How to Arrange Music for Piano

So, how does one go about arranging piano music? That's a good question. And one that can get confusing for most students. They sometimes confuse composing with arranging and with good reason - they're closely connected. Let's look at how to arrange a piece of music for piano. Specifically, we'll look at the lesson piece "Fall Sunrise."

Fall Sunrise is a contemporary/new age piano piece I wrote to illustrate how ABA form works. The first section is comprised of 4-bars which is repeated twice. The next section (B) is an 8-bar phrase repeated twice and then we come back to our (A) section, which again is repeated twice. So, if we were to "arrange" this so we can see what it would look like we'd end up with something like this:

2A2B2A

This is a shorthand way of seeing the arrangement. It simply tells us how many times to repeat a section. Now, this arrangement by itself is sufficient for about 3-4 minutes of music, however, if we wanted to, we could add another section and lengthen it even more. The reason why we need another section (if we wanted more music) is that if we keep repeating this, it gets monotonous and boring.

We introduce a new section for contrast purposes. The ear hears this new music and is refreshed. But before we introduce a new section, we need something to lead us into it. We need what is called a transitionary phrase. Two bars is usually enough to accomplish this. The transition prepares the listener to receive something new. It's a connective device that bridges the sections. After the transition is introduced, we can bring in a new section of music and call it C.

Now, if we were to write out what this might look like we can come up with something like this:

2A2B2ATCA

Where T= transition and C= a new section of music. By adding in a new section, we can now repeat the other sections more because we've introduced contrast into the mix.

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