Arranger
I've always been interested in jazz and improvised music which I listened a lot in my youth. I learned to play the Charlie Parker omnibook with saxophone at the age of twelve and remember being amazed with what Bird (Charlie Parker's nickame) was able to do with the horn in his music and still am. My attitude toward improvised music has since then somewhat changed although I do like a lot the classic jazz recordings such as Kind of Blue by the Miles Davis group or Time Out by the Dave Brubeck quartet to mention some.
While I also wanted to understand better popular music I begun to arrange some of the songs I like for piano, the instrument I knew best. I quickly understood that my approach to arranging was a lot more detailed than what I had seen in the published scores, so I started to write down these arrangements to make them available for a larger audience.
As an arranger I trust more in my ears than theory although I may check some ideas against the theories I know. I never write down any notes before having tested it myself that everything works. Part of the good sound is that it should also feel nice technically and this is where my classical studies with piano help a lot.
This song by the Finnish song writer Kaj Chydenius is one of my long time favourites. The piano heard in this video is actually not played by me but was rendered though a program with which the score was written. To me this music is quite dramatic and is characterized by the sudden changes in dynamics between the parts of the song.
Another of my favourites is this song by Lionel Richie which was originally written as a movie soundtrack but was later released on another album by Richie. This arrangement is fun to play as it uses full chords in both hands while the melody crosses between the two hands in the middle register. This is a technique often used in classical piano compositions and requires good ears and control from the pianist.
If you are interested you can find some of my arrangements available at sheetmusicplus