New (well old, but newly arranged, performed and produced)

I’m still working on the solos, tweaking the arrangement, and trying to get the mix right…and I’d welcome comments on any of this.

But my big question here is about the 1:14 Intro (and again in the Outtro), which I’m sure one might argue has nothing to do with the rest of the piece. To which my answer might be ‘yeah, but I still like it…’ - although I could argue some connection to the rest of the music.

But the thing is this: I originally wrote this piece for my Senior Recital, and it opened the concert (think this will be my last ‘back catalogue’ reproduction for a while! Back to new music after this). The intro served as a statement of intent, and to get people’s attention.

Of course, if you’ve come into a concert hall to hear a concert, you are unlikely to walk right out after just 1 minute of music, so I was reasonably safe in that live setting. But today, when people can click-off in under 3 secs if they don’t like what they hear, is this too much of a risk of losing people who might otherwise love the rest of the track…?

Thanks for any feedback!

Genre/Style: Pat Metheny Group-esque ECM style jazz

Creative Vision for the Track: Create a sound world that listeners can sink into and enjoy. Take them on a journey of discovery.

Composition Details (Tempo, Key, Main Chords etc): 64BPM, main section oscillates between BbMaj7/D and CMaj7/G, but there are 3 sections (apart from the Intro/Outro). The form of the ‘head’ is:

AAB
AAB
CCD
CCD

But there are slight changes to this as the piece progresses, along with the arrangement.

Main Instruments used:

There are 3 solos: Soprano sax, piano, and vibes, and a mix of electronic, acoustic, orchestral and ethnic instruments. I wanted the orchestration to be rich and complex. The challenge of course is have I controlled all these resources or does it just become a mess…?

While I’m still finalising aspects of this it’s just on a private SoundCloud link at the moment, but the link should still work as normal:

Would welcome any feedback. Thank you.