Arranging music in 3 easy steps
Our students very often want to play pieces and songs that they know and like. The issue is that often the sheet music for pop/contemporary songs is too complex for them, or costs a lot of money, or sometimes there is no arrangement of that song for that particular instrument. So we teach our students how to arrange their favourite songs. Here’s how we do it.
Figure out the chord progressions/harmony
We suggest you begin with the harmony of the song. The harmony is like the skeleton of the song - it gives it its structure, and supports the melody. Try figuring out the chords by ear, or by looking up the chords on websites such as Ultimate Guitar.
Once you have the chords figured out, find an accompaniment pattern that you can play with your left hand which will suit the style and rhythm of the song. This could be triads with the notes played together or as an arpeggio, playing the tonic-dominant-tonic (or third), or sometimes even just plain octaves.
Figure out the melody of the song
When you feel secure with your left hand chord progression, turn your attention to the right hand, which will play the melody of the song. Again, figure out the melody by ear. Otherwise you can look up other arrangements of the song online to find what the melody notes are.
Make the arrangement interesting
This step is really optional and only there if you want to take your arrangement to the next level. In this step, you take a creative look at your arrangement and see if there is anything you could change to either make it more unique, fun, or a closer arrangement to the original (depending what your goal is). You could, for instance: try playing at different registers, add effects (like harmonics or percussion), swap which hand plays the melody. There are no limits to what you can do when you are the one in charge of arranging the song!
So there you have it: my 3-step process to arranging a song.
I hope you found this useful!
Eliza
