The Arranging Process
My arrangement process started by listening to the song several times (helping T-Swizzle with those YouTube views, no Spotify of course).
I decided to design this arrangement to be played by a group of year sevens.
I needed to ensure that my arrangement was the following:
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In C major, so that a group of students could play this entirely on Orff instruments such as xylophones where they do not have any sharps or flats.
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Short and repetitive. This entire of music would be easily learnable by rote; as to fulfill the criteria of Orff Pedagogy. All parts except from the melody have only two different bars throughout the whole piece, this allows for easy switching between parts.
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Clean looking score. There are no performance directions (dynamics, accents, articulation) as depending on what instrument is playing each, this would need to be modified. These could be added and discussed as a class group as to whether they believe they could contribute to the music by adding in a decrescendo for example.
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Playable by any instrument. Each of the parts has a transposed version, and is available in treble, alto and bass clefs - it is a mixed bag arrangement.
I began by notating the melody using MuseScore.
Then I added in the ‘harmonic instrument’ with the chords written. This allows the players of instruments such as guitar, and piano to make their part as simple or complex as they would like, if a beginner they could simply play the bass note of the chord, and that would work with this arrangement.
I then took the 3rds and 5ths of the chords and placed them in the Harmony 1 & 2 parts.
I then added in the percussion parts for djembe and tambourine. They are very simplistic parts, this would hopefully help these students to keep a steady pulse.
Then, to ensure that this truly was a ‘mixed bag’ arrangement I created transposed parts so that every instrument could play it. I also created an extra part where the bass part was written in treble clef.
The structure of the piece is A B A. Each of these sections have repeat signs, and would all be great to repeat several times and have different instruments improvise over the harmonies.