What it’s all about:
Since the age of 16, while singing in my first a-cappella quintet, I have been continuously making vocal arrangements for different groups. Working as a professional singer in classical ensembles improved my intuition for vocal writing, challenging myself to come up with interesting and melodic parts for every voice – even for altos and basses! 😉
Normally, my arrangements are medium difficult, though it’s mostly possible to make them easier on occasion. They are always unaccompanied, which I find more developing for the choir in the long run, plus that there seems to be a certain shortage of pure a-cappella arrangements. Lacking the piano accompaniment, you might want to use some kind of percussion instrument in the beginning (a tambourine or a shaker) in order to get the choir into a collective grove. After a while, according to my experience, you don’t need it anymore. By the way, all my arrangements are constantly being tested by my choirs. That allows me to make changes on the way in case things don’t work out how I’ve hoped they would.
A lot of my arrangements have divided sopranos. That’s because most choirs have a lot of sopranos that are able to reach an e5, but not as many who can comfortably go to g5 or higher. That’s why the highest soprano notes are never the most important ones, but just the icing on the cake in case you have the suitable singers.
I always try to notate the original melody of a song exactly the way it actually goes (i.e. in the style of the music or how the composers sang it themselves). Even if that means that it’s a bit more complicated to notate. But since my arrangements always go together with mp3 files you’ll hear the correct version there. Clearly, you have to compromise at times, but I think that too much rhythmic or melodic simplification just doesn’t do justice to the music.
Generally, I avoid repetition signs in order to enable a fluent reading. Since I found, that even in professional ensembles the jumping around in the score often creates unnecessary confusion. So why not just print out more pages instead?
Otherwise I guess, my choice of songs is rather individual. I just have to love the song. So, I often end up with pieces that haven’t been arranged that often yet. According to the motto: You can turn every good piece of music into an even better a–cappella arrangement. 🙂