Make the music easier than you think you need to

I’m arranging a few songs for my youth orchestra and the title of this post “Make the music easier than you think you need to” is one thing I try to remind myself of.

My orchestra is mostly made up of middle schoolers who’ve been playing their instruments for about 3 to 4 years. They know a lot about music and can play pretty well, but most well known classical symphonies would still be too difficult for them. They’re at an interesting stage in their musical development.

So when arranging music for them I need to remember that the level needs to be appropriate.

Because of the pandemic I’ve been putting together videos as their “concerts” which means they need to be able to play the piece well enough to be able to record them. That adds another layer to it because it then needs to be even easier for them to learn.

That shortens the timeline a little, and adds the layer of recording to it, and if they’re not comfortable playing the piece it’ll be too difficult for them to comfortably record and send to me to edit.

All this means I need to make the parts easier than I think they need to be.

ISJ