An aspect of development of musicianship


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Posted by Klaus on September 20, 2002 at 18:28:05:

One or two weeks ago Kenneth Sloan opened a thread based on the experience of seeing his 14 years old son starting out as an arranger of low brass 4-tet music. Kenneth and I communicated a bit on the topic, partly on this board, partly privately.

My opinion is, that every singly young musician shall strive to produce material for his small ensembles, be they steady or of a pick-up nature. I have been trough that phase myself several decades ago. And I am fully aware, that not all material made by youngsters will be ear-pleasing, but the experience and in-depth knowledge they gain by doing things themselves will be invaluable for their musical development.

I have worked quite a bit with expanding existing arrangements for small jazz groups for ensembles, that were not large enough to play bigband charts.

Once I took two parts, trombone and string bass, for an upcoming arrangement and gave them to my best trombone student and told him: "Write yourself a bassbone part for next weeks rehearsal!"

Next week he came and told me: "I couldn't make ends meet, even if I worked very hard on it". My reply was: "I knew the task was tough, and I knew you would work hard on it! My guess is, that you have made yourself ready to understand every single note in the part, that I wrote for you yesterday!" (no dirty tricks like having written the part in advance to giving the task).

This young guy got everything right in the first reading, because he had fought his way through all of the elements. Nobody should ever blame him for not having the experience to combine these elements to a satisfying whole. Had he written a finished part, my version never had reached his music stand.

I think, that one fine re-re-re-surfacing thread on a board like this would be about how to create ensemble material for instruments like ours. Within my limited work capacity I am very willing to take part in a ping-ponging with young players. I am extremely well aware, that there are contributors to this board, that are very much more qualified, than I am. Yet I am fairly sure, that I could contribute a bit at a beginner's level.

At the site linked to below I have uploaded a rather simple re-arrangement, in .pdf format, for low brass of a very classical renaissance tune, Ave Maria by Jacob Arcadelt.

The principles behind the arrangement are told of in the preface. To make that arrangement a learning experience, I might suggest to re-transcribe it to its original form. That might seem a very backward way of learning, but be sure, that you will come out wiser at the other end of the process.

It is well known, or should be so, that everybody can download the catalogue pages presented in several postings below this one. However, when it comes to the closer exchanges of thoughts on music, then I want to know exactly with whom I am dealing. Hence the more restricted access to the Yahoo group linked to below.

It is the same group from where you can download, for free, the brass band version of the tuba section soli "The Helicon Schottische". More arrangements are in the planning.

Klaus



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