Ragtime Marches

Our latest Gamelan and Marimba Arrangements

Our Gamelan Ragtime Marches are all free and you can hear a streamed selection before you download the complete piece .

Here we see a cakewalk appearing as a march and it was a small step away from some of the Ragtime dances to the marches. There are some miliaristic pieces but there was clearly a demand for march music presumably for civic parades where a patriotic feel was required without the military dimension. Creole Belles just adds that New Orleans flavour without the echos of a funeral procession.

Our new arrangements are based on MIDI transcriptions of the original sheet music most of which was published ten years either side of 1900 in the USA. Many of the transcriptions in this selection were produced by John Cowell and have been put into the public domain without restrictions. We used a digital sample based version of the Indonesian Gamelan together with a selection of digital Marimbas. Through trial and error a consitant set up was developed and then adapted for each recording. We have sought to emphasise the contrast between the two voices of the piano music whilst emphasising the rythmic content.

There are more Gamelan Ragtime tracks on the Rags, Dances, Intermezzos, and Novelties pages and you might also be interested to hear our selection of other march tunes.