Product Description
Why am I proud of my arrangements?
To me, most arrangements are either needlessly difficult or don't really capture the "essence" of a song in the hands of a student/learning pianist!
Most of my arrangements are field-tested on my students! Many of the fingerings and editorial decisions are based on either my experience as a teacher or actual challenges my students encountered playing the arrangements.
I usually include fingerings, which is time-consuming to put in and requires a lifetime of experience.
My arrangements may not exactly match the original recording -- sometimes they leave out parts, especially when they are written for students who have less experience.
I care about page breaks and formal structure -- I try to make sure that they make sense and, whenever possible, jumping back to a D.S. or repeat makes sense and doesn't require an unnecessary page turn.
I have a classical B.Mus performance degree from Oberlin Conservatory, a M.Mus in Afro-Latin music and decades of experience as a performer in jazz, pop, Latin, and gospel music. I've also worked as a composer, arranger, orchestrator and copyist in concert music, TV/film music, and more. I'm a member of ASCAP, I was a music consultant on Mad Men, and my classical pieces have been Grand Prize winners. My trombone music has been played by the associate trombonist of the New York Philharmonic.
Working as a "rhythm section" player has helped me decide what is important in an arrangement and what isn't, and I often put a note or two in the "right" places to help students keep a rhythmic vitality going when performing.
Just think, all of that experience helped me prepare this music for you, all for the price of an (admittedly fancy) cup of coffee.
Notes for this song
Hostage - The small cue notes in measure 16 are optional. If you cannot play the top melody smoothly in the right hand leave them out -- it's more important to make a nice legato sound than to catch all of the sixths! The optional notes have their fingerings in parentheses.
Hostage is a great first example of changing time signatures. Notice how it goes from 3/4 to 4/4 time? That extra beat really adds to the languid and off-center feeling of this song!
This product was created by a member of ArrangeMe, Hal Leonard's global self-publishing community of independent composers, arrangers, and songwriters. ArrangeMe allows for the publication of unique arrangements of both popular titles and original compositions from a wide variety of voices and backgrounds.