West End Musical Showcase
Theatre director and writer Andrew MacBean needed a musician to work on the showcase on his new musical, Raindogs. The music had been written over a few years by a couple of composers but the music had never been written down. Andrew needed about 12 scores from the show to be turned into sheet music to rehearse the cast of West End performers and for the live band that was going to be used in the showcase. I took the midi files from the client and produced sheet music with a standardised layout. The show was still in development so the client had lots of changes to both the lyrics, structure and music based on the workshops so these were incorporated into the scores. It involved using recordings from the workshop to notate the songs. The lead time on the project was incredibly short due to the upcoming performance so this work involved working through the night to achieve the desired results.
You can download the following samples from the project:
Sample of hand-written sheet music from client
Gospel Band Arrangements
Oxford Gospel Choir contacted me when they wanted to add a live band to one of their concerts. With 20 songs to provide live band parts for, I got to work straight away! I worked with the musical directors to ensure that the arrangements really worked and produced a full score for the gig that they could use to rehearse the choir.
The choir then needed someone to work with the band and conduct them in the live performance. By using me for all their needs they could be sure that the end product would come together smoothly with a single artistic vision.
Aspiring Composer
Aspiring composer Kay e-mailed me, ready to market pieces she had written by playing into a keyboard. The raw material was midi files she had recorded. Working with her I suggested appropriate ensembles for each of her works and worked to transcribe her compositions into sheet music that anyone could play.
Impressed with the results, she asked me to do some orchestrations and arrangements of the pieces. A piece that was written played on the keyboard became a string quartet work and then an orchestra. As part of a one fee package, Kay got well presented sheet music that she could send to ensembles who will be interested in playing her music, parts for the ensembles to play from, the Sibelius programme files so that she could pitch her work to publishers and mp3 files so that people could hear what it would sound like live.
You can use the player below to hear the original midi tracks that were sent by the client and the finished mp3 files of the orchestrations.
You can download for the following examples:
Sample full marching band orchestration
Sample string quartet orchestration
Sample instrument part from full orchestral score
TV Song Backing Tracks
Tom wanted to perform songs from an old TV series and had managed to track down the sheet music along with some audio clips from the programme. He was only able to photograph the music though but wanted to have backing tracks that live performers could use. I was able to recreate the style of the original orchestration with some crystal clear backing tracks. A one-off project fee and "pay as you go" pricing meant that Tom was able to stick to his budget and there were no nasty surprises! As an added bonus I made sheet music copies of the photographed score so that Tom and his fellow singers had proper music to rehearse from. Show biz is all about the extra mile!
Click here for a sample of the client's original documents
Click here for a sample of the original audio
Click here for the new sheet music I provided
Click here for an extract form the finished backing track