Update: I have been hinting for a while that I am making changes regarding the Online Music School and let me give you a quick update on that. The long and short of it is that I am killing it completely for two reasons. First, I have had a hard time reconciling it with my lifestyle […]
Tag Archives: arranging
I was talking to a well-published arranger maybe a decade ago and she told me she could write an arrangement book in a week. She was still writing out arrangements by hand (rather than software) which made her claim even harder to swallow. Today, I know more and do not doubt that she was telling me […]
If you have played a lot of my arrangements such as last month’s “I Need Thee Every Hour,” you have seen me do this kind of thing quite a bit: Note what happens in bar 31. You guys know by now that I automatically change almost every V-I progression in music to a ii-V-I. However, […]
As I am knee deep in my new project, I thought I would share a video that talks about the collaboration process with the orchestrator and how I use software to help. If you don’t see the video below, click here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=13oPbWWKMX0
Recently, I was in a church service and I want to make a point about something I observed. I will not say where or when and because I have been in lots of different churches over past months, no one is going to know the particular church. Frankly, what I am about to discuss could […]
I just published a new video demonstrating simple ornamentation (grace notes) as an arranging strategy. If you don’t see the video below, click here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Zopr9ZBm6JY
Here is a new video I recorded this afternoon discussing my favorite tag. For those that don’t know, tag is a music slang term that refers to repeating part of the song (such as the last phrase) to create a more stylized ending. If you don’t see the video below, click here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kpDluxCCSuo
I have been lax on doing videos but plan to get back to them over the coming months starting with this one today. By the way, thank you to the 20,000 YouTube subscribers I have (I just noticed I went over that threshold). If you are not a subscriber and want easy access to maybe a […]
While we may like to pretend otherwise, there are pragmatic aspects to writing music. One of those un-artsy but important things that musicians have to consider is time. For example, a typical piano arrangement written for church these days is in the range of of two minutes. That has changed a lot over the past few […]
As you probably know, we are currently running an arranging contest and I talked a lot about development when I introduced it. Someone recently posted an interesting video that illustrates my point quite well. Take two minutes and listen. If you don’t see the video below, click here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nIs3jechQ_E Now guys, don’t misunderstand me. This is […]
If you are like me and came from a traditional church background that included lots of hymns, you were probably taught at some point or another a style of congregational accompanying that roughly followed these rules. 1) In the right hand, add the tenor note to create a full chord and double the melody to create […]