How to begin transcribing/arranging music for piano?

[chopinrabbitthing]

Hi,

I'd really like to transcribe/arrange music for piano, like Liszt, Cziffra or Horowitz would have done.
I have really basic composition skills, quite a good technique for someone my age, and can play by ear (if that helps).

Basically what I want to do is to take a tune, let's say a well-known folk tune, and make it all pianistic and virtuosic. How should I go about doing things like this?


Thanks

[louispodesta]

Hi,

I'd really like to transcribe/arrange music for piano, like Liszt, Cziffra or Horowitz would have done.
I have really basic composition skills, quite a good technique for someone my age, and can play by ear (if that helps).

Basically what I want to do is to take a tune, let's say a well-known folk tune, and make it all pianistic and virtuosic. How should I go about doing things like this?


Thanks

There are three ways you can do this.  First, you find a choral conductor, whose first instrument was organ or piano.  They transcribe and arrange on a daily basis for their choir.

Second, you can find a graduate composition teacher, who is a keyboardist and who can teach you the basics.

Third, there are jazz departments in most music schools these days, and they have people who teach arranging for any and all situations.

Finally, it just takes a lot of daily writing practice, and then after awhile you get the hang of it.

What you haven't been told is that the pianists of old had a piano teacher, and then studied composition privately because they were expected to play their own stuff.  Modern music pedagogy is not structured that way.

[chopinrabbitthing]

Thanks very much! I always thought that these people just knew how to transcribe music naturally!

[liszt1022]

Understand the theory of your folk tune. Make sure you can transcribe it straightforward. The write a few variations with the same chord progression. The more you write, the more you can see how far you can stretch the variation with the tune still being recognizable.
Listen to lots of virtuostic arrangements (many have follow-along scores on Youtube) and note what it is about them that you like. Play a few!
I'd suggest checking out Hexameron, which is a variation set with contributions from different Romantic composers. Very virtuostic and diverse.

[chopinrabbitthing]

Thanks, from the man himself, "Liszt"

[louispodesta]

Thanks, from the man himself, "Liszt"

The late Earl Wild was taught nuts and bolts music theory when he was twelve.  He began arranging when he was thirteen and actually helped support single mother family by doing so during his teen years.  After that, he was the staff pianist arranger for NBC for a number of years.

For the rest of his life, he wrote transcriptions, the most notable of which are the Rachmaninoff Songs.  His "Variations on a Theme by Stephen Foster" (Doo Dah) for piano and orchestra is a wonderful piece.  And, his Gershwin transcriptions are legendary.  All are for sale or can be obtained through Interlibrary Loan for free.

Please go to the Ivory Classics website and research what he did for over 80 years.  He was the last of his generation to do this.

[indianajo]

There are three ways you can do this.  First, you find a choral conductor, whose first instrument was organ or piano.  They transcribe and arrange on a daily basis for their choir.
Second, you can find a graduate composition teacher, who is a keyboardist and who can teach you the basics.
Third, there are jazz departments in most music schools these days, and they have people who teach arranging for any and all situations.
Finally, it just takes a lot of daily writing practice, and then after awhile you get the hang of it.

I don't understand the professional/pedagogical lock on this skill.  Back when I just started doing it.  Having a recorded performance of something you want to arrange for yourself makes it easy to start, you don't have to memorize the whole piece first.  Even easier, If the recording is in tune with your piano/keyboard, which is made even easier by variable pitch keyboards.  I was held up for some time because my tuner was tuning my piano flat to A=440, to save himself time I suppose. Everything on record was coming out 1/4 tone flat to the key of C#, and it is slow to write down all those accidentals and makes for a messy score if you erase a note.  
A trick to make complicated passages easier to hear, is to slow the recording down to 1/2 speed. I used to record on a 1/4 reel to reel tape recorder at 7 1/2 ips, and play back at 3 3/4 ips, which dropped everything one octave.  Now I understand there are computer software packages that will play back at 1/2 speed.  I don't own one, I've been intending to download ubuntu studio and make a try with it, but backing up the old data is such an ordeal I haven't followed through.  Downloading a ubuntu op system takes about 10 hours too, at my DSL speed. And it doesn't work error free every time.  
I wanted, when 18, to arrange Jumping Jack Flash for my High School band. I imagined the bass line whomped out by twelve tubas, and the final chord with the french horns hands out and bells in the air. Making out 20 instrument parts was a **** in those days of pencil and paper, and good stewardship of my time while I was spending $x000 a year on tuition ended the project.  But they have professional arranging software now, some you mouse click in the notes, and others you play in the notes with a midi interface to the PC.  Then the printer makes your score.  It is all so painless now.  I hear they even have software that will analyize a recording and make a midi file of it, so don't expect to make a lot of money doing arrangements unless your artistry is A+ over the computer's.  
I have transcribed a couple of recorded tracks  unavailable as sheet music for piano, using pencil and score paper.  I imitate Geoge Winston's performance of The Holly and the Ivy this way.  
I've made up a keyboard version of King's  One Fine Day and with new words I wrote played it with the Junior Choir at church.
I'm also beginning to make arrangements of things for the various tunes in my Hammond theatre organ, which is great low $ way to entertain yourself when found redundant by the Lords of Commerce.  Who needs to pay for cable TV? Why take off my shoes in public to travel to faraway places?  I've got a $200 Hammond H100 organ and a stack of $.50 resale shop LP's of favorite music to learn to play.  Bizet's Carmen, anybody? I've already figured out Tchaikovski's  Sugar Plum Fairy on the Hammond, it has a nice glock sound that can be tweaked to sound like a celeste.  And with the drawbars I can simulate a bass clarinet on the lower manual! What fun. I'm also fooling with They Call me Da Breeze, Inna-Godda-Davida and Do You Wanna Touch the last two for the thundering bass lines played with the feet.  
Have fun!