March Song Criteria

[gloria silalahi]

Anyone know how to create song in March format, or what is the criteria for creating march song?
Help me plz.....

Thanks

[fdoell]

Here are some suggestions for easy beginning:

Basic musical hints:
- beat: 4/4 (also 2/2 or 3/4 are possible)
- tempo: around 120 b.p.m. (funeral marches sometimes only 60 b.p.m.)
- accentuation on beat 1, 2, 3 and 4, whilst beat 1 is a little bit more accentuated than the other beats
- mode: mostly major, if it is not a funeral march
- key: use b-keys for easier playing with brass instruments in f, bb or eb

Instrumentation:
- use (snare) drums, timbals, trumpets and swiss pipes for a 16. century sound (when the sovereign entered the town or went to wage war)
- add more brass for modern marching band instrumentation, such as horns, trombones and tuba
- try woodwind instruments (transverse flutes, saxophones, oboes, bassoons) and may be a glockenspiel (e.g. bell lyra)

for more basic information see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/March_%28music%29 as well as http://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marschmusik (gives a lot of examples, for information in english go to german link and then klick "english" in the left language link column)
for more instrumentation hints see also http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brass_instrument#Ensembles

Composition:
- try to define melodies that can be remembered and piped/sung easily
- create a melody with no shorter notes than 1/8 (as a basic rule only)
- use syncopes for modern style pieces only
- harmonisation depends on style also, so use triads or 4-note-chords for classical diatonic harmonies (e.g. expanded by secondary dominants) and more upper structures for jazz styles
- try sections of 8, 16 or 32 measures and reprises of 8 to 16 measures
- add a melodious trio (often in the key of the subdominant)
- eventually include drum solos

The rest of the composition work as I prefer doing it is to start with melodic, harmonic and accentuation impressions and then begin to structurize. Sometimes I have a voice recorder with me and just sing or say what comes into my mind while strolling, notation is the evening work then.

Good luck!
Friedhelm

[DrewE]

Following up on fdoell's excellent post...with a few comments.

6/8 is common in march music. I don't think I've seen a 3/4 march, although some may exist. (Perhaps if we had three legs, they'd be more common!)

The tempo is generally held pretty strictly--that is, it should be free of ritardandos, accelerandos, and fermatas. This is especially true if the piece is actually played or sung while marching; concert marches tend to be a bit more free in the tempo, since walking isn't expected.

Piano transcriptions and scores are another traditional and common form for marches, obviously not used when one is actually marching. (Bassoons are, for similar reasons, not generally used when actually marching.)

Marches tend to avoid complicated harmonies, often having the melody and any counter-melodies played largely in unison or octaves over a chordal accompaniment. Dynamic contrasts are heavily used: playing the counter-melody pianissimo the first time through a repeated section, and then fortissimo the second time, or having suddenly loud or quiet notes. Repeated strains are very common, practically universal.

Sometimes, after the trio section, the first part is recapitulated. This is by no means universal, however. (The term trio for marches doesn't imply that exactly three instruments or lines are used.)

It's somewhat traditional (but thankfully changing) to publish marches on teeny scraps of paper for use with lyres, which often means certain shortcuts are taken in the notation--such as conserving space by marking the key signature only on the first stave and where it actually changes. I don't recommend following that tradition unless strictly necessary.

With all that said, march songs composed as such tend to be rather freer than marches proper; they're often songs that evoke a march style, rather than marches with words added. Not that adding words to existing marches is unheard of--"Be kind to your web-footed friends..." (Sousa's Stars and Stripes Forever) being one well-known example.