There's a family at our church which is basically wall-to-wall musicians. Dad plays guitar, mom plays flute, oldest son plays piano, daughter plays viola and sings, younger son plays violin. They are going to play "Imagine" by John Lennon today during the service. Last week, Steve (dad) called me and asked me if I could help them out. They were looking all over for sheet music, and couldn't find any which transcribed "Imagine" for violin. What?
I asked what Amy (mom) would be playing. "Flute" he said. I know that, but what, is she just gonna play the melody, while Lauren (daughter) sings the song? And they were thinking the violin would also just play along? I always think that that's really lame when people do that. It sounds horrible. I didn't say that. Instead I talked about how this is an opportunity to do something more creative, more interesting. There's a string section on the original song; I could transcribe that for flute and violin. It would be cool. The piano of course drives the song, but a guitar strumming along would be nice. It would be a unique arrangement. (Also, this told me that while they all play instruments, the actual musical talent may be minimal, since they didn't realize that a violin and flute are both C instruments, therefore if the flute was just going to play the melody, the violin could play the same part, but it would still sound really lame.)
So I wrote up charts for the piano (because he was just gonna play the lame sheet-music arrangement which attempts to cover the piano part and also play the melody, as most lame sheet-music arrangements do), flute, violin, and guitar. Sounds pretty sweet on the computer anyway. The violin and flute, in harmony, cover the nice string parts on the record. Then last Sunday, Steve told me that Ryan (son) might not be able to be there today, and he asked if I thought it would work without the piano, or if I'd be willing to play.
Without piano, it completely changes to a voice and guitar arrangement, augmented by flute and violin. That would be reallly sweet, I thought. But if they're not comfortable with that, I could play the piano part. I never heard from them this week, so I guess they're good. Or maybe he was just gonna tell me five minutes before the service that I'd be playing the piano. I'd still do it, and I'd actually like to because I think it would be sweet, but I'm also really curious to hear how it sounds without the piano driving it.
We'll see what happens.