A Christmas Medley Arranged by Orbert

[Orbert]

I posted this in the Chat Thread, but figured I'd post it here as well.

Background:  I play in the praise band at my church.  Because I have actual experience playing in bands, they seem to think I'm the leader.  The Music Director asked if we'd like to do some "special music" for Christmas, so I got this insane idea to arrange a medley of Christmas carols.

The two guitarists know maybe a dozen chords between them, and can strum without hurting themselves.  Piano girl is even worse; she plays at about a second-year student level.  Sax player played in the high school marching band; he's older than me, so that was a long time ago.  I have a violinist and a flautist with actual talent, so arrangements tend to lean on them pretty heavily.  I'm better on piano than flute, but since I wanted all seven of us involved, bad piano girl gets the piano and I played flute.  It's one of those simple arrangements where nothing's too hard, but it sounds pretty nice if everyone plays their parts.  Fortunately, Christmas music has a lot of that built in.

I recorded it on my ancient video camera mounted on a tripod in the balcony, 100 miles away.  Audio isn't too bad because the acoustics in our sanctuary are pretty awesome, but video is pretty horrible because of the distance, plus the fact that Facebook munges your video down for bandwidth purposes.

Click!

Left to Right:  Dan and Dusty on Guitar, Me and Debbie Jo on Flute, Michael on Violin, Nancy on Piano, Brian on Soprano Sax.

[BlobVanDam]

I get this-

Video Unavailable
The video has either been removed from Facebook or is not visible due to privacy settings.

I'd love to check it out though.

[Orbert]

Okay, I changed it to Public.  Hopefully this means everyone can see it.  I don't know exactly how sharing a Facebook video works.

[BlobVanDam]

Yep, shows up fine now.

I didn't recognize the first song, but I knew the other two, and they were very nice arrangements. On Silent Night I was just waiting for the flutes to come in with that lower harmony, and them bam, they did.

I didn't like the sax much though. It sounded a bit overpowering with the rest of the instruments (just because it's a louder instrument, no fault of your own), and the intonation seemed slightly sharp to me (again, no fault of your own). It sounded like you made an effort to keep it to leads where it wouldn't overpower the melody, and kept it somewhat isolated, so I think you arranged it as well as possible for the band.

Sounds like you really worked to the strengths of the group, and were able to minimize the shortcomings. Good work.

[kirksnosehair]

Quality 

[Orbert]

Thanks!

Yeah, I was blabbing about this a bit more in the Musicians Chat thread, and finally decided to start a thread with it since the Musicians forum doesn't get a lot of traffic anyway, and I realized I was proud enough of it to want more people to hear it.  The sax is twice as loud as the flutes and violin, so we stuffed a sock up the bell (which actually cuts down the volume some, as it reduces the vibrations of the instrument and thus the resonance) and had him stand in the corner.  Still, it was so overpowering that he had to have the melody.  Even against the other three, his line stuck out.  So I tried to make it like we were all taking turns, which led to various duet and trio groupings, and finally the quartet at the end.

Sax was sharp, I was flat, but the other flute and violin were dead on, as they always are.  Violinist tends to rush things, piano girl got lost... lots of fun, but this is the group I had to work with.

The first tune was "It Came Upon the Midnight Clear".

[BlobVanDam]

The first tune was "It Came Upon the Midnight Clear".

Hm, not sure I've even heard of that one. There are just so many.
And I think your awareness of the group you were working for really came through. You can tell care was put into considerations like the dynamics and talent of each instrument/player, and that it was very tailored to that particular group.

[Zydar]

Nicely done

[Scorpion]

As the others have already said, I really like it. The harmonies of the different instruments compliment each other really nicely!.

[Orbert]

Thanks for comments, everyone!  It was a fun challenge, and yeah, I was pretty happy with how it worked out.

[britoven]

It's great (and hard) to compose/arrange with specific individuals in mind... knowing how far you can push them, understanding strengths and weaknesses, not underusing the forces at your disposal, but not going in the opposite direction either... and then putting it all together and making it work... that's another part of the story.

Great job, man! Lots of respect for you.

[Orbert]

Thanks!