I’ve been brainstorming about musical projects to keep me occupied during social distancing. I’ll be rolling out several in the coming days, and here’s the first.
Arranging Pen Pals
A long time ago I heard a story I loved about two arranger friends on a flight home from an IAJE Conference. On the flight home, they passed back and forth a pile of manuscript paper and a bottle, and finished the flight with a finished arrangement (and probably a headache…).
I’ve wanted to find an arranging pen pal for a long time, and I think that (a) the COVID-19 social distancing is the perfect time to try and (b) there might be a bunch of other arrangers who also want to give it a try. Making art is, I think, the best way to face this worldwide challenge.
You don’t need any particular format to attack this, but here’s a rough idea of process.
- Connect with your pen pal via videoconferencing app of choice to meet and to select a song. You’ll probably want to map out some broad parameters like feel, form, and instrumentation together.
- Pick an arranger to go first. They can write a single section of the form (say, the first A of an AABA song).
- Send your finished score and the second arranger gets the next section.
- When you’ve completed larger sections, get together to discuss what works, what can be edited in the arrangement.
- Keep going until the arrangement is complete!
I’ve created a signup form here that asks for some basic info – name, experience level, email address, genre of interest, etc. I’m posting this on Monday, March 16 – on Friday, I’ll do a pairing of all the interested arrangers based on their submitted forms, and let’s see what kind of art we can make together!
(If you’d like to participate in more than one Arranging Pen Pal connection, just complete the form multiple times.)