Ep. 69: Getting Your String Writing "In Gear" with Katie O'Hara LaBrie

Katie O’Hara LaBrie, welcome to the show. How are you doing?

I’m great.

Thanks for having me here.

I’m so glad to get to talk to you. You’re somebody whose name I hear all the time in the publishing world. Everybody loves you.

Your music is great, and I’m excited to be able to talk about string music, because that’s not something we’ve done a deep dive on the show yet. Why don’t you just give our listeners the two-minute version of your life story? Where did you come from?

Where do you see your career currently?

Okay. I grew up in North Carolina and very musical family. I was playing both at school by actually reading music, and then at home, just Grateful Dead, Beatles, whatever, by ear.

I think that really helped in my compositional journey down the line. I went to St. Olaf College for music education, and then I taught.

I always wanted to be an orchestra teacher, and so I did it. I did the thing. And as I was teaching, I started writing music for my students.

I saw, I was like, oh, I need a grade two Hanukkah tune, and my cellos need to work on extensions, so I wrote a piece. So I just was filling in gaps where I saw.

Had you studied composition or were you music ed?

Not formally. I was music ed. I always took composition classes.

I did little composition projects when I was younger, but never formally. So my lens was always just from that of the teacher. And so that’s where it started.

And then I really fell into the being a published composer thing kind of by accident, and we can talk more about that later.

And that’s turned to a whole thing about not just composing, but now I am full-time composing and full-time publishing as well.

That’s awesome. There is something to that. A lot of the most successful composers, at least in the education space, didn’t study composition.

So I think there’s something to just being on the other side, having to teach the music and dig into it as a conductor, you learn what works and what doesn’t.

If you have the brain that can put those pieces together, you instinctively know how to write, even if you haven’t necessarily taken composition lessons.

Then I think also what’s nice, at least in the publishing world, is that we have a lot of great editors out there. I’ve learned a lot from Bob Phillips and Brian Balmages, and all these people along the way, little tips and tricks.

4:26

Well, let’s start with strings and how to write for them.

I think, well, I’ll speak to my experience as a trombone player. There’s certain common mistakes everyone makes. Not leaving space to breathe, for example, is one of them that comes up a lot.

What are the common pitfalls that you see in writing for strings?

Yeah. I see this a lot because I get a lot of submissions each year, and there’s just some that quickly go into the no pile, and here’s why. So, grade level.

If you’re thinking from an educational standpoint, I’m always looking that the grade levels are fairly even. We do not want a boring cello bass part.

You know, Pachelbel’s great, you know, but we don’t just want whole notes and half notes for those cellos and basses. So everybody’s doing around the same level of material, whether that’s rhythmic like the Pachelbel or also just range-wise.

If you know, if you have violas on the G-string, that happens a lot at the lower levels.

Well, if they’re the only ones learning the G-string, it’s kind of a new skill, that makes it really hard for the teacher because you know, you can’t teach it universally to everyone at once.

So anytime you can kind of have the skills the same, the better. And then the next thing that I see a lot is texture. This is probably my favorite thing to look for.

I’ve recently started writing more for band and I love all the colors. You know, I can have a little woodwind thing and then a brass thing. I can go full band.

I can do some solo instruments and you get so much texture and so much color that way. Well, when all the string instruments essentially more or less sound the same, how are you gonna create that texture?

So, it might be in groupings just like uppers and lowers. It might be maybe the cellos and basses have the melody, but then you have some pizzicato stuff with the upper strings so that you have a little bit different texture there.

So that would be like my number two thing. And then the biggest pitfall, I think, for people that aren’t used to writing for strings, especially for the younger levels, is thinking about bowings. Bowings, it’s just a whole world.

And until you do it, it’s not idiomatic or natural. There are some things that, I mean, I saw a piece the other day that was published, and they had only sixteenth notes, and they were starting on up bow. And I’m like, we just don’t do that.

We just don’t do that. So the basic way to think about it is even and odd. That’s on a very plain level.

That’s how I explain it. So if you have a measure with even amount of notes, like pepperoni pizza, you’re going to be good to go because you’re going to always start a down bow on a down beat and then up bows on up beats.

But once you get something that maybe is an odd number of notes in the measure, you might not want to have to make sure you pair it up with another measure so that it evens out eventually type of thing.

It’s OK to be off sometimes, but just not a lot. And so it’s kind of a combination of understanding bowings, but then how that relates to the rhythm. So those are kind of the big three things that I see when I’m going through submissions.

When it comes to bowings, I’m an over thinker, right?

So I will sit there and I will analyze every little thing. But what I’ve learned is that when I’m writing for professionals anyway, they’ll just ignore whatever I put into whatever bowings they feel like, right?

It’s one of those things everyone has their own opinions. Obviously, a sixth or seventh grade violin class is not going to have those thoughts. But how important is it for them to be unified in the bowing?

Like, what does that do?

Oh, unified is totally important, no matter if you’re a professional or a child, because it does sound different. There’s just a different impulse to what you do when you play up or down.

As far as putting them in as a composer, I think there’s just some general things to do. For education, typically, we’ll put them at the rehearsal bars.

I assume you would make more bow marks in grade-level music than you would for upper levels.

Yeah. Just even grade 1 versus grade 5, it’ll change for sure.

Sorry, is that categorized the same way as band music? Grade level 2 is this, grade level 4 is this, da-da-da-da-da, there’s specific things.

Yeah. We can go into it if you want.

I don’t want to sidetrack the bowing thing, but now I have, so there you go.

No. With the bowings, no matter what I do when I put them in, there’s going to be teachers that change them, and I’m okay with that.

There are sometimes multiple ways to do things, and I got to put one on the page, so I’m going to put one on the page. If it’s better for your students to do it a different way in this one instance, that’s fine.

I think a lot of composers in my realm think that way, and it is okay.

Well, I think the equivalent is where you breathe in concert band music. People change that all the time.

So I mean, as far as I would explain it, when you’re indicating bowings, the tools you use are basically the up bow, down bow markings, and then the slur markings. Are there other things that people should be aware of?

Well, the other challenge I’d say to be aware of is just articulations. I explain this to kids a lot. As a composer, I only have a couple tools.

I have, like you said, the up bow, the down bow, the slur. I have a dot. I have this little sideways V thing, and a couple other different direction V things, and a line.

That’s it. That’s not a lot of styles. There are so many nuances that you can have with Boeing to create a wide variety of sound.

My friend Anne-Marie came up with this concept of using, similar to in the band world, we use different syllables like, h, w, la, ma, pa, ta, you know, that sort of thing to kind of help kids like see that there’s all these different sounds you can

create. But on the page, it’s only going to be those couple things. So the interpretation of what you write is really vast and wide. So that’s a big challenge.

A lot of people that listen to this show are writing for smaller string ensembles.

They’re writing for trios, quartets, that sort of thing. How much does that kind of writing or that kind of music transfer to the grade level string orchestra? Is it a one-to-one?

Do they need to consider? Is it just making sure that the grade level is a right fit? Or are there other things that you need to factor in when you’re going from a smaller chamber group to a larger group of people?

I mean, more or less the grade level thing, for sure.

Because most schools have some sort of solo and ensemble festival where they might want to send a trio or quartet or whatever.

So having more music out there for that, especially with a variety of different diverse composers, I think these days is what people are looking for. But also, when you’re thinking about writing for small ensembles, every part is independent.

No matter how you write it, they’re all independent. So that, I think, plays the most factor. It ties into the grade level as well, but how rhythmically homophonic or not you’re going to be, so that they can nail those entrances.

Would you say more homophony is better?

It really just depends.

I mean, you could have, think Mozart-like where you have da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da in the background and then a melody, da-da-da-da-da-da, whatever, over it.

So it could be something like that, where they take turns with the melody and the accompaniment. But maybe the accompaniment part is more homophonic.

Now, going back to what you said about the violas and the G-string, I’ve studied orchestration. I understand that the different strings have different characters and all of that.

But I put zero thought into what string they’re playing on when I’m writing. That’s not something I think about. That’s above my pay grade.

I just assume that they’ll make the right choices. Is that something that you really need to consider in beginning music? How do you incorporate that into your composing process?

Because I imagine there are people that write things because that’s how they hear it in their head and they don’t consider what string it forces them to and it messes things up and they don’t even realize. How do you process all of that?

13:36

Yes.

This is where we get into that grade level conversation. For a grade one piece, you’re typically using a D major scale, and I’m just talking eight notes. Everybody’s starting on open D and going up.

Honestly, grade one is the hardest grade I think to write for. I think it’s easier to write professional level music than it is to write grade one because it’s so limited.

Come back to that.

If you want to build a five chord starting on A and D major, and you want that C sharp in the viola, well, you can’t put it on below the open D because it’s called an extension or a high three in this case, and so that’s not a grade one skill.

There’s certain skills that they do with their fingers, not just the strings, but if they’re playing in the first finger pattern that they learn, I call them gears.

And that’s because D string is the one they all have in common, right? So that’s where you start learning.

Yeah, they do have other strings in common, but D major is pretty much the typical, or E minor, typical keys that you learn at the beginning. Yeah. And then they start to learn other notes like F natural and C sharp and B flat.

So once you, just like in band, you start with six notes, right? Then you get an octave, then you start expanding the range. So that range limitation and key signature limitation really affects what you can do.

Okay.

That makes sense. And technically speaking, all of the instruments can play similar rhythms and things, right? Because you made that point earlier about cellos and basses having boring parts, and that resonated with me as a trombone player.

That was sort of my origin story in some respects, because I just was bored and I wanted to write my own stuff to play because I was bored, and here we are. But in the band world, right? Like there are pretty obvious technical differences, right?

Like a flute is just going to be able to play faster things sooner than a tuba player or a trombone player. Are there those kinds of differences with strings just because of the size of the instrument?

Like, are jumps going to be easier for violin versus double bass or is that not really how it works?

So, just because the fact that you can fit four different notes in your hand in the violin and you only fit two in your hand in bass, there’s going to be differences as far as you’re talking about skips and stuff.

But rhythmically speaking, sometimes I’ll have the cellos going, and the basses might just be going or something, just to make it a little simpler. Not always, it depends on where we’re at.

16:25

How did you decide to make the jump to composing from teaching?

Oh, so I didn’t.

My life made it for me. I like to share the story. It’s personal, but it’s important that people know that you never know what’s going to happen in your life.

You probably didn’t think you were going to be doing this podcast, 20 years ago, or we didn’t even have a podcast. So I was teaching and composing some. I would write one or two pieces a year.

But then actually it was my health. I have a condition called Ehlers-Danlos syndrome and it’s a connective tissue disorder, which is everywhere in your body.

It just became evident in about 2019 that I did not have the stamina to be in the classroom because if you’re not a teacher out there, I can’t explain how on you have to be all the time and energetic. You are an entertainer all the time.

I just didn’t have the stamina to do that anymore. So I had to stop teaching. Actually in 2021, I was actually physically bedridden for like a year and a half.

That was actually my most prolific year though, because I lay in bed with my laptop and I was writing in finale. Sometimes my husband would bring my violin, and I’d laying down and try to figure out bowings.

Because my brain was still working, I was still creative, I still wanted to be a part of this community, this music education community. I just found a different way to do it.

So from there, as the composition thing grew, I just again fell into a conversation, side conversation on Facebook with Randall Standridge and ended up with a job. So you never know.

Explain what that is for people who don’t know.

Yeah, my job there. So I am the Orchestra Division Editor at Randall Standridge Music.

Randall started the company in 2020, initially just with his own music, making that jump from initially he was a teacher, to just composer, to self-publishing essentially. Then he started a band catalog in 2022, I think, and then I came on in 2023.

I wear so many hats and I love it. Every day is different.

I do everything from reviewing submissions, to editing pieces with the composers, and we can take a deeper dive into what that looks like, to working with the audio engineers for recordings, to marketing, proofing, engraving, you name it.

There’s so many jobs in that realm.

Yeah. Well, and that’s exactly the kind of stuff that we dig into on this show. But when you made that jump, how much of a plan did you have?

Were you thinking like, I’m going to write grade level one music and I’m going to make that my thing, or were you submitting to everyone?

I’m just always curious to know the difference between where you actually end up and the vision when you first started, right?

Because like you said, you never know where you’re going to end up, and it’s always fascinating to hear, well, I thought I was going to do this, and then I ended up way over here.

Yeah. Well, I thought I was going to be an orchestra teacher forever. My first publication came about, I was doing a masters with Tony Maiello at George Mason and conducting, and I arranged a piece for it, Hallelujah by Ralph Manuel, a choral piece.

He’s like, I really like this.

He’s like, I’m going to take it to Bob Phillips at Midwest, and I mean back then I printed it out and I made a little CD and put a little package together and he brought it to Bob, and a month later, I get this email, we want to publish your piece,

and I’m like, okay, so now I’m a composer. I was just totally random. But from there, I started a little bit more arranging, and then eventually started writing my own compositions. It was just one here, one there.

Over the first 10 years, I think I had 11 pieces. Then that 11th year when I stopped teaching, and I focused solely on composing, I had 11 pieces in the one year that were published. So by then, my name was known.

I think once you’re in one place, it’s easier to get in other places as well. I mean, Brian Balmages did reject me many, many times before I finally got one. Then I was like, all right, I got it.

Then once I was in, I was in. Now we work together all the time. So it is a process.

For me, I got to the point where I was at with five or six different publishers, and now I’m scaling back because I’m like, I don’t need to send a grade one to everybody because then I’m basically competing against myself that year in the grand

scheme of what the teachers see. So I do try to hit a variety of things and I’m scaling back on how many publishers I’m working with, even though they’re all great people to work with.

I think there is something to that 10-year mark. I don’t know. I’ve seen it in my own career.

There’s something about once you do it for 10 years, if you’re still around, people go, oh, okay, and walls come down. I don’t know.

You’re not the only one I’ve talked to where it’s been like, oh, I did it for 10 years and all of a sudden I’m established. Or things start taking off. I’ve asked this question to a number of our guests before, but I want to hear your take on it.

The advice that I was always given when I was trying to break in was, write easy music. Easy music is what people want, easy music is what people sells. What people sells, that’s not a sentence.

Easy music is what people are buying. Yet, I feel like as a composer, you don’t get noticed for writing easy music. If I’m going to post a score of something that’s really simple, people aren’t going to share it.

It’s not going to go viral. It’s not going to attract attention in the same way that something flashy and original would. Like an Eric Whitaker smushy piece with all the different effects.

That gets attention in a way that a piece that only uses the D major scale wouldn’t. And so what advice would you give to composers that are trying to follow that advice and write easy music in a way that gets them noticed?

22:46

So I’m going to disagree with you.

I think that easy music can be noticed. And like, I mean, I wrote this piece, Thunder Snow, and oh my God, it took off, you know? Like, you know, you typically sell a small amount of pieces each year.

And then all of a sudden it was, you know, just ginormous. And so it can kind of go viral, if you will. I’ve gotten a couple pieces of advice over the years that have been really helpful.

And the first one was what you said, it was from Bob Phillips. He was like, write a killer grade one or two. But easy doesn’t have to be boring.

And that’s where the difference is, I think, you know? So it’s figuring out ways to make it engaging and make it work. So it’s not just always pepperoni pizza, you know, which, I mean, there are a few cool ones like that.

But for the, yeah, just make it a little bit more interesting.

You’ve got a barbecue pizza.

There you go. Actually, composer Kevin Sluder that said, let’s change it to deep dish pepperoni. Like, all right, whatever you can do.

But then Brian Balmage’s advice, I think, is always really good. Always write a tune that sounds harder than it is. And not the other way around.

You don’t want to write a hard tune that sounds easier. And so that’s a good, good piece of advice.

And then the last piece of advice that I’ve always lived by anyway, but Chris Bernatoss had mentioned it as well, is write melodies that kids are going to want to leave the room singing. And that can be at any level, you know? Yeah, for sure.

Yeah, that can be at any level.

Could you talk about your experiences working in both traditional and independent publishing? Because I’ve seen you publish things with Alfred, I’ve seen you publish things with Standridge, other publishers.

What have you seen in your experience working with different companies?

Yeah, I think every editor is very different in how they work. And so I have some places where I’ll just submit a piece and they say, okay, good to go. And it’s done.

You know, they just they take it as it or maybe just a few tweaks. I have other editors that will send me a list of this long, you know, just, you know, with, okay, let’s fix this, fix this.

And it could be something as simple as add a down bow here or something like that. But and then I have other people that we kind of work back and forth. So at my job as an editor now, I prefer that kind of back and forth.

It’s almost like a collaborative mentorship type situation where we’ll get on the zoom and we’ll try different things out in different spots. Not every piece, some of them are more ready to go than others.

But we are trying to, especially with newer younger composers that haven’t been in this field very long, showing them what is educationally valid and appropriate at times, because maybe they have a great creative piece, but there’s something that

needs to be tweaked, like someone sent me a piece and they just had it in the wrong key. Once we changed the key, it laid much nicer for the strength kids, that sort of thing. And then, we can cover a lot of things.

Maybe it’s marketing and how we can tweak it to make it a little bit more marketable or whatever it is. But usually I’m looking from the educational lens.

In the long run, though, I want the piece to be the composer’s piece and what they want it to be, and I’m just here to guide them.

And I think one of the things that the Randall Standridge catalog does better than anyone is just giving them good titles.

I’ve always felt like, you know, I’ve always felt that creative titles are important, but I think y’all take that to a whole other level. And I think it does, especially at that younger age, like give them something to latch on to almost, right?

Like much more so than a dodgy-o number three, you know, or whatever it is. And that brings up an interesting point, which I think is it’s so much harder to market original music than it is arrangements, right?

A lot of the people listening to this podcast are probably doing a fair amount of arranging. And I think when you do that, right, it comes in with sort of a built-in understanding, right?

If I do an arrangement of, you know, Jingle Bells or Taylor Swift or whatever, people know what that is. They kind of come in with an expectation. When I write an original piece of music, for one thing, it’s hard to get anyone to click on it, right?

But for another, it’s just the expectations. When they’re not met, it creates a disconnect or a friction with the customer, right?

If the customer is coming in looking for, if they’re looking for grade two string music and the title makes it sound like it’s going to be a grade two and then it’s not, right, that’s a problem.

So how do you think about presenting original music, explaining what it is, marketing it so that it gets to the right people right away?

Yeah.

Well, I think that’s a big difference between being in the publishing world versus the self-publishing world, if we spin it that way because in the publishing world, you have the backing of engravers making it look nice and presentable, which is

just, I can’t stress how huge, and you have the backing of a professional recording, so that it’s not just this midi whatever coming through, but that professional recording really doesn’t make a difference when people are listening, and then also

all the marketing that they do. So if you’re going to be working on your own in a self-publishing way, you have to think about how you’re going to match those levels of quality, I think, as you go. And so, with original music, creating a really good

headline little blurb is really important. And so, I used to write more about what the piece was about programmatically, but if you’re writing for educators, they’re going to want to know what educational concepts you’re hitting.

And so, I try to do a mix now where it’s telling them, okay, this is the story of the piece and how it’s going to engage your kids, but here’s what they’re going to learn, and here’s what you’re going to get out of.

Not just, this will make a great piece for your full closer, you know, that sort of thing.

Yeah, I want to highlight that because I really think, I really think the way these blurbs are written needs to change just across the board. I mean, I hear from a lot of people that they just don’t even read them, right?

They just click on it and listen to it, which, you know, I guess we can’t change that.

But I think especially now with, you know, ChatGPT and everything, all of the like algorithms that are crawling the internet, looking for all these text based things, right?

Like if you don’t have text explaining your music, it’s not going to get found by the robots, you know?

Yeah.

So I do think that’s important.

Can I hit on one thing you mentioned? You know, some people just click on it and listen to it. If you don’t have a killer like first, I don’t know, 10 seconds, it’s at the door.

Like, I mean, I remember getting the CDs back when we had CDs, or tapes, when we had tapes, and I would listen to the tracks in the car on the way home, and I would get the first 10 seconds. If I didn’t like it, I went to the next track.

So I think that’s important too, because people do have those short attention spans when it comes to, I like it or I don’t like it.

Do you think that’s more because we have short attention spans, or is it because our students have short attention spans, and we just know that they’re not going to buy into it if they don’t like it?

It’s more the latter. But if I’m a teacher, I want to love it. I tell that to our composers that I work with.

If I’m selecting your piece, I’m going to be living with it for an entire year of my life. I want to love it. I can’t get bored with it.

So what is your process as an editor of deciding how much music to publish?

Everyone’s got a different number. To a certain extent, it doesn’t matter because things can be digital now and there’s not necessarily that overhead. Obviously, there’s your time spent engraving and editing and all of that.

But everyone’s different. How do you come at that number?

Our numbers changed a little bit and I’ve only been in this position a few years. We started with a small catalog because we started late in the year. But I think our number is around 28 or so.

It’s hard to whittle it down to that because eight of those are going to be me and Randall. Then it’s really only 20. Then from there, I have so many grade levels to hit.

I want to hit a Christmas and a Halloween, and most of the grade levels and a lyrical and a E minor dragon tune or whatever it is.

You’ve got to have your E minor dragon tune, obviously. That’s a given.

Yeah, it’s a given. There’s just only so many slots, which is the hard thing when you’re looking at the tunes. But for me, mostly, it’s time because we are a very small company.

We only have four or five full-time employees, and so compared to when I work with Alphrax, I do some freelancing with them, there’s a marketing team, and there’s a this team, and a that team, and an engraving team, and so it’s a little different

So, let’s imagine a world where you had unlimited budget and you had more staff.

If you put out 50 pieces in a year instead of 28, do you think that would cause you to sell less music?

I kind of think, yeah. I think there’s a limit to how much the clientele can intake because if we have 20 or 30 or 40 or 50 or saying pieces, and so does Chose, and so does Carl Fischer, and so does all the different companies, it’s too much.

I did a reading session the other day locally, and most of the people there know me and see my social media posts, and I was shocked at how few people knew some of the pieces that we were reading.

I was that teacher that as soon as those catalogs hit in April or May, I was just eating them up. I was taking my planning periods and just listening to all the new tunes and figuring out what I want.

But there’s so much to do and so much on the teacher’s plate, so they don’t have time to do that. So I don’t know if more is necessarily better.

I’ve encountered a lot of similar things in the choral world. That’s mostly where I operate. What I see more and more is directors are relying on other people to filter the content for them.

Like the way to reach buyers is through the gatekeepers, the editors, whatever you want to call them. They’re looking for someone else to sort through the overwhelming amount of music and recommend the content.

They’re looking for what have their peers performed. They’re looking at what’s on festival lists and that sort of thing.

And I think because of that, everyone is really struggling with the marketing and how do we actually reach people and how do we actually get music in front of people.

We literally had this conversation at our weekly meeting on Monday.

Like, I think everyone is. I don’t think anyone’s figured it out yet. But I think when they do, that’s going to change the game, right?

Because, or maybe it won’t. Maybe there’s no way to figure it out. But just like you’re saying, the old days of people just listening to everything that gets put out by a company, that’s not a thing anymore.

Yeah.

Yeah. We try to make it as accessible as possible. And there are social media platforms, especially the Facebook groups, which obviously is for a certain age range of people.

But we have the Facebook groups where a lot of times you can promote things, but there’s some that are closed and you’re not allowed to say, someone’s asked, hey, I need a grade one that does this, this, and this.

And I’m like, oh, I have one, but I can’t say anything because it’s self-promotion, which, yeah, so it’s challenging.

So if you were to pick one thing that has worked the best for marketing your music, what would you say that has been?

I think it’s FaceTime and I don’t mean the iPhone app. I mean, being in front of directors, whether it’s a reading session at a state conference or even just sending the music.

But when we do reading sessions, we don’t just do, hey, play through a bunch of pieces.

I have a rubric of information about each piece highlighting those educational elements and a slideshow that goes along with it as we go or explain, here’s how you can use this piece as opposed to just, hey, let’s listen to this.

I think that that has been really effective.

35:57

Well, I’d like to end by sharing a couple of your pieces with our listeners.

You’ve brought two for us today. Why don’t we start with Adams? Can you introduce that one?

I’m so excited about this one.

When I was teaching, we often would do things where I’d have the high school, middle school, and elementary schools all play together at the end of the year. It was great for recruitment and retention.

There wasn’t a lot of music for that, so I always dreamed of having these multi-level festival style pieces. This is one of them. So it’s part of a new catalog that we’re putting out at Randall Standridge.

We have two more coming out in just a couple of weeks, and one of the parts stands alone on its own. So you get a piece right there, and then you have levels either above or below.

This one happens to stand alone at a grade two, has a four above, and then it has grade, I think, one and a half, and a half part which is just open strings. But then actually, I wrote this one for Annandale High School in Virginia.

Annie Ray is the director, and she has an orchestra called Crescendo Orchestra. It’s a students with severe intellectual or physical disabilities. So we actually wrote a part for them.

It’s all quarter notes and quarter note rests, the music’s enlarged. So just trying to make sure that everyone in their community could be included in this performance. So that’s kind of the idea.

And then their mascot’s actually the atom, which is a very strange mascot. But the idea of, you know, a single atom doesn’t do much, but when you combine, you know, you get this greater thing. Right.

So that’s the idea there.

That’s really cool. And this recording we’re going to listen to, does it have all the layers?

This, I don’t remember. I think this has the A, B and C parts. If I recall what we recorded in studio.

All right.

Well, let’s take a listen. All right, and the next piece is Unbridled Spirit. Tell us about that one.

So this one was also a commission for a local group, and it was right after the pandemic, and they wanted to celebrate their community coming together back after that.

And I typically write for younger levels, so I’m typically writing grade ones and twos. And so this was one of the first pieces that I wrote for those slightly higher levels, is about a grade five.

I’m just really proud of it, and it’s exciting to get to kind of explore some things, and not have to think about range, and not have to think about some of the things we talked about earlier, and just write. So that’s what this one is.

Well, thank you so much, Katie, for coming on the show, for talking through string music with us, for sharing your music. Where can our listeners find you?

Oh, just my name, katieoharalabrie.com.

All right, well, everyone check out Katie’s music, and we’ll see you around next time. Thank you so much.

Thanks, bye.