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It may be November, but church musicians have been thinking about Christmas music for months! Ho-ho-ho!

I know I accepted that challenge to arrange a Romantic Period symphony that isn't by Beethoven. However, I am finding it quite challenging to both get across the essence of the symphony and not get dangerously close to the original orchestra. In particular, I am finding woodwinds becoming of more importance to that essence. I guess I could resort to a quartet of pianists if I have to, but while I try to figure out both what symphony to arrange and what ensemble to arrange it for, I figured I would do another one of my expansion type arrangements, where I take a piece for a smaller ensemble and arrange it for a larger ensemble. Besides the obvious Classical Period Trifecta, I figured that maybe I could arrange a piece by a later composer. Liszt was definitely out of the question(only piece by Liszt that I think would be suitable for an arrangement is his Liebestraum, and even then, just barely). I knew a lot of composers after Beethoven, both by names and pieces. I further narrowed things down to these composers: Chopin - Melodic grace Grieg - Piano works are well known Tchaikovsky - What looks complicated can turn out very simple(I know this from arranging The Nutcracker Suite for Piano Duet) Mendelssohn - He is like "The Mozart of the Romantic Era" Schumann - Melodic grace Brahms - Similar but clearly different style from Beethoven Debussy - Melody first, harmony second, even the harmony tends to be melodic in nature I then thought "Hmm, maybe I should arrange Reverie" and that sealed the deal. I was going to arrange a piece by Debussy. When people think Debussy, they think Clair De Lune, which I did look at, but decided not to arrange. I looked at other well known Debussy pieces and the one that looked easiest to arrange is Reverie, which also happens to be my favorite Debussy piece. So I decided to arrange that piece. I figured that a trio would fit very well to the piece. I wanted to keep that tender character of the original piece obviously. One instrument that I commonly use to soften a small ensemble like a trio is a flute because the flute, even at forte, still has a tenderness to its timbre. So I figured that the flute should take the main melody(except when that melody goes into the bass clef obviously), the cello should play the bass line, and the violin should harmonize the flute melody. So here is my arrangement of Reverie, what do you think?

Hi all! So, another little arrangement of mine. I have written this for my quartet. And, I found it quite challenging to get the dissonance I wanted while really only having three non-melody voices to work with. I sort of went the amoeba route, where I had close harmony surrounding the melody. This is found in barbershop music, and there is some influence there. However, I tend to take things further than a barbershop quartet would allow, which I'm super chill with. Pay no heed to the difficulty of the music, as the people singing this are true musical paragons. It is probably one of the harder arrangements of this piece out there. I'm looking specifically for comments on musical moments that stick out to you. Things that you think may not be effective or fit in the narrative of the piece. Please also look out for spots where you think there should be courtesy accidentals. I put a lot in, but I suspect there are more I'm missing. Thanks in advance for your thoughts. 🙂

Hello everyone! The last week I've worked on an arrangement of a folk/trad song. It's originally called "Have you seen the ghost of tom". I find the melody quite melancolic and in the first part of the piece I try to express that feeling. But later I tried to make it brighter and more heroic like "a toast to Tom!". Anyway, that was what I was thinking of making this piece. I had a great time making this one! Any feedback or criticism is appreciated?

I am currently working on arranging some more Mozart sonatas since unlike Beethoven sonatas that seem to get me overwhelmed, Mozart sonatas never do that. A few people suggested that I shrink the quartet into a trio in my K 545 arrangement to get a more full sound. I didn't though because save for the second movement, where I would have to do some harmonizations, I saw and heard 4 melodic voices, 2 per hand in the sonata. However, I did find a sonata that Mozart wrote 4 years before his K 545 sonata that I figured would be perfect for a trio arrangement, his Piano Sonata in C minor, another well known sonata of his. I noticed that the first movement tends to be where I get the most arrangement mistakes. A few of the triplet passages, I took up an octave to avoid the cellist having to do double duty. The violinist playing eighth notes over a sustained quarter note is one thing, The cellist having to do triplets while sustaining a whole note is a totally different story and is an impossible task. Thus, I took some of the triplet passages up an octave. The triplet passages that I took up an octave all involve a cascade from the violin to the viola before the cello becomes the solo instrument for a while. Except for these triplet passages that involve the instrument cascades, I kept everything in the original octave unless it got too low(which was rare) and then of course I would raise it by an octave to keep it in range. I missed a few slurs here and there, I will fix those in the second draft of the first movement arrangement. In the development section, I tended to have the staccato figure in octaves because it was in octaves everywhere else. Even the Coda still had it in octaves, just scattered a bit. Bars 1-185 are all the bars of the first movement. This is what I want feedback on. Are there any impossible double stops in there? Is there anything I can do about the dynamics to make it sound better? I would love some detailed feedback on what exactly I did wrong so that I can improve the first movement arrangement, and maybe have the entire second movement arranged at the same time(That did happen with K 545, I got feedback on the first movement, I improved the first movement and finished arranging the second movement at the same time). Here is what I have arranged so far of the sonata:

I composed a head and made a basic arrangement for the first play-through of the head. Here I did put in some written parts for piano and bass, though that was primarily so that I could hear what the trumpet and saxes were doing in something resembling the context in which it would be played. I'm mainly wondering how difficult this is for the saxes (are all those off-beat, short notes doable) and whether this is doable for a high school jazz ensemble. Additionally, I was wondering what you think of my harmonization and the melody and what others might have done differently. I have three attachments. #104.pdf is the chart, #104.mp3 is the audio with the rhythm section, and #104_2.mp3 is the audio without the rhythm section.

I was wondering if someone could give some tips on what instruments to boost the bass range of an orchestra, currently I am using EWQLSO and am somewhat limited on the range of certain instruments. Also wondering if they could direct me towards which instruments play which clefs in soprano, alto, tenor, bass.

This is an arrangement that I have been thinking about doing since winter of last year. No, not because the Nutcracker Suite is common as Christmas music, but rather because the Nutcracker Suite is my favorite of Tchaikovsky's 3 famous suites. Instead of starting with the March as most piano arrangements do, I decided to start with the Overture. I couldn't find many piano arrangements that included this so I decided to go from the orchestral score and arrange it myself. But I ran into a difficulty after a while. No it isn't the clarinet part and me having to transpose it. No, it is the entrance of the entire orchestra. So, I decided to highlight different parts of the orchestra. 2 distinct voices are highlighted the same color because I ran out of colors to highlight with(but you can tell the difference because one of them is almost all 16th note staccatos). So here are my score arrangement, both mp3 and pdf, and the pdf of the Overture with the highlighted areas. Pages 4 and 5 are where I have highlighted distinct voices in the orchestral texture. The ones highlighted in blue and green I think would be obsolete in a piano duet arrangement, especially the one highlighted in green since it is just the same note being repeated over and over. What do you think of my arrangement of the Overture so far? I know it is all treble clef but that has to do with the fact that there are no cellos in the overture and it goes pretty high up, high enough to consider me having it in treble clef instead of bass clef. I know I could just lower the notes that originate from the viola parts down an octave and it would fit perfectly into the bass clef but I'm just not sure that I should do that.

This is an arrangement of the song "Merry Christmas Everyone" that I am doing for my school's steel orchestra, an example of which can be found here: https://youtu.be/p7RlAJn-Qxs

Here's an arrangement of Crown Him With Many Crowns. I'm pretty new to orchestration, this is the first project with this many instruments that I've actually finished. So I'm very happy to hear any tips, suggestions, corrections. I'm definitely not finished with this so please feel free to comment anything you feel would make it better. Thanks! P.S. Sorry again for MIDI instead of MP3 Crown Him With Many Crowns -Rough Draft MIDI.mid

I arranged this (with permission) from a piece a friend of mine wrote for solo piano.

Arrangement of a piece by Ryuichi Sakamoto for large percussion ensemble... Check it out

Here is my first in depth composition for string quartet (two violins, viola, and cello). I have some background in theory but only recently have been getting into actual composition. I'd love to hear feedback from some of you, as I want to get better and better at this. Thanks!

hi It would be appreciated if u could have a Consultation. The question is the sequence of making an orchestral song with many instruments. For example I am working on my own song it has strings, contrabass, choirs and many instrument else. Ok? But now I am in Deadlock why? Because I am working in Sibelius and I want to add some ambient sounds need instruments like Chime and a very big cymbal. Here it has not. Now my result is Sibelius is not for all works I should write the parts only. I should not expect that I can make all of works by this software.But when u have an idea you should make it so quick else may be disappear and lost your ideas. So how do u work? How do u start. And how do u finish the song. Sorry for my English language problems. I am not native. Thanks Touradj