Creating Something From Nothing

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.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aiSpd3JV1q4

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.

Starting Elementary Orchestra....Late

I had arrived at Suzhou Singapore International School the second week of October.  School had been going since the middle of August so all the classes that I had were late to begin.

The school is large enough for there to be two elementary music specialist.  The school year started with a traumatic beginning to the music department.  Whoever had been hired to be the second music teacher came the first day, walked in the door, and by the end of the first day had decided (for whatever reasons) to turn and walk away once more.  This left my musical colleague with double the load.  There were nearly 500 students and usually they were divided between the two teachers.  She had to have twice normal sized classes until I arrived.

So, when I did arrive she gave a sigh of relief that someone had come to ease the burden.  What I hadn't mentioned before was that each of us had a specialization of musical duties for this school.  She had the elementary choir and I had the elementary string orchestra.

                                                                                                           
My experience prior to SSIS was inclusive of many musical duties.  I had taught elementary choir, middle school choir, high school choir, middle school pop band, high school pop band, and middle and high school orchestra.  So, I knew what was necessary for starting the year with the elementary orchestra, but it was now two months into the school year.

That put a bit of a rush into my procedures.  Within a week of arriving I had put a notice out to all who had previously been in orchestra, but I also invited others to audition as well.  So, by the third week I was listening to auditions during all my breaks to make up for the fact that it hadn't been done in August.

Students would come in with their instrument and play a short passage as well as a little scale work to hear their facility on their instruments.  Those involved ranged from second through the fifth grade.  Most were placed in the orchestra, but there were a few who needed some further private lessons to play the musical arrangements which would be our repertoire.  One little girl, a Kindergartener, came in after only a few lessons on the piano and wanted to be the orchestra's accompanist.  Disappointed perhaps, but realistic, she had to be sent away to return later or even the next school year with more performance experience.  Many of these students, with only a short musical career, were actually quite advanced.  As can be expected there were more piano players than could be used, but I had a plan for their inclusion.

The music which was in the filling cabinet was a bit advanced for many of the youngest students.  That is a problem when it comes to young, young groups.  The first job of a good instructor is to see exactly what their group is capable of.  So, I set out to do just that.  As much as some of these students had auditioned they were young and inexperienced which showed in their playing.

                                                                                                           
In my work prior to SSIS I had created a considerable number of arrangements using Sibelius music software.  For the beginner musician this is a Godsend.  If the part given by the instructor is much too difficult it can be rewritten to allow for the student's personal growth.  After the student has improved the part can again be rewritten easily to a higher degree of difficulty.  This almost amounts to individual instructional materials, but that is a preferred alternative to the traditional way which leaves some musicians "lost".

So, rehearsals began in earnest.  Our first performances were going to be during the holiday time.  In China it was not a good idea to perform Christian songs, so my repertoire was confined to generic songs like "Jingle Bells" and things like that.  I suppose that's normal in American schools, too.  I had just come from a Christian school where there were no restrictions in this way.  When you think about how late in the school year I began working with the children it's a bit of a miracle to have gotten many pieces learned in time for those performances.  But, we did and as that began it was already time to look past January 1st to music for Chinese New Year which was a much bigger holiday than Christmas in China.  My work was cut out for me.