This is the CONCERT BAND arrangement of Celebrate America, which is availalbe NOW, and includes the piano-voice score as well as a full set of parts for concert band, plus full score (and more).

ABOUT “Celebrate America”

The STORY of
CELEBRATE AMERICA

by David P. Miller, Composer, Author, Publisher

The Spark of an Idea

In early 2025, I became aware that the next year (2026) would be the 250th Anniversary of the founding of the USA.

Because I have been fond of writing music to commemorate special events, such as “U.S. Horay!” a halftime show for the University of Florida to celebrate the nation’s bicentennial, the 2017 Solar Eclipse, the 50th anniversary of our landing on the Moon, and other occasions, I knew that I had to write a special song for our nation’s 250th anniversary.

It was something to CELEBRATE! So of course, the first words of the song sprang to mind: “We Celebrate America!” and with them, the first nine notes of the song itself.

And so it began. 

Within just a few days, I had a rough version of the lyrics to the first verse, and the first couple of lines of the chorus.

The melody at first proved elusive, with quite literally THOUSANDS of alternatives ocurring to me. For example, on the 10th note, where the lyrics were “Our” (in “Our land if libery”), should the melody step down to “land” or jump a third? (A stem from 7 to 6 or a jump from 8 to 6?) I eventually decided on the jump.

But there were, as I said, literally THOUSANDS of decisions like that to make on the melody. 

And then there were the harmonies. 

As with nost song melodies, most of the harmoties describe themselves through the song, but as with all good songs, there are a few chords in there that make it sound, well, delicious, and I spent literally months working those out. 

I know there are some musicans who have music so naturalized into their beings that these things come naturally to them. Sadly, I’m not one of those. But I am willing to listen carefully, to work hard, and to always be ready to make a change if it will make the song better.

Anotherr Impetus

Not long after President Trump’s inauguration, I heard him in a speech talking about our upcoming 250th annieversary, and how he wanted to see a BIG Celebration for the event, including … and this truly reached me … some NEW MUSIC for the occasion!

So I got to work even more.

Sadly, I hit a wall of writer’s block, being unable to come up with lyrics past the first verse and chorus, lyrics I felt were good enough for the song. 

There was a dry spell for quite a number of months, until, along about late Aubust 2025, I decided I had to just buckle down and DO something.

AI Help

So I turned to AI platforms for suggestions. I asked Gemini, Claude, Perplexity, and ChatGPT. Eventually, I came up with a set of 15 possible verses and 6 possible choruses, none of which were ideal, and I didn’t use all of any of them. 

But I did get some excellent ideas from those suggestions, and taking a chunk from this one and a segment from that one, I assembled what became the final first draft of three verses and two choruses, making the song into a “triple decker sandwich” of verse-chorus-verse-chorus-verse, which just seemed right.

Lest anyone think there is no creativity involved when you get an AI boost, I’m here to tell you that is NOT the case. I filtered through every syllable of those 15 verses and 6 choruses to pick and choose those that seemed to fit the best, then tweaking them this way and that to make them fit even better, to suit the scan rhythm, and to match the overall arc of that particular verse or chorus. 

The Completed First Draft

In October 2025, I completed the final first draft of the song, written in the Dorico Music Notation program (which I had to learn pretty much from scratch, since the Finale notation program company went out of business recently), and created a video off that version, rendered on the piano by the Dorico software, and the singing rendered by the ACE Studio software (which I had to purchase and then learn to use from scratch), and posted it right here on this website.

It should still be available on the Videos Tab if you caare to see/hear it. 

More Tweaks; and the Band Arrangement

Because I am totally a one-person operation, getting pretty much zero help from anyone else (other than a few good friends giving excellent inputs and feedback), I got a case of burnout at this time.

Then, along about late February this year (2026), I realized, “Time’s a-wastin’!” and knew I HAD to get back on the project.

So I got going, creating the arrangement for full Concert Band and Choir in Dorico. Of course, as I went over and over and over all the music, melodies, harmonies, gingerbread, and the lyrics, I kept seeing things I wanted to change, to “improve.”

So I did. 

Of course, all these improvements made the first draft from last October well out-of-date, so the Concert Band with Choir arrangement became the new baseline work.

This is all for right now; I’m going to take a break and write more later.