11
Arrange and Orchestrate
Studying the craft of orchestrating and arranging creates a wonderful symbiosis with conducting. You get incredibly quick at score-reading: transposing instruments and less-usual clefs become no problem at all. Also, you get to figure out and discover how the organism of an orchestra functions - which combinations of instruments achieve which effects. The more scores you study as a conductor, the more in-depth knowledge of what works (and what doesn't) you accrue.
As an arranger, this in itself opens up conducting work too; often companies will pay one person to oversee the orchestration and conducting of a new orchestral project, because, again, it guarantees that the person conducting has taken the time to learn the scores!
Studying the craft of orchestrating and arranging creates a wonderful symbiosis with conducting. You get incredibly quick at score-reading: transposing instruments and less-usual clefs become no problem at all. Also, you get to figure out and discover how the organism of an orchestra functions - which combinations of instruments achieve which effects. The more scores you study as a conductor, the more in-depth knowledge of what works (and what doesn't) you accrue.
As an arranger, this in itself opens up conducting work too; often companies will pay one person to oversee the orchestration and conducting of a new orchestral project, because, again, it guarantees that the person conducting has taken the time to learn the scores!
There are lots of things I've not had the chance to cover in this (already seemingly endless?) presentation (I'm sorry, it'll be over soon). But maybe these are best dealt with in the Zoom meeting anyway. Act 3 is really just a list of all the other stuff I thought I'd cover but doesn't lend itself so well to being written down, for whatever reason.