Finding Easy Band Arrangements On Youtube

All of us band geeks, or I guess bandies would be more politically correct, began our musical career in beginning band. Ah, yes, beginning band. A place where fingering and oiling your slide valve still made you chuckle and the G major scale was the most complicated thing you did. Recently I had the privilege of working with the newly reformed band at my old alma mater. The band had been out of commission for several years and was in the rebuilding process. It did not take me very long to realize that an ongoing trend in the schools had played it's part to place a serious damper on the ability of the band to move forward.

When something is removed from the school the music department is usually the first thing to go. While the band was in a rebuilding state funds were not being generously provided so no new beginning level music could be purchased.

I offered my services in arranging music for the band. It had been a hobby I had nearly forgotten about but I got back into the swing pretty quickly. It was fun to be arranging again but at the same time it was very time consuming. I made the decision that one of two things needed to happen. A- More funding be allotted to the band to allow for buying new music. And B- I needed to find an alternate way to get the music done in a more timely fashion. A was just out of the question as it was not in the school's parameters. Maybe if I would have found a way to implement some sort of ball into the proposal funding would have turned up.

Option B had to work. It was easy to find partners in arranging through former fellow band geeks but I still needed a way to get fresher music that was arranged for a beginning band atmosphere. One day I was searching youtube and stumbled upon a video for an easy marching arrangement of a Justin Bieber song. I contacted the arranger and was offered the piece for $5.00. I had really hit on something here that I had formerly not thought about. After a little searching I started finding more easy pieces that all I had to do was copy the sheet music and I had new pieces.

I was shocked at some of the really good, high quality easy arrangements I was finding. I even started putting some of my own work on there. The moral of the story is to never under estimate the power of youtube.