Not just an arrangement
The music program my local high school was good. I have a biased view because I was a member of that program but every once in a while a memory comes to the surface. Some people were more talented than others. In order to stand out in a program involving hundreds of students you have to bring something else to the game. Today I remember the girl who knew how to arrange. An average piece of music in high school will be performed by dozens of students in the case of a band program we all worked from the printed page. Probably the best way to direct dozens of students in the right direction. When it came time to do a band recording it was a major undertaking. We were fortunate to have a proper concert hall in our town. A large stage with good acoustics. It made creating a band recording somewhat easier. However you still needed to acquire the sheet music. On one iteration our band took on a piece of contemporary music. The whole band of course. And the interesting part in retrospect was that the arrangement had been created by one of our own. The girl who served as the band president. Now I did not fully understand what was involved. I still do not. Somehow she took a song that she had heard on the radio and created all of the parts required dozens of parts. And wrote out the sheet music. When it came time to record this number we were working with materials produced in our own band classroom. By one person who had not been trained to do such a thing. She had it as a talent. I think I have lost the recording over the decades but I still remember the song. Scarborough fair. Arranged for all 50 people in the band. Not copied but arranged. She took a simple musical idea and made it into something that we could all understand. I will probably never see her again in my lifetime but I would love to ask the one question that has stayed with me. How did she figure all this out. I think she saw more than we did in that simple air.
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