Lesson 17
Notes to Lesson 17
We're in for a real treat with Lesson 17. We get to put into use our previous 16 lessons of training by writing accompaniments to songs we know. Here's what Mickey says: "Get four or five sheet music's (popular tunes) or any kind of songs that you like. Study the chord connections, then take your new chords and apply them to these songs."
In 1955, Mickey used a sheet of manuscript paper and handwrote each arrangement. He also could have taken a standard sheet of paper and drew a straight line with tick marks to divide the line into measures, and wrote the chord changes in the appropriate measures. I'm certain that every guitarist reading this page has made chord charts that way. In fact, it is still an important and useful way to show changes that in Lesson 15's Notes, I give a simple way to do this in TablEdit.
Once Mickey finished his score, he called his bass player, his drummer, and his melody instrumentalist and they played the tune. That's all Mickey asks of us and if that's what you want to do, great!
Since we have TablEdit as our editor and also to give a MIDI playback, we can use this tool to help us remove the abstract of a paper operation depicting sound, and hear what our orchestration sounds like before we actually play it with our instruments. This gives us a flexibility and usefulness of our scores that was beyond the wildest imagination of any guitarist in 1955.
To help you with Mickey's assignment, I've arranged 7 examples, one in each of the orchestra keys. I used the keys in which the songs were originally published. Rather than just having a single module of rhythm guitar for each tune, I've created a four-part musical score. In addition to the guitar part, I chose a clarinet to play the melody line, and I added a simple bass line and brush style percussion. I didn't improvise very much on the melody. Listen to how Mickey's chords give a fresh sound to these tunes. As all of the chords now are new "old friends", I didn't write the names of the chords or give chord diagrams.
As just setting up a score can seem like about 75% of the work in an arrangement, to help you with that chore, I've made a template called Clarinet Template in C.tef It has four modules:
Melody (MIDI voice is a clarinet) - Enter the melody in the Clarinet Module just as if it were a guitar module. The module has already selected the clarinet voice and put the staff in the correct octave.
Rhythm Guitar (steel string acoustic guitar voice) - You're already an expert in this module from the previous 16 lessons!
Bass (acoustic bass voice) - For some folks that have never played bass, the thought of creating a bass line is very intimidating. You can just use the bass line from the piano score if you don't have a lot of experience writing bass parts. Or use roots and fifths of the standard chords the score calls out. One trick that you can use is to write the bass line on a guitar tablature staff as if you were using your guitar as a bass. Make sure you create it to be on strings 6 through 3. Then copy (or cut) just those strings. On the bass tablature staff, put your cursor in the first position of the 1st string (which on a standard tuned bass is a G) and paste. You now have a simple bass part.
Percussion (brush set voice) - I've written a simple general purpose percussion part can be used without very much manipulation in hundreds of tunes.
Mickey doesn't give any limitations as to the type of tunes we use. He says to use use songs we like. Let's modify that a little by pretending someone has come to you and asks you to arrange a tune for their group. Then arbitrarily select a tune that not necessarily is your favorite. That makes it a little easier to remember that our objective is to write chord substitutions. It's important to not over task oneself on his/her first efforts. My suggestion is to start out simply and not concentrate on the right hand strums, or times other than 4/4. You may favor a different melody instrument. In addition to clarinets, violins, xylophones, flutes, and perhaps saxophones seem to work (blend) easier with a small combo, rather than a solo trombone or trumpet.
Save the template under the name of the tune as your first step in generating the arrangement. That ensures you won't corrupt your template.
The template is set up for the key of C and in 4/4 time. Rather than transpose the tune, accept the key in which it was written, as I did in the examples. In my examples, I only used tunes in the orchestra keys, but you certainly should feel free to use any key you desire. In Lesson 5 we learned how to change key signatures, so a review of that lesson might help.
Many guitarists like to use chord diagrams either with or without the chord name. I've included a "Mickey Baker Chord Catalog.cat" file that can be imported into any TEF using Chord Manager and it has 12 forms of each of Mickey's 33 Chord forms. I've also imported it into the Clarinet template TEF.
It's going to be like practically everything: the hardest one you'll ever do will be the first. By the way, if you're like Mickey and have musical friends to come over and actually play your arrangements, don't forget that the clarinet is one of the "Bb instruments". We discussed this in an earlier lesson. No problem. Just make a copy of the TEF and transpose it up two frets (a whole step.) Then you can print out just the clarinet part and everyone will be in the right key...... maybe!
Please send me any of your arrangements you'd like to share and I'll be sure to add them to Lesson 17. Now you'll see why Lesson 17 is one of my top three favorite lessons in this course. Since putting this lesson into TablEdit almost two years ago, I always think of it when I arrange a tune. I'm believing you will, too.
Ideas for those true gluttons who can't get enough! You can transpose your arrangements and my examples to all the other keys, orchestra and guitar friendlies'. Additionally, take my examples and try some different substitutions, tempos, and strums.
Just keep it FUN!