Lcheg Music

Every single musician I know have been part of flexible ensembles. Some are in bands, and have members change occasionally so are constantly revisiting their music to make sure it still works. Some work solo, but occasionally gather a band around them. The more classical musicians I know also work flexibly – there’s rarely enough musicians on the right instruments, especially in amateur and community groups.

My first memory of flexible playing is from when I was about 14. I grew up playing in traditional string ensembles and orchestras, and we played normal, traditional string ensemble arrangements. I participated in a yearly summer camp, which meant that for a week, we attended our Conservatorium for 6 or 7 hours a day and played music together. At one of these camps, we were preparing a few pieces for a concert later in the year, a concert where we would be playing with woodwind players among others. One of the pieces was the Arrival of the Queen of Sheba, and is traditionally written for string orchestra and two solo oboe players. But we were a string orchestra and didn’t have oboe players to rehearse with, so two of our violinists played the parts instead.

Looking back, it seems laughably stiff of us to be excited about modifying an arrangement in such a small way, but it opened the gates for me personally, and I started thinking about flexibility more. (The year before I had also started Jazz piano lessons, so that may have had something to do with it too!) The ability to make a piece work for any ensemble has become quite valuable to me, but it’s not something I reflect in my writing. I decided to do something about that! So I wrote an arrangement of Charlie Puth’s Attention for two parts; two parts which are flexible and can be interchanged freely.

You can play it with any combination of:

Violin, Viola, Flute, Oboe, Clarinet, Bassoon

and

Viola, Cello, Flute, Oboe, Clarinet, Bassoon

As long as there’s at least one player on each part, it doesn’t matter what instrument they’re playing! I find this really exciting, and it was a little bit of a challenge. I haven’t included brass instruments because personally I’m not that comfortable writing for them, but that will hopefully come in the future. You can check out the music at the links below.

 

I really love it when people contact me and ask about my work. I’m not sure what’s more exciting, when someone I know asks me about my work, or when a complete stranger finds me and thinks to contact me.

Thinking about it, when someone I know contacts me, it means that they’ve decided I’m the person who can do what they need, and given how musical most of my friends are, that’s quite a compliment! I’ll be excited and happy that they thought of me, and thinking of the best way to meet their requests. Personally, I work best with some restrictions, when I’m working towards a purpose I work quickly and efficiently to deliver something of quality for the person I’m working with. I wish I could give myself the same purpose!

But when someone I don’t know contacts me, and asks me if something about my work can be changed or adapted, it’s very exciting! So much of music, and the arts world in general, is word-of-mouth based, and if I can reach someone on the other side of the world and they like my music enough to reach out to me about it, it just blows my mind. I love that music can transcend geographic boundaries in such a unique way.

Most of the emails and messages I’ve gotten have been about my pieces with vocal parts, specifically At Last by Etta James. I wrote an arrangement of this for solo voice with string quartet accompaniment a few years ago, and I periodically get requests asking if I can transpose it for the vocalist who will be performing. I received one of these emails a few days ago asking if I could put it in Eb major, which I’ve done. The person asking was from Amsterdam, and it’s for a friend’s wedding! It blows my mind that I’m going to be a part of a stranger’s wedding from half a world away, even if it’s only a small part. You can check out the arrangement I’ve made for that wedding here:

 

I choose the music I arrange based on three factors:

1. Will the piece work for the ensemble I’ve picked
2. Is the piece something people will want to play
3. Do I, personally, like it

Some pieces just don’t work for some ensembles. For example, if something is really percussion heavy, it would be very difficult to make it work for a flute quartet. Two genres that don’t translate well to instrumental music are rap and metal; especially in rap the lyrics are very important, so it loses a lot when you don’t have the words, and metal is such a processed sound that it’s hard to create a recognizable arrangement. Personally, My favourite ensemble to work with is a String Quartet – which may have something to do with that fact that I’m a cellist! Strings are very versatile instruments, able to create many different sounds and suited to many different genres. However so are many other instruments – call me biased!

The second item on my little list is important if you’re aiming to publish the music you’re writing – people won’t buy something that they’re not interested in! There are so many factors that go into if people will buy something, including the popularity of the original song, your intended market both style- and age-wise and level of difficulty. Another important (important!!) consideration is the copyright – are you actually allowed to arrange this! Some pieces don’t have any copyright, and are in what’s called Public Domain, which is a thing which varies by country. Australia’s laws are really easy to understand, but America’s are a complete nightmare and a little dangerous to work with if you’re not sure. Copyright is very important because it’s the thing that can get you into a whole pile of legal trouble (think “Down Under” by Men at Work), and as a publishing composer and arranger it’s something I pay a lot of attention to. If I were to arrange a piece by Sting, it’s likely that an arrangement of Fields of Gold would sell much better then Shape of my Heart and so as a musician trying to survive on my work I’d go for Fields of Gold first – but probably also arrange Shape of my Heart because it’s a song I really love!

Which brings me to number three – pick something you like, because it’s no fun working with something you don’t like, and it’s less likely to get finished well. No logic here – everyone has personal tastes and I know mine!

I’ve just published an arrangement of Rewrite the Stars for String Quartet, from the Greatest Showman. It fits the bill because:

1. The style converts really well to my chosen ensemble (String Quartet)
2. It’s a new song, from a popular movie, sung by two very popular musicians, Zac Efron and Zendaya, and it happens to be a love song, which always sell well! (Regarding copyright, thanks to SMP’s ArrangeMe program I don’t have to worry about a thing)
3. I really love this song. I really love this movie. Made it super easy to arrange!

Please check it out!

 

Welcome to Lcheg Music! I’ve been thinking about making this website for a little while, and I finally got around to it. On here, you’ll find random blog posts to do with music, links to my sheet music that’s for sale and also a few freebies. There may be more in the future, but who knows, I’ll see where it goes! If there’s something you’d like to see please comment, or message or contact me somehow with your thoughts. Enjoy!