Arranging music for the Uke - quality fingerstyle/campanella

gritstone

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I'd like to try arranging some music for my uke. There's a lot of music about I'd like to play that I can't find decent uke arrangements for (tab or score). I'm not interested in chords/lyrics. Quality fingerstyle tab/score for the uke is limited; at least as far as I can see (with some notable exceptions of course).

So, my question is - how should I arrange music? Which software app is best, do I lay down the melody first then add an accompaniment. Where are the guidelines for this?

I've been thinking of arranging 'Summer Wine' (Corrs/Bono version), I can find the words/chords on-line, but can't find the melody... I guess I'll have to start from scratch.

if I do make my own arrangements I'll publish them here, if you like.
 
My method for arranging:
1. Learn the melody very well in my head. Listen to the song a lot. Don't get too caught up in the original key. You might need to change it.
2. Learn to play the melody on the instrument. Try starting at different parts of the neck. If you run out of notes either at the low end or the high end, you'll either need to change octaves or the key.
3. Find the chords either by ear or the web. Transpose if necessary due to step 2 (or if you just wanna).
4. Play (or sing) the melody while playing the chords.
5. Replace/revoice or otherwise dick around with the chords while playing (or singing) the melody to make it interesting and cool. Simultaneously mess with picking patterns and strums for the same reason.
6. Record it or write it down. I usually record it so I'll remember. If I write it down I usually do tabs or scores with pen and paper, so perhaps someone else could help you with the software for this.
7. Repeat steps 5 and 6 until you have an awesome arrangement.

I am usually singing the song, but my arrangements often have finger-picking and chord solos, so these steps should work for fingerstyle as well.

I think you've come up with a great project here that will both make you a better musician and player as well as contributing to the ukulele community in general.

Good Luck!

Yer Luvin',
-Troy
 
I've been playing less than a year but have already started doing some simple arrangements. Not sure if they are campanella or not but I do try to play each melody note an a different string than the previous when possible. I still include some chord strums just because I like the way it sounds.
In my limited experience I am finding that playing (and studying)other people's arrangements has helped me to learn how to do my own. I still have a long way to go but feel like I'm making progress. IMO the Wilfried Weiti arrangements (Solo Buch) and the easier Ken Middleton arrangements (some of the are pretty challenging) have been valuable learning tools.

I am also learning from Michael Madden's book but it's more chord/melody solo style. But hey the way I figure, learn a little bit of everything and develop your own style.
Best of luck with it.
 
As far as software goes, if you want something that is free and that will pretty much get the job done, you could use Powertab. A search on google should turn up some links where you can download it. It has a few minor bugs, but most of them can be worked around, and it does have a few useful tools that can help you with arranging (like a chord dictionary). If you decide to try Powertab let me know and I can give you a few pointers. Good luck
 
The best piece of software for writing music is Sibelius. It is very expensive, but you don't have to use the latest version. You may be able to borrow or buy an older version. However, Sibelius does far more than you are likely to need arranging tabs for ukulele. It is excellent to use though, and produces brilliant results. There are various other cheaper options you could try.
 
Just so I am clear on this, the software doesn't do the arranging for you correct? You tell it where to put the notes etc...
I use powertab because it is free. Then I convert to a pdf file.
 
Just so I am clear on this, the software doesn't do the arranging for you correct? You tell it where to put the notes etc...
I use powertab because it is free. Then I convert to a pdf file.

There is no software that will do a good ukulele arrangement. You have to do it all yourself.
 
I've been playing around with TuxGuitar and MusEdit, not sure which is better yet. Both seem to offer more advanced features than PowerTab.

Sometimes you can "leverage" what someone else has already tabbed out for guitar. I've found way more fingerstyle/classical tabs for guitar than for uke.

TG, for example, will open GuitarPro, PowerTab and TablEdit files. From there you can change the tab to 4-string with uke tuning. Also, you can import a MIDI file to generate standard notation and then translate into tab from that. It won't be perfect and will usually need quite a bit of massaging, but it's a start.

High G and especially campanella are going to be somewhat problematic because any auto-generated tab isn't going to be sophisticated enough to make the most intelligent decision as to which string to use.

But like I said, it's a start and can save you some time so you don't have to input each and every note. You may need to transpose keys into something that suits the uke better. And you may find notes from the lower two guitar strings have gone missing and you might want to add them back in on another uke string to complete a chord.
 
6. Record it or write it down. I usually record it so I'll remember. If I write it down I usually do tabs or scores with pen and paper, so perhaps someone else could help you with the software for this.
Pen and paper! that's a bit revolutionary, and a damn good idea.
I can concentrate on the writing instead of learning new software (as a start).

Here's a start: http://ukulelehunt.com/wp-content/uploads/2008/03/blanktab.pdf

Thanks for all the great advice everyone, I'm on it today.
 
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Ummm, it took about an hour to jot down the basic tune and arrangement on paper (thanks UkeHunt for blank tab pages).
Then about 4 hours to work out how to use the Powertab software!

Anyway, it's almost complete - I'll post it in the 'Tabs and Chords' section - for critical review.
 
Ok - it's finished.
Is anyone brave enough to test drive my effort, and give me some critical feedback?
PM me with your email address and I'll send the pdf to you...

I think it's about grade 4 (fairly hard).
 
I'll give it a look. :)

Was going to say I didn't know that song, but just youtube'd it and see it's the same as the old Nancy Sinatra/Lee Hazelwood song. My age is showing. :p
 
help

I'd like to try arranging some music for my uke. There's a lot of music about I'd like to play that I can't find decent uke arrangements for (tab or score). I'm not interested in chords/lyrics. Quality fingerstyle tab/score for the uke is limited; at least as far as I can see (with some notable exceptions of course).

So, my question is - how should I arrange music? Which software app is best, do I lay down the melody first then add an accompaniment. Where are the guidelines for this?

I've been thinking of arranging 'Summer Wine' (Corrs/Bono version), I can find the words/chords on-line, but can't find the melody... I guess I'll have to start from scratch.

if I do make my own arrangements I'll publish them here, if you like.


Maby this site will help you www.arrangemymelody.com Good luck
 
I've been doing a ton of arranging this year for both solo and large ukulele ensemble and my go-to software is definitely Sibelius 7. It's spendy and the news is that they've stopped developing it, but it's still more user friendly than the other big name, Finale. Doing a few songs by hand ain't so bad, but software can seriously speed up the process.

I usually start arranging by doing a web search for a midi file to import into Sibelius. These are prone to mistakes but it's a good place to start. Of course, having a hard copy of the original score is also really useful so you can use their formatting for repeats and codas. Once I have the midi imported and formatted I try to pick out the melody track and copy it into uke treble staff. This allows me to fix any problems with pitch or rhythm. If reading music is a struggle for you, that part is going to take some time. Next, I copy it into a tab staff. The program will take a guess on how you want to play it, but there's still a lot of dragging the notes to different strings and transposing passages that go out of range in order to make it playable.

Of course, adding that accompaniment in a different voice depends on the style of music you're playing. If you're doing a fingerstyle arrangement, you might start by adding some voicing of the chords on the strong beats that work with where you need to play the melodic note. If you just want to strum and pick out the melody at the same time you could get aways with just adding some chord grids above the melody.

Your post just inspired me to upload some of the Christmas songs I arranged this year. They're pretty simple, but because they have both melody and chords a player can choose to play either one or try to combine them to get a fingerstyle sound. Check them out in this thread:
http://forum.ukuleleunderground.com/showthread.php?91446-Merry-Christmas

Or here's the direct link: https://www.dropbox.com/s/wc9h7jmp2i2az35/Ukulele Christmas Melodies.pdf

-Kiel
(0 )==::
 
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