  In July, 2010 a call came from one of the members of The Morning Brass Ensemble of Kaneland Harter Middle School, Sugar Grove, Illinois, USA, a 12-year-old young man who serves as their business manager, asking if they could commission a version of the Star-Spangled Banner that they could play outdoors at a semi-professional football game. This seemed like a great idea. Since the version we already have here is for a brass quintet wtih slightly different voicing, owing to the particular difficulty young players face when playing outdoors, and the simple fact that their "quintet" actually consists of two first trumpets, a second trumpet, one french horn, a trombone, and three tubas, some rearranging of what we already had seemed necessary. First, simply translating the first trombone part to french horn was not going to generate near enough sound volume to carry the melody against a trombone and three tubas in the opening phrases. Some of the passages were more complex than they needed to be. The first trumpets needed to carry the melody throughout, which necessitated a complete rewrite of the fanfares over the rockets red glare and bombs bursting in air. In short, there were going to be a lot of differences from the "original" version. This version is still in A-flat to maintain singability, which also matches up well with young players' key familiarity, and the overall effect is stronger and has more impact than the other. The ending was also simplified, as it is expected that an crowd would respond to a middle school brass ensemble a bit more vigorously than a more experienced group, so much of the flourish at the end of the other version would be covered by applause anyway. When a lot of crowd noise is going on and you are trying to finish a piece together, especially outdoors, simpler is better. The introduction was marked "optional" in case event promoters wanted the shortest possible version. So all of this got put into a pot and mixed with the original version and we ended up with a version created specifically for this group. The music proudly bears the words, "Commissioned by and dedicated to The Morning Brass Ensemble of Kaneland Harter Middle School, Sugar Grove IL USA." Compare the other brass quintet version. MP3 sound sample: Entire Piece (synthesizer/midi). THE STAR-SPANGLED BANNER by Key and Smith arranged by Tom Kirkland for brass quintet consisting of two trumpets, french horn, trombone, and tuba, comes in a pdf file of 305K, with a three-page score, five one-page parts, and a license page, nine pages in all. Performance time should be about 1:20 to 1:30. |
| WE SEEK RECORDINGS TO USE AS DEMOS The majority of our sheet music pieces use electronically-produced demos on the item pages. We would much prefer to use actual recordings, so if you email us a digital recording or link to an online video and we end up using it as a demo on our site (fully credited), we will send you a coupon code good for US$25 toward your next purchase from our site. BLANKET RECORDING POLICY FOR SHEET MUSIC Many of our sheet music licenses state that the purchaser does not have the right to record the work. We have modified our policy on this, and unless the license page states that you must obtain permission from a party other than www.tributek.com to record the work, we will allow a small number (less than 50) of copies of an audio or video recording of a live performance to be made and distributed and/or posted to a free web site for viewing/listening, so long as www.tributek.com, the composer, arranger, and lyricist are credited. IN THE DOWNLOADABLES BUSINESS OVER Visit our hard goods division at  .usA customer commented: "Today I made my first purchase from Tributek. Every aspect of the transaction exceeded my expectations. The description of the product included a Quicktime demo in addition to a clear, interesting, well-written description of the product. The price of the product was a bargain. The ordering process could not have been easier or faster. I will definitely shop with Tributek again!" Another customer commented: "I would like to compliment you on the ease of purchasing music on-line. I require the music for a wedding in a couple of weeks, and didn't want to wait for music to be sent in the mail. It was great to be able to hear the music and to know the length of the PDF file and performance time." Another customer writes: "I bought some choral music off your site. It's great. I hope we can do all of it in our church. I don't know how you can sell it so cheap. It's a great service you offer." NOTE: All www.tributek.com customers are given the opportunity to rate our service, value, and quality, and 98% of www.tributek.com customers who have ever returned satisfaction surveys rate their overall experience doing business with us as "excellent" (71%) or "good" (27%). You can't please all of the people all of the time, but we do try very hard.
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