I'm primarily an arranger, and BBox has been a very valuable tool to both come up with ides and presenting to others what's in my head in a fairly quick way.
Anyway, I just wanted to take my first step into this forum with this demo of my jazzy treatment of a Mozart tune. It's all BBox, all I did was pick the instruments and jazz up the chords:
My Soundcloud

Hi Icelander ...

A few years ago, I (Alan) did a CD of taking Baroque Piano lines and adding modern backing instruments. I was real happy with it. Here's a link to one of them, if you are interested:

http://soundclick.com/share.cfm?id=5012149

It's not based on any song previously written, just using Baroque Classical Piano style to a song I made up.

We really enjoyed your song. We're delighted you finally decided to share it with us. Creative and innovative ... nice use of the program! We wish you continued success with your efforts.

I was in Iceland in late summer of 1978... Reykavic. Hope I spelled that right. A very nice city ... enjoyed my couple of days there. Take care ...

Alan & Di

Catchy little arrangement. Just goes to show the amazing flexibility of this great software suite.

Thanks for sharing

Trevor

Eddie,

Nicely put together. You made that sax fit right in...

And a good mix.

fj

Hi Eddie,

welcome to the forum.
Let me quote Alan: I really enjoyed your song. I am delighted you finally decided to share it with us. Creative and innovative ... nice use of the program!
Enjoyable listen.

Guenter

Nice arrangement. Enjoyed it. thanks for sharing and I look forward to more from you soon.


Charlie

Hi Eddie
I agree with what has already been said. A very nice and creative use of BIAB. It really is the most wonderful too for putting these kinds of projects to completion.
Well done

That's a very nice first contribution to this forum!
Well done, looking forward to hearing more from you.

Regards,
Rob

It's funny you should point out the sax in particular, for that proved to be the trickiest part of the whole piece. It kept 'wanting' to play the shots & holds along with the rest of the instruments, even if I unchecked the "allow in middle chorus"!
So what I had to do was to first remove all shots and holds by hand, memorise where they were(!), then make the sax and then put all the shots & holds back in!
Very cumbersome.. but have to say it worked out nicely in the end result.

And many thanks to all you other commenters for such positive responses - you'll hear from me again for sure

Eddie...

It's easier if you save another copy of your SGU to remove the shots and holds. (Do a "Save As..." and call it {old song title}-NoHolds.SGU.. or something similar).

You can use "Search/Replace Chords" under the Edit menu to change most of them at once.... using
*... change to *

you have to also do
*m... to *m (to do all the minors... and so on...)

Generate what you need for mixing in a DAW.. and you still have your original...

fj

Thanks for sharing and welcome to the forum.

I'm glad you choose a popular public domain song. That made your arrangement stand out even more since we had other performaces of the material to compare against.

This performance reminded me of the "Hooked On Classics" album that was popular in the seventies. The only thing missing was the bass drum thump and looped hand clap.

One of the music lessons that BiaB is teaching me is the importance of arrangement within the context of a song project. Your unique arrangement demonstrated the importance very well.

I'm looking forward to hearing more.

By the way, do you have a particular style or genre you prefer?

Great use of all RTs!

That sax cuts and it's a
good mix all the way through.

Hope to hear more.

J&B

Ok, starting to feel slightly overwhelmed here already by all these big responses!

Now, let me see if I can reply to the rest of questions & comments in one go:

"A few years ago, I (Alan) did a CD of taking Baroque Piano lines and adding modern backing instruments. I was real happy with it. Here's a link to one of them, if you are interested:"

Nice, reminded me a bit of that french keyboard guy, whose name now escapes me of course, very popular with the 'alternative' crowd back in the 70's-80's. And it's spelled 'Reykjavik'.

"It's easier if you save another copy of your SGU to remove the shots and holds... == ..Generate what you need for mixing in a DAW.."

Tbh, that whole paragraph made it sound more complicated than what I ended up doing, heh! I'm not even sure some of it is an option on my Mac version of BBox Oh, and I didn't use any DAW either, it was all mixed and exported straight from the app.

"I'm glad you choose a popular public domain song. That made your arrangement stand out even more since we had other performaces of the material to compare against.

One of the music lessons that BiaB is teaching me is the importance of arrangement within the context of a song project. Your unique arrangement demonstrated the importance very well.

By the way, do you have a particular style or genre you prefer?"

I do have a soft spot for that whole ''different angle' thing, it's also a good exercise when you've no new/original material to work with. And I agree with you on that other point, arrangement can be almost a make-or-break, for any music.
As for what I 'prefer', then my taste in music varies considerably (one benefit of being in the middle of a large family), and the things I like to listen to can differ quite a lot from what I actually make (yes, I have also made my own music, years ago). The latter is probably more to my own limitations as a player though, heh

Fun listen, and pretty clever.

I guess that's me in a nutshell, then - fun & pretty clever!

Hi Icelander,

Welcome to the Users Showcase forum

Mozart's K545 always manages to hold my attention whenever I hear it. You've done a great job with your arrangement. Like others before me, I was drawn to how well the sax sat in the mix and how it comfortably developed the arrangement. When the song finished, the first thing that popped into my head was "I really enjoyed listening to that!"

Regards,
Noel

That, for me, is the greatest type of compliment I could ever hope for.

Thank you each and every one, for all your encouraging (if slightly overwhelming) feedback. And, as Arnold should have said: I shall return!

Fun and unusual arrangement! Love the way the sax natural follows the traditional melody. A marriage of different centuries that works so well! Nice work!! Take care. Greg

Great work; Thanks for sharing your demo; look forward to more in the future!

hi Icelander very enjoyable great job on everything thanks for sharing look forward to hereing more from you eric

Thanks for the feedback, everyone. Another sample of my 'twist on a melody' things is on here now, "Vem kan segla". Be sure to check that one out too!

Hi Eddie,
Great work! Welcome to the forum. I have to put that piece on my "to learn list"

SD

My social media page (which shall remain nameless, heh) "decided" to remind me of this old thing today, which I'm only now realising was the very first thing I ever shared with you guys. Time sure flies!

Anyway, back then there was no direct integration between SC and BBox (and I was still very much finding my ways on both), thus my original upload was in retrospect quite bare boned. So when this reminder popped up today, I went back into the SC page and picked a much more fitting image to go with the song

Have a look (or a laugh) and see if you don't agree with me