Generic Teenager

my will to practice my instrument suddenly:

Old hag by *veprikov

by Audrey Williams

I would always get a good laugh when my musician friends from our church orchestra told harrowing tales of what they went through to piece together a living as a working musician. For those of us who have decided not to teach in the school system, this is a very common reality.

I played in a string trio for a few years as one of my side jobs. As we started to build up a following, we also started getting a lot of requests to play music from contemporary artists such as Cold Play, Mariah Carey, Whitney Houston, Foo Fighters, etc. There was one instance when I booked us a last minute job, so it became my responsibility to come up with 7 custom trio arrangements of pop and R&B songs within a week. The stress was very real when I found out that there wasn’t any pre-packaged music that I could buy anywhere to fulfill our client’s requests. After I calmed down, I had to scramble to find a solution. Then I remembered that I had a free copy of Finale NotePad software, which came free with the lesson books I use with all of my beginner cello students. It was a mentally painful experience to become proficient with Finale NotePad in just a few days while creating professional arrangements that wouldn’t embarrass my trio mates in public. I don’t use this software as much these days since I have a score editor in my Logic Pro DAW (digital audio workstation), but it’s a great alternative when I need to get an arrangement done quickly and don’t want to create a whole new project in Logic to use the Score Editor.

When I first started using Finale, I would either use the keyboard to type the note name that I wanted on the staff and use the mouse to drag the note head to the correct octave, or I would just use my mouse to individually click on the lines and spaces to create a note. This turned out to be a painstaking and tedious process to go through. I now have a MIDI controller keyboard that I connect directly to my computer by USB port. The Finale software automatically recognizes my MIDI keyboard, so I don’t have to do any additional setup other than powering the keyboard on. This allows me to quickly play a passage on the keyboard, which manifests itself immediately on the staff.

The more convenient option for me when creating an arrangement or composition is typically Logic Pro, since I usually have a Logic Pro project open on my computer at any given time anyway. What I have to do is create a software instrument track, then record my MIDI note events using my MIDI keyboard. (See the image below.)

In this next image, you will see that ‘Classic Electric Piano’ is my software instrument track. Logic automatically defaults to this software instrument on its own. The instrumentation can easily be changed by selecting a different option in the library window. After creating a software instrument track, I then click on the red circle in the top left hand corner to start recording from my MIDI keyboard. The green region below contains the notes which can be viewed on the staff in the score editor.

Yes, there are other programs out there that you can use to arrange and compose music. This posting is definitely not meant to be an exhaustive discussion on the subject. Hopefully, you will find my experiences helpful as you make your own path through the music world.

“An artificial flower’s lullaby.”

oh

Things you’ll hear from my room while I’m practicing -noises that don’t make sense -clapping -screaming -crying -rustling sheet music (more like me throwing it) -various swear words -self doubt -the same part over and over again -metronome clicks -stand falling over (I might have kicked it) -cursing the composer and all of his/her intentions

Things I’ll need after practicing -ice -water -reassurance -nap