AMES, Iowa--Karina Snider is beginning to think like a musical composer.
On the Celebrity Showcase stage on August 14 at the Iowa State Fair, Snider explained to celebrity guests Van Harden and Bonnie Lucas of the WHO radio show Van and Bonnie in the Morning how she wrote a march for her school band.
Van and Bonnie had volunteered to participate in the ISU Extension 4-H Youth Development Celebrity Showcase event at the fair. The showcase allows high profile professionals to showcase 4-H youth and their project work on stage in the 4-H Exhibits Building.
Snider was an 18 year-old high school student at the Ballard Junior-Senior High School in Huxley at the time she wrote her march.
“My assignment was to write an original march, but I had some guidelines. I had to write the march in the key of B-flat major, 6/8 time and use the same chord progressions and bass clef that were in a sample march from my music theory book."
Snider explained that the beginning of her march, Min Første Marsj in Norwegian or My First March in English, is fanfare-like to capture the audience’s attention.
Snider asked many of the same questions that composers do when she was writing her march. Should the flutes have a melody or counterpart? Do the trombones play two different parts in their section or in unison?
She had originally written the march for the piano in the key of C, so her next step was to assign different parts of the music to the other musicians in the band. She transposed the original piano music for instruments such as the trumpet, flute and trombone, while at the same time making certain that each part was in the correct range for each instrument.
When she was finished, she asked several members of the Ballard High School band to practice the music and give her feedback. “This is when I began to tweak my march so it would work for the entire band,” she said.
The band continued to practice Karina’s march, but it still didn’t have a name. “During that time my march was known as Karina’s March or The March of the Karinas. It was difficult for me to come up with a name because I wanted it to be just right. I finally settled on Min Første Marsj in Norwegian. Part of my heritage is Norwegian and this is the first march I have written,” she said.
The grand finale for all of Snider’s hard work was when the band performed her composition at the school’s February concert. She remembers thinking “I had done it. I had written a piece and had it performed in front of an audience. It was an amazing achievement and accomplishment.”
The audience at the Celebrity Showcase also had the opportunity to hear Snider’s march, and at the end of the piece, broke into spontaneous applause.
Snider graduated from Ballard High School in May 2006 and plans to attend Iowa State University in the fall of 2006. She will major in music education and wants to be a high school band instructor after she earns her bachelor’s degree. In addition to the piano, Snider also plays the piccolo and the flute.
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