Choosing a test piece is one of the highest-stakes decisions a musical director makes each year. Get it right and you’ll stretch your players without breaking them, hold an audience’s attention, and give your band a genuine shot on the contest stage. Get it wrong and you’ll spend months fighting the music instead of making it.
Here’s a practical framework for narrowing down your options — plus a grade-by-grade starting point if you want to skip straight to listening.
Start with grade, but don’t stop there
Grade (or section) is the obvious first filter, and it matters — a piece pitched above your band’s technical ceiling will eat rehearsal time on note-bashing instead of musicianship. But grade alone doesn’t tell you enough. Two pieces at the same level can ask very different things of a band:
- Technical demand vs. ensemble demand. Some test pieces are hard because of individual passages (fast fingerwork, extended range). Others are hard because they demand tight ensemble playing, balance, and listening across sections. A band strong on individual technique but still building ensemble discipline needs a different piece than the reverse.
- Solo exposure. Does your line-up have a confident principal cornet or euphonium ready to carry an exposed solo movement? If not, look for pieces that spread featured material more evenly across the band.
- Duration and structure. A single continuous 12-minute arc rehearses very differently to a four-movement work you can approach one movement at a time. If your rehearsal time is limited or fragmented, structured, movement-based pieces are often easier to build progress against week to week.
- Contest vs. concert use. A piece chosen purely for adjudication points may not hold a general audience the same way a strong narrative or programmatic work will. If you’re picking a piece that also needs to work as a concert closer, favour something with a clear emotional or narrative arc.
Questions worth asking before you commit
- What did we play last season, what’s the gap and what is the set piece this year? If your last test piece was hard to play and even harder to listen to, look for something with more musicality this time, and vice versa. Try to choose a piece that works with the set test piece – then players can remain in the same mind frame. Alternatively, if the set piece isn’t great (and let’s face it, sometimes they can be a little bit of an acquired taste) then your own choice needs to make up for it. Variety keeps players engaged over a long rehearsal period.
- Where are our weak sections, and do we want to expose or protect them? Some MDs deliberately choose a piece that forces development in a weak section; others protect a known weakness in a contest year. Both are valid — just choose on purpose.
- How much perusal time do we have before we need to commit? Most publishers, including us, offer sample scores or reference recordings before purchase. Use them. A piece that reads well on paper can feel very different once you hear the texture and pacing.
- Does the piece have a reference recording? A guide recording tells you far more about pacing, balance, and difficulty than a score alone.
A note on programme music vs. abstract works
Programmatic pieces (built around a story, poem, or place) give you a ready-made way to talk to your audience about what they’re about to hear — useful for concert programmes and for holding the attention of less experienced listeners – especially great for those pre-contest concerts. Abstract or more traditionally structured works can offer more room for the band’s own interpretive choices. Neither is inherently “better” for contest — check your association’s adjudication criteria, but most reward strong musical communication regardless of whether the piece tells a literal story.
Starting points by grade
(Update this list each season as new works are released and selected as set pieces.)
- Elite / Championship Section — Moonscapes
- A Grade / 1st Section — Quaternity: Forces of the Ancients
- B Grade / 2nd Section — The Blazing Blizzard
- C Grade / 3rd Section — A Brisbane Journey / Journey to Alpha Centauri
- D Grade / 4th Section — The Keeper of the Winds, selected for the D-Grade Australian National Band Championships, Brisbane 2026 or A City Divided – brand new this year!
- Developing / Training Bands — A Bournemouth Suite
We’re planning on creating a dedicated guide for each grade with a full shortlist and listening links of both our works and up-and-coming other works from amazing composers. Watch this space!
Before you buy
Most publishers, us included, provide a sample score and reference recording so you can properly evaluate a piece before committing your band’s season to it. If you’re weighing up options at D-Grade level, The Keeper of the Winds — this year’s set work for the D-Grade Australian National Band Championships in Brisbane — is a good example of a piece built to reward a band at exactly that stage: a clear narrative, movement-based structure that’s easy to rehearse incrementally, and solo opportunities spread across Principal Cornet, Flugelhorn, and full-band feature sections rather than resting on one player. You can read the full programme notes and listen to the guide recording here: The Keeper of the Winds.
