 years ago) after a performance.  I was impressed with the band's ability to perform classical pieces without strings.  He was very open & friendly about it.  Upon my asking he even pulled out the conductor's score & showed me the techniques used for scoring brass instruments to successfully mimic string sections.

I was really impressed & learned some good stuff that I still keep in mind when writing for brass.  I asked, "So who wrote these arrangements?".  He smiled & replied, "Well, I did."  :D  Don't remember his name but it was an excellent meeting/conversation; he was clearly a man that loved his job. :thumbsup:

Sousa and all those great military marches. Those are a lot of fun. While the snare parts are easy, I really enjoy the dynamics of marches. We also do contemporary classical music and movie scores. Our ensembles consist of; a Marching band, Concert Band, Stage/jazz band, rock Group, vocal group, and some bands have a jazz combo, and we'll be starting a percussion ensemble for next year.

Unfortunately, Army recruiting these days is awfully hard, so we're not getting any bigger anytime soon (in fact we're projected to lose another 25% of our strength next quarter. ). It's kind of a shame because this really is a great job to have.

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  • 4 weeks later...
  • 1 month later...

And FINALLY!!!

http://www.myspace.com/shnstlns

it's not much, so please be kind. The first piece is something that I wrote for my percussion ensemble a few years back now. I really like the movements, so I'm taking it and re-writing it to a more rock/classical style. It will soon be MUCH longer and for a rock instrumentation. I have a couple new sections that I'm adding to it. When it's finished. It'll probably be my masterpiece.

The second piece is something I wrote up on Finale that I ended up using for my computer music piece (in the computer music version, which I no longer have, it has all sorts of effects on it). I like it's texture, but it doesn't go anywhere interesting. Although, I like the "solo" section. It's still all the same notes in the same order, just written to sound like a solo.

The third, and final, piece is just a drum solo I put together when I had my full drumset out. I lose time a couple times, because I was trying to do a bit much. Themes don't always come easy to me, but I do try to make the drumset a musical instrument, rather than giving the impression of a guy "beating the skins." While I'm not terribly melodic, I don't think I do that bad of a job. Anyways, as I get more written (especially on the first piece) I'd be interested in your views/critizism

Thanks, hope you enjoy. :)

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  • 3 weeks later...
And FINALLY!!!

& I FINALLY got to hear the stuff!

The first piece is something that I wrote for my percussion ensemble a few years back now. I really like the movements, so I'm taking it and re-writing it to a more rock/classical style. It will soon be MUCH longer and for a rock instrumentation. I have a couple new sections that I'm adding to it. When it's finished. It'll probably be my masterpiece.

There are definitely some viable materials you could work into interesting themes. I think it would greatly benefit from an orchestration with multiple timbres. Good luck in finishing it!

The second piece is something I wrote up on Finale that I ended up using for my computer music piece (in the computer music version, which I no longer have, it has all sorts of effects on it). I like it's texture, but it doesn't go anywhere interesting.

I was thinking the texture was oddly Zappa-esque :P. It doesn't really "go anywhere" mostly because it really is just what you call it "Variations on Dies Irae". That old melody has been used by Bach, Mozart, Liszt, Verdi, Rachmaninoff...as a musician you probably know this. A suggestion I found useful: go find the scores & study how those masters used this theme & manipulated it to their own purposes.

The third, and final, piece is just a drum solo I put together when I had my full drumset out.

Gets out Bic lighter, holds up, & ignites...Drum solo!!! Rock & roll, dude! :thumbsup:

Themes don't always come easy to me, but I do try to make the drumset a musical instrument, rather than giving the impression of a guy "beating the skins."

One of the main rhythmic "themes" I keep noticing is you explicit &/or implicit use of this pattern: Dotted 1/4, dotted 1/4, 1/4. Sounds like you were having a great deal of fun! Thanks for making them available.

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Thank you!! I kept forgetting to send them over email, so I'm glad that you got to hear them. I appreciate the replies. Yes, I'm working on completely re-writing the first piece and it seems to be doing well. I haven't had much time lately to work on it. (Another new piece has taken up my time as my ideas for that have been flowing). And yes, usually when I do a drum solo, I make a theme and center the solo around that theme.

Thanks for the ear and hopefully I'll have some new stuff up soon. I'm hoping my band will do some recording soon and I'll be able to put one or two of our pieces up.

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