Continuing the discussion from July Morning Challenge - release your creativity:
I chose to do this because I have been wanting to get back into writing music for some time, finally something to kick myself to take the time to do it too...
Tuning My Piano:
I wasn’t actually going to take the time to actually tune my piano, especially since I have been under the impression that it actually takes some skill, and special tools. BUT, after consulting with google, it appears that it’s actually pretty simple.
Things needed:
* Piano that needs tuning
* Something to mute stings with (I just used my fingers)
* And a square wrench socket, the one I found didn’t seem to have a label, but I’m going to guess it’s roughly ¼”. Alternatively, you could buy a “tuning hammer” off of amazon
* A tuner, and a good ear. Anything lower than G2 didn’t seem to register on any of the tuners I tried.
It took a few hours, and the process was tedious. The lower range wasn’t so bad, since they only had one or two strings per key. But once it got to the high range where there are three (3) strings per note, it was really annoying. As for getting the pitches right, G2 and lower didn’t register on the tuners I have so I had to do that by ear (it doesn’t matter if you have relative pitch or perfect pitch, and tune the octave above first for reference).
After I finished, I felt accomplished, and yet again added something that could turn heads when I’m talking with other musicians about instrument maintenance.
Brainstorming:
I’ve never had much luck with getting my ideas out in the past, whether it’s sharing them in general, or making something. I’ve always taken the approach of opening up Finale 2009 and try to hammer something out. But that never EVER worked. So I thought maybe I should just riffing stuff on some of the instruments I have and write it out. I keep wanting to try to put it right into the program, but that doesn’t work either, takes too long to put it in. So back to pen(cil) and paper.
After hours of trying to create something from scratch, I have started and scrapped several “ideas” that I came up with. They sounded ok, but sounded weak. And when I say weak, I mean like most beginner’s compositions sound. If you’re not sure what I’m talking about, just go to musescore.com and browse some of the recent uploads. I am still attempting to come up with something that doesn’t sound like it was just some sort of assignment for a music theory class, but I’m not sure that will work out too well...
So for one last time I scrapped my own idea. With the limited time I had left I quickly threw together an arrangement of the Game of Thrones theme for a brass ensemble…
My process for transcribing an arrangement (written more as a tutorial):
Firstly: I always, always, ALWAYS take every minute I can to listen to the track that I am trying to write out by ear. In the car, working on something else but listening to music, whenever… The same track on repeat over and over. It gets annoying, but the track gets burnt into your brain and you’ll become more aware of anything not in the foreground at every second.
Next, get some staff paper, pencil, and something to play the track on; head to a piano or similar instrument (while I was in high school I spent my lunch in the band room to use a marimba). While you could get away with a string instrument such as a guitar, it tends to be easier to not need to constantly retune your pitch reference. Also, as good as your ear might be, it’s still easy to find yourself unwittingly writing it out in the wrong key.
Listen, poke, write down. Sounds dumb, kind-of is… Just listen to a few seconds and try to match a SINGLE part you can hear on the instrument you chose to poke at (mine was a piano this time). Take it a few seconds or so at a time (unless it’s lots of long tones, you probably won’t ever go more than 20 second blocks), work on getting THE PITCH correct and THEN worry about note values, so just stick to notating dots then just start adding the stems and flags afterwards. For the same reason try to stick to working on one clef (there are a few exceptions to this, it all depends on your train of though). This part can take a few hours, so feel free to take lots of breaks unless you find yourself on a roll in which case DON’T STOP unless you absolutely have to.
Once you have majority of the melody, and any counter-melodies you might pick up on go ahead and start to put your notes into a notation program. My program of choice is Finale, but that program costs several hundred dollars, but there are plenty of free programs out there (Musescore is popular multiplatform, flat.io is basically google docs for music notation. They’re both good, but I don’t care for the workflow.) If you have not already identified a key for the piece, do that before starting to input everything
Now that most of the melodies and counter-melodies are in, you can start to fill in more parts. Grab some decent headphones and listen closely, harmonies are not always the easiest to hear. At this point there is enough to just input everything into the notation software.
The Result:
I somehow managed to lose my handwritten transcription for this arrangement to show what I meant in the section above. Not that there was much to them, my handwritten music is pretty sloppy looking and really lacking any detail for someone to just take a look at for a few seconds and make too much sense of it.
What I ended up with is mostly note for note of the original, with a few additions. This is one of the better arrangements I’ve put together for sure, as it even sounds pretty decent from the program’s output.
There are 2 French Horn parts, 2 Trumpet parts, 3 Trombone parts, and a Tuba part. There is little to no written instruction (dynamics, ritardando, ect) because for the most part it follows the same rules that would be tacked onto a Mozart Concerto, so use your own judgement if you add it to your own group's repertoire.
Here’s a link for PDF’s of the score and individual parts, there’s also an export of the playback from Finale: https://oasis.sandstorm.io/shared/we5_NBGN-hIijgKgqkzAWaeYTaVpgbuvh_ellRd7zFo
Anyone can perform this in their own brass group, and if the link stops working and you want a copy of it, just reply or PM me. I'll get you hooked up with a new link. I put this together for fun, and I wouldn't mind if I saw a recording of it on youtube.
Also, mind m15-16 of the Trumpet 1 part. I know it’s high, take it down an octave if you can’t hit it. It’s there because it is possible to hit on a trumpet, and is what is in the original.
I may have slipped in something from the Skyrim soundtrack in there, lol.
