Hey all,
Welcome to the second official day of the project, and I have to say I've made good progress. Especially considering I haven't had a whole lot of spare time to work on it due to volleyball (a huge time-suck) and other schoolwork. Last night, however, I spent a little time dinking around on the piano and somehow managed to get the basis for the melody written out, as well as the flute part, which I was very happy with. And because I enjoyed it so much, I must admit that instead of paying attention to Mr. Freeman's lecture about various function operations and compositions (or, at least I think that's what it was about) during first period today, I was writing out the trombone, clarinet, trumpet and bass clarinet parts for this project. So far, I believe I've been successful in transposing the parts from memory, provided I didn't slip up when I was writing in bass clef. I also got the rhythm for the bassline written out, which was quite the process because of all the syncopation and overlap with the melody.
I spent most of class today trying to wrap my mind around transposing to alto sax. I think I got it, but I'm not too familiar with the instrument so it was a bit of a challenge to write the part out. (Again, I have no software to transpose the parts because my computer, being a Mac, doesn't run Finale NotePad. Still a bit of a predicament.) All of my notes for the project and the parts I have written out so far are handwritten on blank staff paper I printed out yesterday. Seems to be working pretty well. And besides, it's probably a better learning experience because I have to write the whole thing out by hand as well as from memory. Hopefully I didn't mess up too badly. Alto sax parts are a bit annoying to transpose because they're up a 6th from concert pitch (e.g. a Concert Bb would become a G. I think). Even though I play bass clarinet (up a step from concert pitch, making the alto sax part a 5th up from that), I still had some difficulty transposing it. It was hard to wrap my mind around and I still have some doubts about whether or not it's right. Oh, well. I guess I'll see when someone finally plays it. But hopefully I was successful in writing it out. And if I know what I did wrong, it will be easy to fix. The next challenge will be getting the bassline written.
Overall, though, I think this project is going very well so far. I've made a lot more progress than I had expected to, especially in a period of about 24 hours (which is really the amount of time I've actually been working on it). As of right now, I'm really enjoying this because one, it's a great song which sounds cool and is fun to arrange and sing, and two, because I'm learning more and more about music and music theory as I'm arranging it. This feeling, however, is likely subject to change as the due date approaches and I fall into what I like to call The Cramming Game. Pretty self-explanatory, but stressful nonetheless. But for now, this is great fun and I look forward to working on it in the future. I suppose that's all for now! More information to come soon.
Thanks!
Rachel
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