Product Description
My first complete concert band piece. It's been in the works for about 3 months. The early drafts of this piece were written in April/May and were then left to collect dust for months. I wrote it to experiment with melodic/harmonic minor scales and did not intend to finish the piece. Around the same time I wrote the early drafts of the piece, my high school band director asked if I wanted to write a piece for the concert band. I agreed and spent months working on different pieces of music, completing none of them. Around late October I stumbled across this looking through old pieces of music for some new ideas. I listened through it 3 or 4 times and decided to continue the piece. After spending roughly two months finishing the draft, and another month revising and adding parts, I had finally finished Trapped.
When I started working on this piece with the intention of finishing it, I was at a difficult point in my life. I had recently come home from my rookie season of drum corps and was still transitioning back to the real world. The freedom of tour had been taken away from me, I had mentally matured a lot during the summer. While only 17 I felt like I was stuck with a bunch of kids. I had spent all summer with friends much older than me, learning a lot from them and taking inspiration from them in many ways. When I started this piece, I was conflicted with many thoughts and emotions. I was still under the impression that my peers in the music program hated me because of some of my actions last year. The girl from home I had been talking with all summer while I was gone, and hoped to start a relationship with, lied to me while I was gone about many things, causing me to remove them from my life. The last year and a half have involved many events like losing my best friend of 5 years because of, what I consider, an overreaction on my part; being used for my kindness; lied to; having secrets about me revealed behind my back by those I trusted; being a therapy friend; constant overthinking; as well as toxic friendships I didnt want to leave because I gave them the benefit of the doubt.
I felt trapped. I had spent so long trying to improve myself to become who I am today, and I still felt like crap. Even though I knew and promised myself I wouldnt follow through, I was battling suicidal thoughts and I was in a severely depressive episode of my life. I wrote this piece to express the feeling of overthinking, being trapped in your mind, and the road to recovery. The constant back-and-forth battles with yourself, unsure of where to go and what to do next; feeling trapped. I hope that this piece connects and resonates with those of you in a similar position to what I was in, and I promise there is a way out and that life does get better.
And with that, I present to you, Trapped.
This product was created by a member of ArrangeMe, Hal Leonard's global self-publishing community of independent composers, arrangers, and songwriters. ArrangeMe allows for the publication of unique arrangements of both popular titles and original compositions from a wide variety of voices and backgrounds.