Casey Crescenzo's Symphony Project

http://www.pledgemusic.com/projects/thedearhunter

I pledged. Will you?

I wasn't going to pledge but the offer of a score book is enticing. I'll probably drop down $25 at some point. Maybe meow he'll get back to doing something interesting musically

Kinda funny I find out about this just as I started saving up for recording my own orchestra (sort of) project.

It hits me right in the feels when I start thinking about all the orchestral projects I ended up abandoning. :\

But yeah, I got the score book, too. 

It's going to take a few years but I have enough musicians willing to record it for free, so I only have to pay for studio time and mixing (that's going to be a nightmare), so it'll take a couple years to do it all but I think it'll be worth it to take the opportunity.

I noticed they don't charge you right away unless you use Paypal so I went ahead and pledged the $25. I'm excited! I think this will turn out to be pretty interesting.

Yeah, it seems like a pretty legit pledge service, especially since they refund you your money if it doesn't pan out.

Good luck on your damn wonderful symphony.

He posted a video update recently with random clips of the recording sessions. It wasn't much to off of, but I have to say I'm not all that impressed. To be honest it sounds like something written by someone who likes and appreciates orchestral music, but doesn't know anything about how to write it. Parts sounded very meander-y. But as I said, there wasn't much to go on and it's hard to judge music based off random short clips tied together. Listening to it as a whole will probably help a lot.

There was one pretty cool part though that sounded very much like his usual style so I hope there's more like that. In any case, at least it isn't like "The Dear Hunters Leftovers Turned Into Orchestra Pieces" like I kind of thought it was going to be. And even if it turns out to be not very good I hope he ends up doing more because he'll only get better at it.

My copy of the symphony on vinyl, with a signed copy of the score book, came yesterday. I'm listening to it now.

It's alright. I hear what Halo's saying, it does sound a bit like it was written by a freshman in music school, albeit one that has a lot of potential. Gosh that makes me sound pretty snooty. But it's true.

At any rate, I'm still glad I supported the project, and I do hope he continues to write orchestral music, because as Halo said he will only get better.


edit: Movement II has a really nice moment at about 8 min.

edit 2: Movement III is actually quite good. It seems to take a lot of cues from the more dramatic movie scores out there, and he plays with rhythm and tempo a bit more. The first movements feel so boxed in by comparison.

edit 3: IV's decent. All in all, it's not bad. Again, I hope he keeps at it.

I haven't got the physical copy yet but I have the PDF score and the mp3s.

It's... hmm... well it's better than I thought it was going to be after the preview I had heard lol. There are some really cool parts to it! but unfortunately, while there are some really interesting things he does, it's outweighed heavily by some pretty generic/cliche stuff or musical ideas that are underdeveloped (or that maybe he just didn't know how to convey properly).

Overall it's a good listening experience though, and people should check it out.

edit: Movement II has a really nice moment at about 8 min.

I love that part! I think it's my favorite section of the whole thing.

Spoiler for A lot of nitpicking over the score book:

At any rate, there is only one thing I think is done outright poorly and that is the score book. I'm being a bit nerdy about this and probably no one cares, but he gave us a scorebook so it's bound to happen. I know he's publishing this symphony himself but I still thought he'd have an orchestrator or just somebody to help with at least the layout of the score. There are several instances of directions, tempo, etc. out of alignment, smushed together, or just plain in the wrong place:



I know when it comes to engraving rules, there are many ways to do things, but I'm pretty sure that's not a viable option. Also his enharmonic spelling is often bad:



Maybe he doesn't know D flats exist or something. I kinda understand why he thought to do that, because the piano plays C#(or nat.) and D# simultaneously and you can't write D flat in that chord too. But for whomever is playing flute it makes little sense to do that and they probably wanted to smack him.

Also the choice to write in no key is sometimes questionable because there are long parts where it seems a key would have been better/more accurate, but given how much and how quickly he goes through keys it might not have mattered. Kinda torn on that.

Marimba should not go below unpitched percussion in the score order I myself don't follow traditional orchestral score order (usually I go by concert band because it makes more sense) but in no way should that ever happen. Also he could have condensed the unpitched percussion into just a general Percussion staff and saved a lot of space.

Too many rehearsal marks. You shouldn't get to Z in a piece that straightforward

The way he wrote the harp music is acceptable, but I know that harpists prefer it to be done differently, such as putting a pedal diagram or doing this:

Simply writing "F Major" above a gliss isn't really a very good method. F major scale? F major chord? You could set the B and E pedals to the top and end up with a gliss that sounds much like an F Major chord. Or at least F7.