I gotta say, I'm not really digging the franticness and pressure of putting together 6-10 tunes in a week or two. I stay up late working on them, and I find shortcuts to complete them sooner, usually meaning I don't add as much music from the arrangement as I want. I found myself doing that with most of the pieces for the Brass Camp this summer. Man, I had so many different plans than what ended up happening...but due to a lack of time, I had to cut arrangements short, change my repertoire in a couple cases. I know it didn't really matter to the students, who still loved the music and felt very fulfilled by it. But I just felt disappointed in myself.
So, in response to all this, I have come up with an idea that will benefit myself, as well as folks shopping for arrangements of brass ensemble works. I'm going to put together complete arrangements of many different works, mostly orchestral works, for the standard orchestra brass orchestration (4 horns, 3 trumpets, 3 trombones, tuba). I may add parts as needed, including timpani or percussion. But these arrangements will not be simplified, meaning the challenges of the original work will be applied.
Doing this will have advantages. Since this is a standard instrumentation for a brass choir, it will appeal to those looking for music. But also, I can use these pre-made arrangements for my brass choirs. Now, I won't be able to directly use them because I'll rarely have that instrumentation. And most likely (depending on the piece) the skill level will be too high. But having these arrangements as Finale files will allow me to tweak the piece as I need to: to shorten the piece, to fit any instrumentation I have, to simply the piece. And it will take far less time to do that then to make the arrangement from the start, when I only have a small amount of time.
So be on the lookout for new arrangements of great orchestral works showing up here. Yes, I know there may be arrangements of many of these works out there, but these will be my arrangements, which I can reorchestestrate and tweak all I want to. It's gonna be great.
Take care and value music.