Music educator, director, performer, producer, arranger.
https://youtu.be/2ars4zkfZac As a leader of a function band, I know how easy it is to get lost in conflicting charts and parts when you’re trying to put together a gig. You cobble together your leftovers from previous engagements – sometimes handwritten parts, sometimes someone else’s – and who knows if they match up to what… Continue reading Cover bands: No more scribbling out horn parts and charts!
I want to play jazz – but where to start? Over the years of teaching piano I've often been asked to help a student learn 'how to play jazz'. This often seems like a reasonable request but can be hard to execute – depending on the students' proficiency in reading music, or understanding music theory,… Continue reading Play Jazz Piano with Ben!
Following on from my last blog post in which I laid out a method for 'condensing' scores in Sibelius (combining numbered instrumental parts onto one stave while retaining separate dynamic parts), I went ahead and made a video outlining another method for achieving this which doesn't involve needing to make a separate copy of the… Continue reading More on condensing in Sibelius
I've recently been doing some orchestrations in Sibelius as part of a fun project to introduce some of Debussy's piano music to youth orchestras. As it had been a little while since I wrote anything for large ensembles using the software, coming back to it for this project reminded me of a few problems for… Continue reading Orchestrating in Sibelius – condensing workaround
One practice I’ve started to integrate into my life as a freelancer is to review my assets about every 6 months or so. ‘Assets’ is a strange word to use perhaps – you might be thinking I’m talking about financial products. Most musicians probably aren’t high-flying investors or property developers, though all power to you… Continue reading Freelancer: Protect and Promote Your Unique-factor
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