Thoughts on Arranging Music - My Personal Process Part 1: Who are you writing for?
I recently have been in the process of publishing some of the arrangements that I've done for various groups, most of them my orchestra class at the Utah Conservatory ( click here to see my publisher page , and click here to see my new website ). Some of my colleagues commented that the arrangements were fun and very high quality. They were long enough to be recognizable, but short enough to be enjoyable for the students to play. I've also started to have some success in selling these arrangements, and I wanted to take some time to talk about the process I go through when I start to arrange a piece. In this article, we'll be talking about your intended audience: those who will perform the arrangement and those who will hear the arrangement. The first consideration I start out with is: what kind of group will be performing this? What is the group I'm going to be writing for like? Who do I have to play the different parts and what are their strengths and weakness