When you are a music teacher working in China or other places, such as international schools, you often will find yourself with few, if any, materials to work with. I found this true when I worked on Guam as well.
I would have thought that these schools would accumulate a reasonable sized music library over time, but I was sadly mistaken.
When it came to instrumental arrangements for pop bands I discovered a solution which has served me well for years now.
I create music from "nothing". Actually the truth is that I create written music from which my bands can play from midi files which are in abundance on line. These files are digital representations of mostly famous compositions that have been put up on the web for a number of different reasons.
In the case of pop songs, many have been created for the purpose of a backing track from which people can sing or perform with. Styles are of many types: classical, pop, country, ethnic, religious, almost anything you might want musically.
My process utilizes a computer software called Sibelius, although there are many commercially produced brands available.
I simply download the midi (most often free) and load it into my Sibelius. Immediately the song pops open with all the parts that the midi transcriber had created to duplicate the song as you might hear it on a famous recording.
At this point you must examine the piece as fitting with the instrumentation of your group. Sometimes it might be necessary to re voice parts with the existing instrumentation that you have available. Sometimes you might have to create parts that are not on the recording.
I will give an example below and how it came about.
The song is called: 海阔天空 by a group called Beyond. It was a famous Cantonese song from many years ago. I asked my students to find a midi of a famous Chinese/Cantonese song that we could perform and they came to me with this one.
I put the midi file into my Sibelius software and it opened with the correct digital information of the main instruments including strings, drums, bass, guitars, pianos and voices. What did the track lack? A Guzheng
which was one of our instruments and also the chords for guitars. I distributed all the other parts and added a track in the key of C because the Guzheng has only do, re, me, sol, la as the notes to play.
I had to write a part which might be played easily using those notes. I took bits of the piano part and other accompaniment and cut and pasted the Guzheng from the other parts.
For the guitar chords I analysed the song's structure and wrote those chords onto the score where they had not been.
The singers learnt their parts via the original recording and presto; we had our song.
I would have thought that these schools would accumulate a reasonable sized music library over time, but I was sadly mistaken.
When it came to instrumental arrangements for pop bands I discovered a solution which has served me well for years now.
I create music from "nothing". Actually the truth is that I create written music from which my bands can play from midi files which are in abundance on line. These files are digital representations of mostly famous compositions that have been put up on the web for a number of different reasons.
In the case of pop songs, many have been created for the purpose of a backing track from which people can sing or perform with. Styles are of many types: classical, pop, country, ethnic, religious, almost anything you might want musically.
My process utilizes a computer software called Sibelius, although there are many commercially produced brands available.
I simply download the midi (most often free) and load it into my Sibelius. Immediately the song pops open with all the parts that the midi transcriber had created to duplicate the song as you might hear it on a famous recording.
At this point you must examine the piece as fitting with the instrumentation of your group. Sometimes it might be necessary to re voice parts with the existing instrumentation that you have available. Sometimes you might have to create parts that are not on the recording.
I will give an example below and how it came about.
The song is called: 海阔天空 by a group called Beyond. It was a famous Cantonese song from many years ago. I asked my students to find a midi of a famous Chinese/Cantonese song that we could perform and they came to me with this one.
I put the midi file into my Sibelius software and it opened with the correct digital information of the main instruments including strings, drums, bass, guitars, pianos and voices. What did the track lack? A Guzheng
which was one of our instruments and also the chords for guitars. I distributed all the other parts and added a track in the key of C because the Guzheng has only do, re, me, sol, la as the notes to play.
I had to write a part which might be played easily using those notes. I took bits of the piano part and other accompaniment and cut and pasted the Guzheng from the other parts.
For the guitar chords I analysed the song's structure and wrote those chords onto the score where they had not been.
The singers learnt their parts via the original recording and presto; we had our song.
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