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Monk Suite (Continued)

The other day, I mentioned some work I’d completed in digitally notating my arrangement of some Thelonious Monk tunes. This is a follow up to that post. 

Well, I got the second movement (which is “Well You Needn’t”) finished—except for some ties and dynamics, which I will do in all three movements once the notes are all in the manuscripts. It took much less time than I expected, and I’m still relatively happy with the result. I didn’t have to change too much: there were a few rhythms that needed adjusting, some changes I made that would not affect the sound but make it easier to read and perform, and I made a small adjustment to the ending (and instead of slipping into a weird, out of place rubato ending, I kept the latin groove going, repeated the last few bars, and whalloped the ending in with a nice, short little wind soli. I considered adding the little intro Monk often plays, but decided against it, opting instead to open with a drum solo that fits the style of the arrangement better.  

The first movement took over a week, while the second took me only about six or seven hours of work. Partly that’s because it’s somewhat shorter, and faster—which makes for less complex lines to input—but also, I’m getting better at using some of the more arcane functions in Musescore that are not apparent when you first start using the app. (The Selection Filter function especially is helpful!) 

The only disappointing things are that the drum solo at the beginning is not represented (there’s an 8 bar one right at the start), and that is that it has a long stretch in the middle where, in playback, the only thing audible is the piano chords. Realistically, the drums would drop out completely or partly, and piano would accompany bass on the first solo. The second is a piano solo, accompanied by bass and drums. The third and fourth solos are trumpet and sax, with some woodwind and brass backgrounds on the bridge. Adding a drum set swing pattern isn’t a good solution, since it’s boring and you cannot fix boring with more boring. If I want a decent rendering of these songs, I’m going to have to find a pianist, and find a drummer or figure out if I can play the drum parts myself for the recording. (I’m learning, but far from proficient so far.) The bass I can probably generate, or fake with a wind controller. But at least the orchestra  

That leaves only Movement 3, “Round Midnight.” It’s really short, on the page, with no improvised solo sections—at least, that’s how I wrote it years ago. We’ll see if I keep it that way. I think I was responding to Monk’s wonderful arrangement of “Abide With Me” on Monk’s Music , which similarly is an arrangement for horns played by skilled improvisors, but which has no solos section. In other words, I think I was trying to treat Round Midnight like a hymn or something. We’ll see: I’ll probably start working on that next week. 

I also discovered that the new version of Musescore can directly interface with VSTs! That means a lot better playback, and also means I may be able to do up some sample recordings sometime soon! I don’t have a great DAW at the moment but I do plan to get Ableton Live later this year (with the educator discount, whew). I’d love to pick up the full version of Kontakt as well, but I’m more focused on some real instruments and hardware for now, so that will have to wait. For now, though, I have hope that I might be able to turn these into passable backing tracks for practice or busking (or whatever). 

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