Week 4 - Finishing Lead Sheets, Finale Next Week

Your finished Lead Sheet is due next Monday - Week 5. This week, get your lead sheets ready to turn in. You will need:

1. Your draft version (pencil)
2. Your final version (pen)
3. A copy of your original commercial sheet music that you used to make your chart from

If you only have the one copy, give it to me and I will hand it back to you after checking it.

This will be your Mid-Term grade.   

Next week - Week 5 -  we will be starting Finale, the music notation program. This is going to be more challenging than what we've been doing so far, so be prepared!

We're going to re-choose workstations that you will stay with for the rest of the quarter. If you like the one you have, stick with it. If you choose a new one, you will need to set up your own personal folder in Documents again, and keep all of your data on - don't forget, these computers are used by other people who may not be as file-management-conscious as you are! People lose their data all the time, and erase other peoples' as well, so make your own folder, and then back it up onto your flash drive.

For Finale, you must have:

1. Headphones
2. A flash drive to back up your work onto

Make sure that you have both of these.

Have a great week - I'll see you next Monday!

Read on...

Week 4 - Lead Sheet - the Finished Product

So far, we have a rough draft of our lead sheet. This week and next we will clean up the lead sheet to make a good-looking chart that is easy for any musician to read.

There are a few things to keep in mind as you make your final copy:

• Write your final version lightly in pencil, then trace over it in pen. Use a pen with blue or black ink (Sharpie Calligraphy pens are what I like best)
• At the beginning of the chart, write the clef, the key signature and the time signature on the first staff only! Every other staff can be left blank.
• Give your players the info they need, such as feel, tempo, what instruments are played when (example: "medium rock feel", "First verse piano & vox only; band in on second verse")
• If there is a signature intro line, write out the melody in notation - usually one staff only.
• Make sure you are clear about sections - write Intro, Verse, Pre-Chorus, Chorus, Solo, Outro (or whatever other sections you may have) to clearly mark where those sections are.
• Arrange your measures so that each section starts at the far left of the page. It is okay to have a different number of measures in each staff, so long as it enables the sections to start at the far left. If you only have four or six measures on a second (or 3rd) page, see if you can distribute those measures among the ones on the previous page(s) so you won't have an extra page with only a few measures on it.
• Write neatly!
• Make sure you write chords large enough for your players to be able to read at a distance! Remember that they will probably have your chart on a music stand and will need to have everything written large, clear and uncluttered. Your chart could be perfect, but it won't make a difference if your player can't see it. So, even if your normal handwriting is small, for your chart, make it larger.
• You do not have to write lyrics; however, if there are places where it would help the players to know a lyric, you could write the first couple of words in the phrase followed by an ellipse(…) just to let them know where they are in the song - especially if it is repetitive, or the verse and chorus sound the same.
• Double-check to make sure your graphical and text repeats work for the song structure. Make sure they are easy to see. I usually put little curved lines on my repeat signs to make sure they are eye-catching. Same with your codas and signs - make sure they are noticeable by your player.

These things will help you put together a great chart. We will talk more about this in class.

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The Big Four - Back By Popular Demand!

Click each page to view or download!

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Welcome, My Spring Chickens!

Hi all - this is our introductory post for the Spring 09 quarter of Arranging For Singers 'A'.

Our first assignment, for next Monday (week 2), is to bring in a piece of commercial sheet music - it can be something you buy, or scan out of a book, or check out of the library, or something you aready have. It needs to have lyrics, chords, and a piano part. What we will be doing is condensing it into a chord chart, which we will be writing by hand.

I'll be updating this on a regular basis. In the meantime feel free to browse the rest of the site - theres a lot of info there that we will be using later on in the quarter. And don't forget to sign up on our Facebook group!

If you have any questions about anything we're doing, please don't hesitate to get in touch with me any time - by a comment on the blog, an e-mail, a text message or through Facebook.

See you Monday!

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Welcome To 'Arranging For Singers' - Lead Sheets, Finale, GarageBand

Welcome to Arranging For Singers! This is where I'll be posting info about what we're working on in class.

What Is Required For This Class:

Headphones!
Pencils, erasers and staff paper – plenty of it. A pen for copying the finished chart – I recommend the Sharpie calligraphy marker.

Also, either a flash drive or a CD to back up your work - many people use these computers and there's no guarantee your files will be where you left them.

How to start:

There are a few basic concepts you should learn from the beginning – knowing these concepts will make your computer work that much easier.

The first one is – save your work immediately after creating your new document.

Let me repeat:

SAVE YOUR WORK IMMEDIATELY AFTER CREATING YOUR NEW DOCUMENT!

You’ll be so happy you did - especially when your program crashes on you and you still have the file you worked so hard on. As you work, Finale can automatically save your file every five minutes, or whatever time you specify.

Basic things to know:

• Use keyboard shortcuts instead of the mouse every time you can. It will help immensely with your speed and efficiency.
• Learn the most common keyboard shortcuts by heart so you automatically use them.
• Get familiar with the Main Tool Palette. This palette (little floating square with buttons on it) is the key to everything you will do in Finale.
• Access the Help Menu in Finale - it opens up in a browser and tells you anything you want to know. Most of the info below is directly from the Help Menu.


Main Tool Palette

This floating square holds the tools that you will use in creating your chart in Finale.


How to get there:

The Main Tool Palette is almost always open on the screen. If it’s not, choose Main Tool Palette from the Window Menu.

What it does:

This palette contains all of Finale’s primary tools, which you can rearrange or hide. You can move, resize, reshape, or hide the palette itself. You hold the mouse over any of the tools to find out what the name of the tool is. Click on the name of the Tool in the picture below to view that section of the manual.

* [Close box]. Click this small button at the upper-left corner of the palette to close the palette. Once it’s hidden, you make the palette reappear by choosing Main Tool Palette from the Window Menu.
* [Title bar]. Drag the strip across the top (or left) edge of the palette to move the entire palette to a new screen location.
* [Sizable frame]. Drag this small white square at the lower-right corner of the palette diagonally upward and to the right; you’ll reshape the entire palette. As you drag, the palette snaps into new configurations: tall and thin, short and stout, square, and so on. If your monitor is wider than it is tall, for example, you might consider rotating the palette so that it’s a short horizontal strip.

If you drag the resize box inward toward the upper-left corner, you hide tools. Drag the resize box outward again to bring them back into view.

* [Tool icons]. See the individual tool for a complete discussion of each tool and what it does. In the meantime, note that you can rearrange the icons within the palette. To do so, press shift and drag an icon into a new position; it will trade places with the icon onto which you drop it. Keep in mind, too, that you can save these configurations of tools for quick access; see View Menu/Customize Toolbar dialog box for instructions.

These are the tools you’ll use most often in chart-making:

Selection Tool
Double-click an object to go to its editing tool. Click and drag to move an object.

Staff Tool
Use the menu to add or edit staves -- names, transpositions, groups, brackets, etc.

Simple Entry Tool
Click or use keystrokes to select values from the palette, and then use your mouse, computer keyboard, or a MIDI keyboard to enter notes.

Speedy Entry Tool
Click a measure to edit or insert music, with or without a MIDI keyboard.

Measure Tool
Double-click a measure to set characteristics; drag to move a barline. Click or double-click the tool icon to add blank measures to the end of the score.

Repeat Tool
Double-click a measure to create repeats, ending brackets or text such as ‘To Coda’.

Key Signature Tool
Double-click a measure to insert a key change.

Chord Tool
Choose an input method from the menu; click a note to add or edit chord symbols.

Lyrics Tool
Use the menu to create or edit lyrics and position them in the score.

Text Tool
Double-click to add text blocks. Use menus to change fonts, borders and so on.

HyperScribe Tool
Set up menu, then click a measure and play, for an instant transcription.

Page Layout Tool
Click the page to adjust margins or systems.

Read on...