![]() ![]() I accompanied singers and I played in a dance band on a cruise ship (not as glamorous as it sounds). ![]() In addition to playing at church services, I played for corporate events at various hotels and resorts, holiday parties, weddings, receptions, funerals, anniversary parties, birthday parties, retirement parties, and special dinners. When I took a two-year sabbatical from teaching in my late twenties, I supported myself for two years working as a pianist. Very few people can make a living from the arts of interpreting, composing, or improvising, but I have known a number of pianists (including myself) who have kept their landlords and stomachs happy by playing arrangements at public events. That’s why I call arranging the most practical of the musical arts. As long as people give parties, have weddings, and plan other special events, pianists will be asked to perform familiar tunes, either solo or with others. Why should piano students (and their teachers) learn how to make their own arrangements at the piano? Because these various abilities allow pianists to make both art and-amazingly!-cash. (Commercial arrangements are often too simple, too complex, or lacking in some other respect.) It also means being able to quickly make an accompaniment for a singer, or instantly make an artful arrangement from a “fake book.”Īrranging: The Most Practical Musical Art Arranging also means being able to convert orchestral themes such as Blue Danube Waltz and Canon in D into piano pieces. This can be folk tunes ( Silent Night, Danny Boy), songs from musicals ( Memory, Somewhere), popular “standards” ( Over the Rainbow, Yesterday), hymns ( Amazing Grace, Abide with Me), or pop tunes that will come into existence tomorrow. Arranging at the piano means using one’s knowledge of chords to turn a tune or theme into a satisfying piano piece. Part of the art of arranging is making a piece sound fresh on the repeats, “re-arranging” the harmony or style to keep the melody full of life.įor our purposes here, “arranging” will be refer to arranging familiar songs and themes for solo piano, at the piano. As a result, the piece becomes less interesting on repeats. When we play the melody of Greensleeves on a piano, we lose all the fine lyrics. The most common kind of arrangement is a familiar song transformed into a piece for solo piano. Often, difficult piano pieces are arranged so that beginners can play a semblance of them. ![]() For example, Liszt arranged (translated, transcribed) Beethoven’s Symphonies so that two pianists could play them together. Arranging could be called “re-arranging” because it involves changing music from one form to another, creating a new arrangement of preset parts. ![]()
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