Custom Shows

1st Place Designs offers complete custom shows that include music for winds, battery, and front ensemble as well as drill, and guard work.  These shows include ‘show flow charts’ that allow your entire staff to stay organized and rehearse by musical phrases, and warm up exercises and tips that are created specifically for your custom show.

1st Place Designs also offers separate services.  If you just need wind or percussion arrangements, drill design or color guard choreography, our designers can help.  We are a team of independent contractors who have formed a professional partnership, and enjoy collaborating on shows whenever possible.  However, we quite regularly work on independent projects for various bands and guards while continuing to develop and create our growing selection of finished programs.

Do you have a great show idea? Do you need ideas?  Let us help you arrive at a show concept that is current, and can be applicable to the abilities of your performers.  What are the musical strengths of your music program? What genres have your students been exposed to?  We have created effective and successful shows in the jazz, rock, orchestral, and wind band genres.  Patriotic, historical, and shows centered on a central theme – no matter how eclectic – are all within our designers abilities.

Original commissions. This could include school fight songs, alma mater pieces, parade tunes, cadences, or one production to compliment other arrangements you may be using in your program. Commissions have also been composed to mark a special community or school event, as a dedication to someone past or present, or to commemorate historic celebrations (town birthdays, anniversaries of significant events or births, tributes to veterans or civic leaders)

Rewrites, chart preservation/updates. Several schools have contracted us to save aging manuscripts. Recently we were sent 75 year old parts and half of a condensed score for an original school fight song written in 1934. Torn, missing parts, and with outdated instrumentation (Eb horns), we produced a new set of parts, a full score, and added mellophone and multi-tom parts, and a small pit score. The best part was that we left what we received intact, making the alumni happy, and we even included a piano score for non-marching band performances.

Transcription services. If all you have is a recording, we can help. We offer transcription services both to duplicate the recording in score form, or to re-arrange a recording to fit the instrumentation of your ensemble. We have taken scratchy jazz recordings from the 1920’s and produced full jazz ensemble arrangements with parts. We can leave the piece intact and just add missing parts (Tbn. 4, Guitar, etc.) or alter the original to feature a particular soloist or add solo sections.

If interested in any of these services, Contact us for payment and delivery options. . Let us work with you to create a unique and exciting program your students will love to perform and never forget!