[Trombone-l] Learning to arrange for Trombones

[Joshua Hauser]

> From: John Burton
>
> You arrangers out there, how'd you learn?

John,

One of the best ways I learned about arranging was when I was in a brass
quintet at Aspen back in the late 80's.  We used to play out on the street
for tips in front of a restaurant nearly every day and we wanted to keep
putting new things into the mix that we didn't need to rehearse much (or at
all).  I found a book of show tunes for voice and piano and put the lead
into one of the instruments and basically copied out the piano part for the
other four voices.  Some stuff worked great and some was less than
effective.  As I kept doing this and got to hear it back right away with a
live group of musicians, I started to learn more about voice-leading and
what tricks worked better than others.

Once I learned Finale, I took advantage of several opportunities to do part
copying for people who's charts I respected.  Not only did I learn how to
use the software better, but I also learned a lot about what those guys did
when they wrote for various instruments.  If you just start out by copying
out some simple 4-part hymns for trombones (pick a good key before you start
or just copy them out as is and let your software to the rest), you will get
a good idea of what works well for similar sounding instruments.

One other tip that I give my students in tbn choir is to bring in sketches
whenever they have any ideas.  It never sounds the same on the computer as
it does live and they learn a lot without having the frustration of having
spent hours and hours on a 'final' version of the arrangement.  Echoing what
Robert said, I often find that if they bring in what they think should be a
complete arrangement, they have so much invested in the piece emotionally
that they are unwilling to make the adjustments needed to turn it into a
really fine chart, but if they bring it in in progress, they still have the
opportunity to tweak it and don't get as frustrated.

Have fun and keep at it.  For every 'good' chart I have written, I have
dozens of sketches that I have tossed out because I haven't been happy with.
Sammy Nestico used to tell a story about being at an awards ceremony and
sitting at a table with a bunch of writers (Billy May and similar folks) and
complaining that he only felt like he had about 2 productive writing days
per month where he felt like he was 'on' and things were clicking.  One of
the other writers at the table then replied 'How do you manage to get 2 days
per month? I only get about 1."

Josh

______________________________________________
Joshua Hauser, Associate Professor of Trombone
Box 5045
Department of Music and Art
Tennessee Technological University
Cookeville, TN 38505
931/372-6086
jhauser at tntech.edu 
http://iweb.tntech.edu/jhauser
http://www.tntech.edu/brass/trombone
Trombones at Tech new CD Project!!
http://www.tntech.edu/publicaffairs/rel/2006/dec06/music.html
http://www.tntech.edu/publicaffairs/rel/2007/march07/trombones.html