Looking back, I think the arranging bug started when I was playing Organ or Piano in church and found that it was more fun NOT to look at the music but try and play the melody off-by-heart in the service. Once I got the hang of that I began by experimenting with different harmonies.

That reminds me - back in University, my tutor Dr. Whenham, made us buy Bach’s Riemenschneider, with 371 of his chorale (hymn tunes) with different chords underneath. Some of them were truly modern and even jazzy! For my 3rd year Scott Joplin theatre piece I needed to expand Scott Joplin’s piano rags for a pit band of Strings, Woodwind and Brass (a real Sousaphone!) and really enjoyed the whole process… this arranging lark was definitely for me then!!

When I started my first Director of Music post in 1989, it became obvious very quickly that I needed to edit any ensemble pieces to suit the abilities of those young musicians in my care, otherwise they’d be disollusioned and stop taking part. So, if Tommy was 3rd Trumpet in the Junior Big Band and could only play four notes, you wrote his part for those four notes he could play.

What I quickly found out was that because the music I ‘wrote’ (arranged) for the pupils was very quickly playable by them, they grew more confident and played more powerfully, even under concert pressure, so the overall sound was so much richer and stronger - success!! So I applied this approach to every ensemble, even for part-writing for the choirs once they could handle two or three parts.

In 2007, I was invited to direct a local a cappella group ‘Copious Notes’ and my arranging toolkit went up a few gears. Click on their piccy to see more…

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