Arranging Music

[John Zimm]

I am assuming there are some among us who have arranged music for the mandolin or for guitar and mandolin, so I am wondering if anyone can provide any tips. I would like to arrange Ravel's Pavane Pour une Enfant Defunte, and I am wondering if there are any tricks or things I should keep in mind. Thanks in advance for any advice.

-John.

[jeffshuniak]

I have never transposed any classical, just jazz, italian, russian, greek tunes.
I suppose it doesnt matter if you have a good guitarist.
maybe you want to keep in less than 3 sharps or flats , try to keep it easy to sight read.

[margora]

For this piece, I would start with what is already in print, which you can find at www.gspguitar.com (Guitar Solo, in San Francisco). For example, there are several arrangments for two guitars (a famous one by Pujol, which everyone plays); most of the melody (this is from memory, I don't have the score handy) is given to guitar #1, so the mandolin could just play from guitar #1, leaving out whatever isn't needed (or isn't playable on mandolin). Or you could make your own arrangement from the several that are available for solo guitar, extracting the melody line for mandolin. Or you could just order the arrangement for flute and guitar; I haven't seen it, but chances are you can just play it more or less as is.

[Eugene]

There is also an inhuman transcription for solo guitar (if you have fists the size of melons) by Roland Dyens available from Editions Orphee (http://www.orphee.com/solos.htm#ravel). #I do a fair amount of arranging, but am not too sure of what advice to give. #I suppose keep your instruments handy to experiment with keys and inversions of inner voices on the fly. #I also like to use software for quick transposition if a particular key just isn't working out.

[John Zimm]

Thanks for the tips. I think I will work on this this weekend and see how it goes. I used to arrange things for the guitar but I was never satisfied with what I could do. It seems like any arrangments I made were a little weak sounding, like I needed to add inner voices that I wasn't sure how to add. We'll see how it goes.

-John.