Ceremonial, patriotic, & classical concert band MP3 & RM music pages.
Kurt Kurosawa
http://www.acc.af.mil/public/music/ceremonial/ - We posted
this page because we ran out of the second re-pressing of
our Ceremonial Music CD (we made the CD for ceremonial
project officers & ncos because budget cuts closed many Air
Force bands in 1991 and we couldn't handle all the
ceremonial band requests that were coming in, but the demand
for the hardcopy CD was more than we could afford to meet).
Site allows anyone to make tapes for ceremonies of all
branches of the military (with simple instructions, not one
complaint yet). If you know a teacher who puts together
school patriotic programs, or a JROTC instructor, or someone
in the military, or someone in a veterans or civic service
organization, please pass this URL on to them. Files are
posted in 128 kbps constant-rate stereo MP3, dual-ISDN rate
mono RM (for Mac users), and zipped dual-ISDN rate mono RM
(for version 3 browser users who otherwise would get nothing
but garbage running up their screens). BTW, mono is the way
to go when making tapes to play over public address systems.
http://www.acc.af.mil/public/music/patriotic/ - This is a
companion site to the ceremonial site. We didn't know there
wasn't a collection of recordings of patriotic standards
anywhere on the web, but after we put up the ceremonial
site, we got tons of requests. It's small but growing.
Please pass this URL along to anyone you'd pass the previous
URL along to. Same formats as previously described.
http://www.af.mil/accband/sounds/ - We have 3 pages here.
Formats are: 192 kbps variable-rate stereo MP3 (our ears
find this a lot more liquid and musical than 320 kbps
constant-rate), dual-ISDN stereo RM (not so great, but we
didn't want to lose the stereo imaging although dual-ISDN
mono RM sounds much better quality-wise), and zipped
dual-ISDN stereo RM (for easy version 3 browser download).
Please let music teachers know about this URL so they can
pass it along to their students (concert band music doesn't
get quite the airplay it ought to). Currently, the three
pages here are:
First, 'Space Themes in Classical Music, including Richard
Strauss' 'Also Sprach Zarathustra, einleitung' (AKA the
theme from the movie '2001: A Space Odyssey') and five
movements from Gustav Holst's 'Planets' (his music fits the
current space craze, but actually Holst was an astrology
fan; Pluto is missing from his original work because it
hadn't been discovered yet).
Second, 'Van Gogh Portraits' by Aldo Rafael Forte. Aldo is
our resident composer. He's been fascinated with Van Gogh
for years and goes out of his way to visit any museum that's
showing a Van Gogh. He wrote musical interpretations of
five Van Gogh paintings for our concert band, starting from
the dark, moody early painting 'Potato Eaters' and ending
with the last known self-portrait (you can hear the gunshots
of Van Gogh's suicide towards the end of the last movement).
Air Force One gave out copies of the CD on the recent
Ireland/Russia mission (Van Gogh is a language everyone
appreciates). Thanks to the webmaster of
http://www.vangoghgallery.com for permission to use
miniatures of his photos of the paintings on our page.
And last, 'Songs of the Air Force,' including many versions
of the Air Force Song, text pages of the history of the Air
Force Song and full lyrics, Air Force Blue, Air Force Mymn,
some obscure things like Barber's Air Force dirge, and a
dramatic narrative we recorded last year.
Thanks for your help in getting the word out!
Best regards,
Kurt