Does anyone here do any arranging of music, like the kind on noteflight.com?

I find people who can do this amazing It's like a foreign language to me. How in the world do people get into this and how do they do it and how does it work? Do they sit there with a blank sheet and literally put down notes? O_o Or do they generally play on the keyboard and then it shows up on the page? (Still amazing)

Does everyone who do this have just a really good ear or what?

Arranging (orchestration for classical musicians) is an entire course of study in music.

People with great ears can arrange away from the piano but most people use the piano as a reference for their ideas.

There are many books on the topic that can help you get acquainted with the skills that you need to do arranging. One that I like is this one:

https://www.amazon.com/Creative-Arr...=8-1&keywords=arranging+at+the+piano

There is some confusion in using the concepts of arranging and orchestration.The arranger writes some song for a group of instruments: one plays a bass part, the other a rhythm part; some instruments play the melody, the second melody, chords. It is the creation of orchestral parts - melody, rhythm, bass, harmony, counterpoint (second melody) - refers to the arrangement area. Orchestration is the choice of specific instruments and their combinations that will play the orchestral parts written for them. When you play the melody in the right hand and the chords in the left hand - you have already made the first step in the arrangement: you have divided two orchestral parts between hands. Your orchestration is limited - under your fingers just piano. But if you play on the digital keyboard with diverse sound bank, you can change the orchestration ; and then you can hear how differently sounds melody or chords with the sounds of trombones, saxophones or strings.

Sure. But there may be many more steps to be taken in creating piano arrangements - as I'm sure you know. Chord voicings, stride, bass lines, single note melodies vs. thirds, sixths, octaves, etc. In addition to reading, listening carefully to solo piano recordings can be very helpful.

Right! This is what is called a textures, and also refers to the field of arrangement: solo, duet, trio, octaves , arpeggios, open and closed chords. etc.

I do a lot of arranging of pop and rock music: YouTube Channelhttp://www.youtube.com/elainemusic369 My process is listening to the melody by ear and then playing it on the piano, then sometimes I will print out a chord sheet of the song and create my left hand based on that. All the patterns of the L-H and the chords of the R-H, I go about intuitively and in a trial-and-error way since I can't remember much of the music theory. And i also look at other people's arrangements for inspiration. Music theory is definitely useful in arranging.

Most of the time I create the arrangement by imagining the sounds in my head and then play it out since I have relatively accurate pitch.