An interesting exercise.

• Jul 16, 2010 - 16:52

The organiser of a local village fete asked me if I could help with some muisc. She had the melody line only of two traditional tunes that she wanted scoring in a three part harmony for B flat Calrinet, alto saxophone and Tenor saxophone. The idea was that the tunes would be played by three children who were learning these instruments and were currently at about Grade 3, while other children danced a little dance to their playing, so the arrangement had to be in the style of Morris Dancing. The melody lines were in Concert G so I simply transposed these for a B flat clarinet, put the two melody lines one after the other and then arranged the alto and tenor sax harmonies. Though the first melody line as given to me was written with straight quavers, and though I stuck with them in the arrangement, I did suggest that it might be better to play them as swing quavers, which I believe they did. This is what I came up with.

Attachment Size
trad tunes.mscz 4.13 KB

Comments

If this piece is for begginners, you should bring the clarinet part 0ne octave lower as higher notes at around F are a high, especially for 3rd graders

In reply to by AdrianFlute

It wasn't the notes that caused problems it was the key signatures. Before the event I was asked to put it in an easier key, especially for the alto sax, so I took the whole thing up a semitone to put the Bbs in Bb and the alto in F. They managed this OK and the clarinet wasn't too bothered about her high notes. I think they're using it again this year.

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