Composition, Arrangement And Transcription

This section of my site is for my composition and arrangement services. I make music, and some of it is for sale to others. If you want samples of my existing songs for sale, please contact me directly.

If you are a songwriter and would like to have your lyrics set to a melody or a beat, I'm the sort of person you contact for collaboration.

If you've made up a song and would like to have it written down on paper, I can do that for you too.

Photo by Roger Baker

Composition

COMPOSITION is the art (and science) of putting notes together so as to create an original melody. If you have lyrics and need a melody, or if you have an idea and want to frame it in a musical setting, seek out a composer. If you need a sound track for a computer game, a piece of video, or a special dance, a composer can create it for you.

Most of my compositions can be delivered in *.wma format, as CD tracks, or even in *.mp3 format. My preference is the *.wma format or CD format because the sound quality is better, but if my customer requires a *.mp3 track, then that's what I deliver. The FINALE computer program I use is capable of generating a variety of different electronic output as well as professional-quality hard copy. I also have the CakeWalk MusicCreator 4 program for multi-tracking.

Here are some *.mp3 tracks containing compositions of mine as rendered by the FINALE program. When there is a vocal line, the program replaces it with a synthesized "ah" or "oo" sound.

I use a variety of different forms, but my compositions have a distinctive style. My songs have a rhythmic groove, a chord pattern, and a melody that fits the appropriate lyrics (if any). I can start from any point: the groove, the chord pattern, the melody, or even the text. I find that one usually implies at least two others, so that if I have a core idea such as a word or a rhythm, the entire song eventually crystallizes around it. The melody is closely tied to the lyrics and the overall "feel" or mood of the piece. The chord pattern is closely tied to the rhythmic groove. There's an additional connection between the chords and the melody, because that's where the rubber meets the road.

So, working upward from the rhythm, you have:

Groove - Harmony (chord pattern) - Melody - Lyrics

It doesn't really matter where in the chain I start out, because once I have one stage thoroughly understood, the rest follows. If you start out with a mood or a feel, that puts me smack in the middle of the Harmony section. If you have a set of lyrics, that obviously starts me out in the Lyrics section. I can build a song around just about anything. I've been doing it for more than twenty years.

USS New Mexico is a fairly modern piece for rock band with a variety of other instruments. This sample is cut from a rough track before final mixdown. I recorded this with "E Pluribus Unum" in December of 2009 and released it as a single in 2010.

Lazy River is arranged for a 4-part choir with piano accompaniment. It's a gospel-style choral piece with an optional solo. This is an example of how I adapt existing forms and compose within them.

Solar Hymn, originally entitled "Resh", is a 4-part a capella arrangement for unaccompanied choir. Here I have arranged it as a brass quartet. There's a little bit of counterpoint in the beginning. I went through a polyphonic (many-voiced) stage in high school and this is a bit of a throwback. For the most part I prefer a more modern sound, but I've written a variety of fugues, inventions, and other Baroque style pieces. I find the Baroque-style composition to be very intellectual. This era is not driven by the intellect, but by emotion, so there's not much of a market for polyphony.

Nocturne is a sweet little piano solo that I've also arranged for the guitar. A vocal arrangement with words exists also. It's entitled "Softly Rest", and it's appropriate for a soprano. Most of my melodies are true to themselves. They float above a repetitive rhythmic motive that repeats over a fairly simple chord pattern. So if you were building a song upward from the bottom, you'd have the rhythmic motive as the core, with the chord pattern layered on top like the second layer of the wedding cake. The melody floats above it. In this case, I've got the melody growing out of the rhytmic pattern, which is very simple.

The Dread Sun is a more modern piece with a single voice over a piano or guitar line. I like to play and sing it over a moderately distorted electric guitar with open strings. The melody is a twelve-tone row and I've superimposed it over my usual rhythmic pattern, which I repeat in two chords as necessary. I've arranged it for an electric guitar and a singer, who is represented by a horn.

Arrangement

ARRANGEMENT is the art (and science) of taking a melody and putting it in an appropriate context for the instrumentation you've got to work with in real life. If you've got a glorious piece of music for a choir, but all you've got to work with is a piano, you arrange the music to fit the instruments you have. This is how Beethoven's symphonic music ends up getting sung by a choir, or how you hear a rock version of a Bach tune or an orchestral rendition of a heavy metal song.

If you have a song melody and would like for it to be set in a differen context, you call in an arranger. An arranger can make a jazz tune into a country song, or a blues tune into a rock song. Switching from one musical style to another is generally a question of arranging. A lot of what a music producer does can best be described as arrangement, because a producer decides who should play what, when.

Walking By The Woods On A Snowy Evening is a poem by the American poet Robert Frost. It starts with the words "Whose woods these are, I think I know,/His house is in the village, though." I took the melody from "Greensleeves" (or "What Child Is This", which is also an arrangement of the "Greensleves" melody) and made it into a 4-part choral work with piano accompaniment. As usual, the choral parts are represented by wind instruments. If you know the words by heart, you can sing them along with the melody. It fits surprisingly well.

Transcription

Suppose you have a song you would like to have written out into sheet music. Maybe you're a singer or a song writer who has an idea for a melody, and in order to pitch your idea to a band or to a record label, you need a demo tape. In order to get a demo tape, you need a group of musicians to record the song. To get the song into a format they understand and can turn into song, sometimes it helps to have the melody written out. If you can sing the melody into a tape recorder, *.mp3 track, or CD file, I can listen to it and convert it into something any musician, anywhere, can understand.

Similarly, if you've got something you've composed and have written it out by hand, and if you'd like to see it in a more professional font, contact me.

I do two runs for every transcription job: one draft, which allows you to correct any discrepancies between what you wrote and what I put into the file (or between what you intended and what you wrote). Each transcription comes with a *.mp3 file so that you can listen to what's in the file and compare it with what you intended. Then, if you want to make a change for any reason, you let me know about your changes, and I put them into a final version.

I use FINALE 2005(b) for all my transcription and sheet music. I've been with FINALE since version 2.0 (which makes me older than I care to admit), and I know the program inside-out. If you're new to FINALE and need a briefing as to how the program works, I may be able to help you with a consultation lesson.