{"id":9781,"date":"2025-04-28T11:23:32","date_gmt":"2025-04-28T15:23:32","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/wilktone.com\/?p=9781"},"modified":"2025-04-28T14:15:15","modified_gmt":"2025-04-28T18:15:15","slug":"breathing-easy-for-big-band","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/wilktone.com\/?p=9781","title":{"rendered":"Breathing Easy for Big Band"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">I&#8217;ve been working on some big band writing lately. The last two I completed were big band arrangements for my friend, <a href=\"https:\/\/www.wendyljonesmusic.com\">Wendy Jones<\/a>, to sing with the <a href=\"https:\/\/www.ashevillejazzorchestra.org\">Asheville Jazz Orchestra<\/a>. Both those songs were originals she wrote, <em><a href=\"https:\/\/youtu.be\/FW4W2Rk4FZA?si=WUd7znFMM4rfoWrg\">The Day I Saw You<\/a><\/em> and <em>All the Years<\/em>. Since those charts are not my compositions you can follow those links to hear Wendy&#8217;s combo recordings of her songs and come to our concert in August where they will be featured.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">After completing those two arrangements I worked on an original ballad of mine, called <em>Breathing Easy<\/em>. I wrote the A section of this tune many years ago as a demonstration of how to use melodic cells to come up with ideas for composing new melodies. It was long enough ago that I don&#8217;t recall exactly how the melody for this tune got developed, but I do know that the melodic cell I used was the first two bars of London Bridges.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<figure class=\"wp-block-image size-full\"><img data-recalc-dims=\"1\" loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" width=\"656\" height=\"174\" data-attachment-id=\"9787\" data-permalink=\"https:\/\/wilktone.com\/?attachment_id=9787\" data-orig-file=\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/wilktone.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/04\/London-Bridges.png?fit=876%2C232&amp;ssl=1\" data-orig-size=\"876,232\" data-comments-opened=\"1\" data-image-meta=\"{&quot;aperture&quot;:&quot;0&quot;,&quot;credit&quot;:&quot;&quot;,&quot;camera&quot;:&quot;&quot;,&quot;caption&quot;:&quot;&quot;,&quot;created_timestamp&quot;:&quot;0&quot;,&quot;copyright&quot;:&quot;&quot;,&quot;focal_length&quot;:&quot;0&quot;,&quot;iso&quot;:&quot;0&quot;,&quot;shutter_speed&quot;:&quot;0&quot;,&quot;title&quot;:&quot;&quot;,&quot;orientation&quot;:&quot;0&quot;}\" data-image-title=\"London Bridges\" data-image-description=\"\" data-image-caption=\"\" data-large-file=\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/wilktone.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/04\/London-Bridges.png?fit=656%2C174&amp;ssl=1\" src=\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/wilktone.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/04\/London-Bridges.png?resize=656%2C174&#038;ssl=1\" alt=\"\" class=\"wp-image-9787\" srcset=\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/wilktone.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/04\/London-Bridges.png?w=876&amp;ssl=1 876w, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/wilktone.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/04\/London-Bridges.png?resize=300%2C79&amp;ssl=1 300w, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/wilktone.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/04\/London-Bridges.png?resize=768%2C203&amp;ssl=1 768w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 656px) 100vw, 656px\" \/><\/figure>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">If you want to give it a listen, here is a mockup I did of this chart. I used Dorico for the notation and then to generate the midi realization for the horns, with the Atomic Big Band Horns sound library. The rhythm section and tenor sax &#8220;improvised&#8221; solo were generated using Band-in-a-Box. I dumped all the audio files together into Logic Pro and cleaned up some of the glitches there.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<figure class=\"wp-block-audio\"><audio controls src=\"https:\/\/wilktone.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/04\/Breathing-Easy-Demo.mp3\"><\/audio><\/figure>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Can you hear London Bridges in there? I&#8217;m not sure I can, but I think I did some octave transpositions and inversions to get the melody sounding so different.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<figure class=\"wp-block-image size-full\"><img data-recalc-dims=\"1\" loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" width=\"656\" height=\"196\" data-attachment-id=\"9793\" data-permalink=\"https:\/\/wilktone.com\/?attachment_id=9793\" data-orig-file=\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/wilktone.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/04\/Breathing-Easy-Melody.png?fit=1002%2C300&amp;ssl=1\" data-orig-size=\"1002,300\" data-comments-opened=\"1\" data-image-meta=\"{&quot;aperture&quot;:&quot;0&quot;,&quot;credit&quot;:&quot;&quot;,&quot;camera&quot;:&quot;&quot;,&quot;caption&quot;:&quot;&quot;,&quot;created_timestamp&quot;:&quot;0&quot;,&quot;copyright&quot;:&quot;&quot;,&quot;focal_length&quot;:&quot;0&quot;,&quot;iso&quot;:&quot;0&quot;,&quot;shutter_speed&quot;:&quot;0&quot;,&quot;title&quot;:&quot;&quot;,&quot;orientation&quot;:&quot;0&quot;}\" data-image-title=\"Breathing Easy Melody\" data-image-description=\"\" data-image-caption=\"\" data-large-file=\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/wilktone.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/04\/Breathing-Easy-Melody.png?fit=656%2C196&amp;ssl=1\" src=\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/wilktone.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/04\/Breathing-Easy-Melody.png?resize=656%2C196&#038;ssl=1\" alt=\"\" class=\"wp-image-9793\" srcset=\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/wilktone.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/04\/Breathing-Easy-Melody.png?w=1002&amp;ssl=1 1002w, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/wilktone.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/04\/Breathing-Easy-Melody.png?resize=300%2C90&amp;ssl=1 300w, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/wilktone.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/04\/Breathing-Easy-Melody.png?resize=768%2C230&amp;ssl=1 768w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 656px) 100vw, 656px\" \/><\/figure>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">I&#8217;ve found Dorico makes it easy to put together parts, but it isn&#8217;t quite as easy for me to layout the score as easily, so the last bit I have to complete is to fix the layout of the score. I&#8217;ll be able to get this printed and then sent off to the current directors of the Asheville Jazz Orchestra very soon, so I hope that we&#8217;ll be able to perform it sometime soon. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>I&#8217;ve been working on some big band writing lately. The last two I completed were big band arrangements for my friend, Wendy Jones, to sing with the Asheville Jazz Orchestra. Both those songs were originals she wrote, The Day I Saw You and All the Years. Since those charts are not my compositions you can &hellip; <a href=\"https:\/\/wilktone.com\/?p=9781\" class=\"more-link\">Continue reading <span class=\"screen-reader-text\">Breathing Easy for Big Band<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":15350306,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"advanced_seo_description":"","jetpack_seo_html_title":"","jetpack_seo_noindex":false,"jetpack_seo_schema_type":"","_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"{title}\n\n{excerpt}\n\n{url}","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"_wpas_customize_per_network":false,"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[1364,1366,1378],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-9781","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-composition","category-creativity","category-jazz"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/peFHCc-2xL","jetpack-related-posts":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/wilktone.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9781","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/wilktone.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/wilktone.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wilktone.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/15350306"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wilktone.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=9781"}],"version-history":[{"count":12,"href":"https:\/\/wilktone.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9781\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":9800,"href":"https:\/\/wilktone.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9781\/revisions\/9800"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/wilktone.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=9781"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wilktone.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=9781"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wilktone.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=9781"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}