Much of my teenage life was spent playing the trombone in bands. I especially recall playing in public at this time of year in a variety of brass ensembles. My passion and past-time of playing music turned into composing with sequencing software and ultimately lead me to starting Media Music Now in 2005.
Since then their has been no opportunity or time to work on my own compositions. In fact, it has been about 12 years since I last had a play with samples and midi.
However, recently I upgraded my software and soft synths and promised myself that I would get back into creating music.
One big thing I have learned from MediaMusicNow is that stock music sells only if it suits someone’s media production and not just because you create great music. No ego needed then.
Making music that I want to create is not the goal. I want to write music to fit the use, and make an extra income along the way. And, as it is very nearly Christmas what better place to start than with some festive arrangements of popular Christmas music.
Being an ex-trombone player, I wanted to create a Christmassy brass band / marching band sound too; you know, the type of band that appears in shopping malls in the lead up to Christmas.
The music featured in the video above is my marching brass band version of Jingle Bells, which can be licensed from Media Music Now http://www.mediamusicnow.co.uk/royalty-free-music/christmas/traditional/jingle-bells-brass-band.aspx.
I have tried to keep it natural sounding and avoided using quantization to try and capture the feel of brass instruments, but of course you can’t beat the real thing!
Lots of traditional Christmas music is out of copyright. This means that the melody and chords can be used to create your own original arrangement. You then own the copyright of the arrangement and production of that piece. All the Christmas arrangements I have created are original.
Leave a Reply