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Tips for finding and arranging music.
Tips for finding and arranging music.
Finding free music that can be arranged for recorder is easy, and there are
many websites that offer free music.
- Noteflight.com
is a community of musicians who compose, arrange, and share music using the
Noteflight web music notation software. Many songs shared by users can be
exported as MusicXML files from the File menu in Noteflight.
- MuseScore.org
offers a powerful desktop notation program called MuseScore as well as a
large library of shared sheet music.
Arranging songs for the Odogy recorder app isn't hard. When starting from an
existing score, it's usually best to look for an arrangement that has
the melody line on a single staff (and not something like a piano part).
Many songs written for voice or solo instruments like flute, violin,
clarinet or trumpet may work well. Arrangements for a solo instrument/voice
with piano accompaniment are common and are a great place to start.
Small ensemble arrangements, like trios, quartets or quintets can also work
well. In general you want to avoid starting from a large ensemble,
like a band or orchestra. Solo piano music usually doesn't work, because Odogy
requires that the top staff has only one note at a time (so piano
chords don't work).
To arrange music for recorder, you'll need a notation editor. Both MuseScore
and Noteflight are free and work great. Below I've shown some common
edits you might make with MuseScore.
Common edits in MuseScore
The top staff should be in treble clef for recorder.
To change the clef in MuseScore, select the clefs palette and drag the treble
clef onto the first measure.
Make sure the top staff is a "non-transposing" instrument.
Right-click the staff name and choose Staff Properties. Set the
Play Transposition selection to "Perfect Unison."
Transpose the entire score so that the top staff is in a
good range for recorder. This might take some experimentation. You want
notes that aren't too high or low for recorder, and you want a key signature
that doesn't have many sharps or flats.
In this example, see how the notes on the top staff line are below the
lowest possible recorder note. We need to transpose all of the staves up to
fix it.
Press ctrl-A to select the entire score. Go to the Notes menu and choose
Transpose. Choose Transpose by Interval, the direction to transpose the notes,
and the amount to transpose them by. Make sure the check boxes in the Options
are checked.
If the first transposition you try creates too many sharps or flats, Undo the
operation from the Edit menu and try again.
Here's the music after the transposition.
Sometimes you will need to clean up individual notes after
your basic transposition. To fix individual notes, click them to select
them and then change their pitch or rhythm. The up and down arrow keys will
change the pitch. Clicking a different rhythm value (as shown below) will
change the duration of the note. If you make the duration bigger, notes that
follow will be removed or shortened to make space for the bigger duration.
When you are finished, go to the File menu >> Save As and set
the type to MusicXML Format. This will create a file that you can upload
into the Odogy recorder app.