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I'm wondering if any of you arrange music for piano often and if y'all have specific methods of doing it (eg. notation programs, chords or melody first, etc.) and any tips or tricks. I've been arranging piano covers for a while using Musescore and wanted to hear how other people do it :))

I arrange jazz standards by starting with the lead sheet and chord symbols and then reharmonize the changes (only a little) and then score it for two hands using various voicing techniques.

I'll add an intro and ending to finish it off.

I work in Musescore.

My arrangement process goes in the following order:

Find the appropriate lead sheet, with or without chord symbols;
Find a suitable key;
Establish which style - swing,bop ,ballad,salsa,modal,pop,fusion; everything that follows depends on it;
Find harmony, which includes chord expansion, reharmonization, and passing chords;
Set the form - number of choruses , location of climaxes ;
Selecting several two-handed piano textures and planning to use them in a piece;
Creation introduction and ending.

I work with Sibelius Ultimate.

Wow your methods are so cool! I don't use lead sheets because I arrange popular music, and also I don't know the names of any chords, I just go by ear. For my process, I just listen for the chords first I have perfect pitch, then decide on whether I want to change the key or not. After I have the basic chords, I put in the melody. Sometimes I change the form (eg. if I want to do a key change or make the intro or outro longer or something). The last thing I do is change up the texture in the basic chords by adding rhythm and the texture in the melody by doing chords, octaves, etc.

Hi Leona

As you've only recently joined the forum you might not realise that both Nahum and Bill are, or were, professional musicians. You may be as well of course!

Cheers

Ah ok - thanks for letting me know - I'm not professional, I'm still in high school, but I play classical piano competitively.

Hi Leona

It doesn't matter what level you're at, they are both very helpful guys, but they are primarily Jazz players.

So you may wish to check out Pianist Corner, which is for classical Pianists. This forum is for non-classical. Though the topic you've raised could be relevant to either. If you search in the forums you'll probably find a previous thread on the topic you've raised, which may have a lot more useful info.

Cheers

I see a contradiction here.

If you , Leona , refer to the Pop Piano book, it has everything you need to know from chords; and most importantly - a large set of textures for popular music; exactly what you need.

Thanks for the tip. To clarify, my main thing is classical but on the side I arrange popular music. Also, I don't pay to much attention to theory/chords/etc. when playing classical music, I know major/minor triads and and sevenths and that's it so far

Definitely a MuseScore user. I can play around with a score like transposing it to another Key to match a performance and change a few notes around to hear what the piece sounds like before & after.