Monday night was my regular rehearsal night with Croydon Brass, with a few members away numbers were a little down, but that has to be expected every now and then; after all, even I'm going on holiday in a few weeks. We spent most of the rehearsal running through some new arrangements I've been working on, I thought this would help me to know how the arrangements work and give the band something fresh to play.
Quite a while back I put together a simple arrangement for woodwind of Barwick Green, The Archers theme tune, it didn't work too well so I just let it sit and never really finished it. With a bit of fiddling around I adapted it for our Brass Band, and even though I say it myself it sounded pretty good. Now I have to finish the whole thing but on coming home and looking I can't find the original sheet music I was working from. I suspect that it may have got lost when I moved a couple of years ago, so now I have had to order another copy and so won't be able to complete the arrangement till it arrives.
One of the reasons I am arranging specially for the band is that we are short of a few players, especially cornets, it's all a little frustrating remembering how the band used to be back it's hey day with a full compliment. Having said that just two more cornet players would make a massive difference, we could even lend them instruments.
It always used to be quite usual for a brass band to have a set of instruments, and just before I joined the band in the late 70s Croydon Co-Op Brass Band as it was then had just bought a complete set of new Boosey and Hawkes Imperials, many of these fine instruments are still there but in the intervening years some have been sold, some updated, and some simply lost track of. We still have some very fine instruments and are quite happy to lend them to players who for one reason or another don't have their own. Whether it's through having had to return an instrument after changing band or leaving school or maybe somebody not having played for some time and fancy having another go it would be good to hear these instruments being played again.
Quite a while back I put together a simple arrangement for woodwind of Barwick Green, The Archers theme tune, it didn't work too well so I just let it sit and never really finished it. With a bit of fiddling around I adapted it for our Brass Band, and even though I say it myself it sounded pretty good. Now I have to finish the whole thing but on coming home and looking I can't find the original sheet music I was working from. I suspect that it may have got lost when I moved a couple of years ago, so now I have had to order another copy and so won't be able to complete the arrangement till it arrives.
One of the reasons I am arranging specially for the band is that we are short of a few players, especially cornets, it's all a little frustrating remembering how the band used to be back it's hey day with a full compliment. Having said that just two more cornet players would make a massive difference, we could even lend them instruments.
It always used to be quite usual for a brass band to have a set of instruments, and just before I joined the band in the late 70s Croydon Co-Op Brass Band as it was then had just bought a complete set of new Boosey and Hawkes Imperials, many of these fine instruments are still there but in the intervening years some have been sold, some updated, and some simply lost track of. We still have some very fine instruments and are quite happy to lend them to players who for one reason or another don't have their own. Whether it's through having had to return an instrument after changing band or leaving school or maybe somebody not having played for some time and fancy having another go it would be good to hear these instruments being played again.
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