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the composer/arranger

A series of blogs from musician to musician. Comments are invited which will receive a human response.

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Month: January 2013

January 27, 2013May 7, 2020

Please try this at home…

The book has many ideas devoted to getting you off the beaten track. This blog provides details of a musical portrait of the gardens at the Alhambra Palaces near Granada in southern Spain, which I visited a few years ago. The composition uses an unconventional source for its melodic and harmonic material, resulting in the […]

Tagged arranging, composing, jazz, music theory. 1 Comment
January 17, 2013April 24, 2020

Instrumental Style

This week we look at instrumental style – the importance of having respect for the character of the instruments we write for, not merely their range and capabilities. Ideally, we would not regard this as a separate aspect of our work since composers generally conceive in instrumental terms at the outset, unless they are re-arranging […]

Tagged arranging, composing, jazz, music theory. Leave a comment
January 10, 2013April 24, 2020

Music is dead. Long live music!

Why is it that some composers find it necessary to abandon us all and move exclusively into the so-called ‘avant-garde’ while others still get the same kick out of their old jazz records as they did the first time they played them? We can’t avoid evolution and I agree with the suggestion that music written […]

Tagged arranging, composing, jazz, music theory. 5 Comments
January 3, 2013April 24, 2020

‘Pronouncing’ music

This Blog discusses the notation of wind instrument articulations. Anyone who has taken part in a band competition will have experienced the confusion of wanting to play in a certain way and yet, at the same time, feeling obliged to play precisely what the adjudicator will be expecting. It’s rather like taking a driving test […]

Tagged arranging, composing, jazz, music theory. Leave a comment
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