Christmas/Holiday Duets - March of the Toys Excerpt

[rrayner]

"March of the Toys" was written by Victor Herbert in 1903 for the Operetta "Babes in Toyland". It is not a Christmas Carol, but the theme of the operetta was set at Christmas time, and the piece has been recorded by a large number of recording artists for their Christmas collections.

This arrangement is an excerpt, as the entire piece is rather long. I have changed the original key from C to G and I have made several octave adjustments to fit the range of the instruments. There are some difficult passages, but a little bit of work will be very rewarding at play time.

My wife Cynthia and I wish you an early Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year!

Ralph R. Rayner

[Sherry C]

Hi Ralph,

As always, thanks for sharing these pieces with the rest of us! It's always fun to see and hear your take on these tunes, and to have them parsed out so that solo instruments can play the melodies.

I don't know if you're working from memory or if you're using a lead/fake sheet of some kind, but it might be kind of fun if the chord names were included. This may just be my own bent since I play bass most frequently, and often use the chord names to guide my lines, and allow me to try playing along on that to accompany your duets

Alternatively, some of us who shall remain nameless might try playing around with the Band in a Box plugin to provide some various other accompaniment as well. Please don't throw anything at me for heresy regarding your excellent renditions

Thanks again for sharing, and a very Merry Christmas and Happy New Year to you and Cynthia, too!
Sherry

[rrayner]

Hi Sherry,

Ah! The reason there are no chords is that I re-orchestrated this piece from a piano score, which had no chords. I took a shortcut on this one due to time constraints (who ever heard of such nonsense! ), and therefore didn't have the time to divine the composer's intention. Most of the notes you see in the parts appear in the score. There are a few places in the Alto part where I didn't like the interaction between the two parts that I changed some of the notes to fit the flow better. That I did by simply selecting a few different notes and hearing what (to my ear) sounded the best and provided the best flow.

Truthfully, a lot of the Alto part is quasi-bass in nature.

So, at this point, being the busy Holiday season, I won't get to this request for a while, but I will put it on my To-do List.

Ralph

[Sherry C]

Hi Ralph,


Oh there is no rush at all. It was just a thought from a slightly overworked bass player I figured you had started with some sort of sketch and then made it very much your own!


I was just going over some of my own practice stuff, pondering over the varying styles that much of our big band Christmas music has been arranged in and also how fun the Band in a Box plugin can be, and thought it would be kind of cool with your duet arrangements to be able to mess around a bit with some different styles with them. BIAB requires chord names, and thus burst forth the thought.


Back to testing and practicing now before I have to pick up kids from school....


Thanks for all the music you share - you're an inspiration to us all


ttfn,
Sherry