This is a renewable assignment for the students of music colleges and jazz schools who are making an arrangements of music pieces. Teachers can use the current instructions or modify them to suit their course-specific objectives.This assignment utilizes the idea of renewable assignment (it is relevant to real-world contexts; add value to the world beyond the classroom; the student work should be openly licensed, allowing others to reuse it freely).
Learning Outcomes
Students create an arrangement and publish it under an open license at a score-sharing platform.
Students will learn how to create a good arrangement tailored to the specific band participants and their performance limitations. They will contribute to the music community by making scores available for reuse.
Students will be able to:
- Create arrangements
- Apply the creative process when arranging music
- Address the ensemble line-up and participants’ performance limitations
- Use compositional techniques when arranging simple pieces of music
- Demonstrate an understanding of, and use proper music terminology
- Use current music notation software, and submit the score in a form available for reuse
Context
What is an arrangement? It's when you take, say, the Beatles' song “Blackbird” and transcribe it for a jazz band or a cappella ensemble. A good arrangement is tailored to the specific band participants and their performance limitations, and can cost hundreds of dollars, but ensembles are often non-profit enterprises with limited budgets. Fortunately, students of music colleges and jazz schools normally make arrangements as part of their Music Theory or Composition course.
Students are required to
- Choose a piece of music to arrange and find a customer for your arrangement. This should be an ensemble that has a request to perform the piece you’ve chosen.
- Make sure that the piece does not already have an arrangement in public sources.
- Arrangement you’ll make must be accepted by the ensemble leader (conductor) for performance.
- Publish the final version of your arrangement under open license. For example, at https://musescore.com/sheetmusic which is a score-sharing platform.
Rubric
A successfully completed assignment must meet the following criteria
- Apply the creative process when arranging music (20%)
- Address the ensemble line-up and participants’ performance limitations (20%)
- Use compositional techniques when arranging simple pieces of music (20%)
- Demonstrate an understanding of, and use proper music terminology (20%)
- Use current music notation software, and submit the score in a form available for reuse (20%)
