AboutPhil Kelly Expertise I`m a semi-retired professional music arranger with over thirty five years in all phases of the commercial music production business. I can try to answer questions regarding music arranging, theory, orchestration , and/or composition for most acoustic ensembles .( jazz band or orchestral ) I can try to offer suggestions about studio music recording procedures and some basic MIDI applications , too. In the course of my career I`ve worked with such artists as Doc Severinsen and the old Tonight Show Band, Bill Watrous, Buddy Greco, John Gary, Mel Torme, Julius LaRosa, as well as the Pop programs of the Fort Worth, Dallas, North Carolina, and Houston Symphonies, as well as library music material for ABC, ESPN, and NFL Films.
Question Hi Phil, my name is Alex Higgins and im 15 years old and I am a junior at monmouth high school in St. Louis, Missouri. I have a question. My best friends dad is a music arranger and is amazingly good. However he writes out all of his arrangements by hand AWAY FROM THE PIANO AND WITHOUT FINALE OR SIBELIUS!!!!! He's amazing. I think that is the coolest thing in the world and I think I may want to start arranging like that. I know technologies are becoming more and more and advanced and stuff but for anybody to be able to just write things down like that, is the coolest thing in the world. Well, my question is are there many arrangers who are capable of writing their stuff by hand, and if they do, how do they get heir music copied, does the record company pay for it?
-Alex
Answer Hi Alex:
Well.. the method you describe is the one I used for close to 40 years ( as did most arrangers of my generation ) I learned on a band bus how to write without a keyboard ( using a pitchpipe and my ears)
and I continued to write that way through my entire career .I not only wrote big band charts, I also wrote symphonic stuff and film scores by hand ..at a desk without a piano. ( as a matter of full disclosure, I DID occasionally plunk a chord or check a voicing on the piano, but 99% of the work was dome sans piano! )
the way it worked in the old days is after the score was complete, I'd hand it to a music copyist who also did his work by hand as well. ( and yes, in those days the artist or record company got all the bills ) :)
AAMOF, I didn't even fool with Finale until I'd retired and decided to learn it for something to do.
I have to say that now ( six years later and three jazz big band CDs behind me ) I'm a *TOTAL* convert to these notation systems!!
.Once you learn one, it increases your writing speed by at LEAST 20% in most cases. In addition, with Finale, I can send a score via email to ANY music prep people anywhere in the world .to have it extracted from my file.( Most all of them have both Finale and Sibelius ) Furthermore, if a singer wants to have an audio copy of a chart to rehearse with, I can create a passable mp3 for those purposes directly from the program.
a few of us" old guy " holdouts use a pencil these days , but very few!
Phil Kelly
www.philkellymusic.com
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