Arranging for Steelband - Part 3

In the previous two parts of this guide to arranging for the steelband, we looked at what we would need to start arranging, as well as the ranges of the pan in a small steelband, and we saw our first glimpse of an arrangement.

The Starting Point: The Leadsheet

To start off, we need the lead sheet for Begin the Beguine, available from Wikifonia. The version that we will use in this guide can be found here. Note that Wikifonia allows you to transpose the lead sheet before downloading, so I chose the key to be F, as it allows for the melody to fit well on the Tenor Pan and is also a fairly simple key signature. Download the pdf and we have a lead sheet that looks a lot like this:

First page of the lead sheet for Begin the Beguine from Wikifonia.org.

The notes given on a lead sheet are, for the most part, the melody. Above the bar are letters representing the chords. For example, in the leadsheet above, the chord for the first bar is F, the chord for the second bar is F6, etc. As mentioned in the first part of this guide, you will need to have a basic understanding of what chords are to understand what we are about to do.

Entering the melody

In MuseScore, a new file will need to be created with four instruments (we aren't going to arrange for the Double Tenors just yet). We will enter the melody into the Tenor Pan's staff. I sometimes enter the chords in there too, as it helps me to arrange the other voices without having to keep looking at the leadsheet.

Once the melody is entered (along with the chords), the first system will look something like this:

Starting off: only the melody and chords have been entered.

If you press play, you will be able to hear the melody, but it doesn't sound particularly awesome yet.

Working with the chords

Now we use the chords to work out the Double Seconds and Guitars' parts. For now we are going to use a very simple strumming rhythm. The strumming rhythm takes notes from a chord and simply plays them repeatedly to a rhythm, as shown in the second bar in the following picture:

A very simply strumming pattern.

Here two notes (F and A) are played in a simple pattern. Due to a human deficiency (two hands!) each pan can usually only play two notes simultaneously. Since chords tend to have multiple notes in them, we split the chords between the seconds and the guitars. We generally want players to be using both hands while they strum, so some duplication may occur. For example, in the following snippet both pans together play an F major chord.

F major chord shared across Double Seconds and Guitars.

Note that the notes of the chord can be allocated in other ways too, but we usually try to allocate them in a way that is comfortable for the players, and also that creates a comfortable sound on the ear. If the notes that the seconds play go too high, it could clash with the melody being played on the tenors, for example.

Using this method of allocating the notes of the chords between the pans, our first few bars of the tune will now look something like this in MuseScore:

First three bars: now with chords!

The chords have been allocated between the Double Seconds and the Guitar Pan, but remember that this is not the only way it could be done. For example, the chords could also be split up like this:

A different way of splitting the chords.

There are reasons why you might choose to arrange the chords the second way rather than the first way. First of all, it gives the different pans a lightly more interesting combination to strum. Secondly, some pans may have a bit of an unpleasant sound when playing notes a tone apart, so that can be avoided by splitting the tones across different instruments... of course this isn't something that should happen on well-tuned pans!

Adding the bass

All that's missing now is the bassline. I'm going to choose one of the easiest bass patterns for now: alternating between playing the fundamental and the fifth of the chord on each beat. You can see how this works in the following screenshot from MuseScore:

All the pans playing together.

This type of bass part is very easy to arrange, and very easy to play. In fact, it's too easy. If you have a bass player who is playing pan for the very first time, then this part is fine, but otherwise it's too boring! It also makes for something that is relatively boring on the ear. Having said that, just be aware that bass sounds tend to blur quite a bit in certain (most?) environments, so having a complicated bass line may be counterproductive.

Something to take home

Using the above method, I made a very simple arrangement of Begin the Beguine. In later posts we will change the rhythm and the parts, but for now it may be useful to see what a full arrangement looks like. For the most part, the arrangement is very simple: I've left the melody unchanged on the tenors, allocated the chords to the seconds and guitars without much creativity, and I've kept the bassline very simple (boring!). You can download the MuseScore file or the pdf. Note that I haven't created different scores for each of the pans yet, as this isn't meant to be a final arrangement for playing... having said that, it may be a start for a beginner band.

In the next part of this guide, we will take the arrangement of Begin the Beguine and modify it so that it starts to sound like something decent. This means that we will change the strumming patterns and bassline to change the style of the song, and then later we will also fiddle a bit with the melody.

Arranging for Steelband - Part 2

This is Part 2 of a series of posts on the basics of arranging for steelband. Part 1 can be found here.

In Part 1 we briefly looked at the bare necessities of what one needs to arrange music for steelband, namely music theory, software, and where to look for sheet music. In Part 2 we will look at the different voices of a steelband, the ranges of the instruments, and a basic arrangement.

The Instruments and Voices of a Steelband

For a common "small" steelband, there are usually at least four different voices, much like in a small choir: the sopranos, the altos, tenors, and basses. In a small steelband, the voices are played by different pans as follows:

• The soprano voice is played by the Tenor Pan.
• The alto voice is played by the Double Seconds.
• The tenor voice is played by the Guitar Pans.
• The bass voice is played by the Bass Pans.

Another voice which is very commonly added, even to small bands, is another alto/soprano voice, played by a Double Tenor. Double tenors have the same range as double seconds, but have a different configuration and are used in a different ways in tunes.

To give an idea of the typical ranges of these different instruments, see the following diagram:

Ranges of the steel pans in a small steelpan.

Note that the diagram only shows approximate ranges, as pan configurations tend to change between tuners. Note also that the full ranges don't always produce the "best" sounds, and so are not always used fully. Double seconds, for example, often don't play in their top octave, although obviously this depends on the arranger and the type of piece.

The full family of steel pans contains a number of instruments with a variety of different ranges, but these can be looked up elsewhere.

Basic Arrangement

Small steelbands tend to arrange tunes over the pans in a fairly standard way:

• Tenors play the melody
• Double Tenors play harmonies or counter-melodies
• Double Seconds play chords (or "strum")
• Double Guitars also strum
• Basses play the baseline

(Just remember that this is for a basic arrangement -- the different pans can do different things depending on what the arranger wants, and don't have to be limited to what I've said here.)

For now we're going to ignore the Double Tenors. This means that for a basic tune, we need:

1. A melody
2. Chords (which will be shared between the Seconds and Guitars)
3. A bassline.

As I mentioned in Part 1, lead sheets (such as those available freely on Wikifonia) provide melodies and chords. If we use a tune from there, we'll have to make up a bassline, but that isn't terribly difficult.

Our final product will look something like the following diagram:

The first two bars of Begin the Beguine as arranged for a small four-part steelband.

Note how the melody line is taken by the tenors. The Double Seconds and Guitars share the chord part, and they play the chords using a simple "strumming" rhythm, a bit like a guitar in a rock band would.

In Part 3, we will look at how we actually arrange the tune into these four parts, using a leadsheet from Wikifonia. We will also look at creating a simple baseline. In later guides we will also change the strumming patterns used so that we can change the style of the song.

Arranging for Steelband - Part 1

In this and the following posts, I look at how to go about arranging music for steelbands.

For many bands, I reckon that one of the biggest problems is having sufficient repertoire to keep the band and the audience entertained. Luckily it turns out that arranging isn't terribly difficult!

Music Theory

If you are already knowledgeable about music theory, then arranging is rather easy. If not, you have a bit to learn, but it is still within your grasp. I assume that we are going to be producing sheet music arrangements, although there are plenty of talented players and arrangers who do everything by ear.

To arrange using sheet music, you will need to have, at the least, the following fundamental abilities:

• Reading sheet music,
• Identifying and using major and minor scales, and
• Identifying and using chords.

These are the very basics, but they are not terribly difficult to pick up. There is a lot of free information that is easily available on the internet that can help here. To the absolute novice, scales might seem silly or unnecessary (why not just keep everything in C and use lots of accidentals?), but it makes your music less complicated to read, and more importantly helps you to understand the chords that have been used.

Software

Despite what some people might tell you, there are plenty of free and/or opensource options available to help with arranging and outputting high quality sheet music.

The aim of this post is not to provide a software review, so I'll leave that to the rest of the internet, but software that I highly recommend is MuseScore. It is an open-source program that allows you to enter sheet music manually, play it back to yourself, and to generate good quality scores. It can also import sheet music in a number of different formats, the most useful of which are probably midi and musicxml.

While MuseScore produces scores that look rather good, my personal favourite for high quality scores is LilyPond. This is open source music engraving software. It is not for playing back tunes or even for actually arranging music; it is only meant to produce high quality sheet music. LilyPond is very powerful, but has quite a steep learning curve. Luckily MuseScore can export to LilyPond's format (not too badly either, although I have encountered some problems that were easily fixed).

My workflow tends to involve working in Melody Assistant (or MuseScore) and then once I've arranged the tune, I enter it into LilyPond to produce a high-quality finished product. Melody Assistant is a commercial product that I've been using for a bit more than a decade, but I don't think that the sheet music it produces is as good as LilyPond. I've found that Melody Assistant has a number of advantages that are easily worth what I paid for it, but I would still recommend MuseScore for someone starting out.

Note that all three of these programs can be used in Linux/FreeBSD, MacOSX, or MS Windows.

Sources of music

I'm not someone who can work out tunes by ear, so I assume that we start with some existing music, such as a piano score or a lead sheet. There are a number of places to legally obtain free sheet music on the internet that can be used, although you may find that at some point you will want to buy music. While one can buy music for piano or another instrument and then use it to arrange for pan, it can be easier to buy scores already arranged for steelband.

When arranging a tune, the two most important parts of the music that you need are the melody and the chords. This means that, at the least, a lead sheet will be really useful. A website that provides a good number of lead sheets for free is Wikifonia.

A less obvious source of sheet music are midi files. You can read up on them more elsewhere on the internet, but it's enough to know that they are in a format that is related to sheet music. This means that you can generate sheet music from midi files fairly well, and as there are many freely available on the internet, this means that there is a lot of sheet music out there. Just be careful to make sure that you don't violate any copyright restrictions on any midi files that you download, although these restrictions should be placed somewhere on the website with the midi files. To generate sheet music from a midi file, all one needs to do is open it up in MuseScore.

This is the end of the first part of my guide to arranging music for steelband. In the next post, I'll look at the different voices in a small steelband and the ranges, as well as some of the basics of how the melody and chords get arranged for the different instruments.