On Another Note: How do you arrange music?

On Another Note: How do you arrange music?

Hey everyone! I’m back with a fun post that’s not about science – it’s about music. I wanted to give some history on my involvement with Intermission Orchestra and then give a quick primer on how I arrange and then conduct music. Just a forewarning – I am not an expert at all at what I do. Expect…a lot of mistakes.

The Intermission Orchestra at UC San Diego, an entirely student-run orchestral group that arranges music from videogames, anime, movies and TV and plays them in quarterly concerts. Example music would be I first started back in Spring 2016, right when the org was a baby at around 20 members. Now it’s over 70. Playing in Intermission has given me so many opportunities beyond belief. I already play violin, but I got the chance to try out percussion my fourth year of college and then start viola the year after. It’s been a blessing to explore so many new instruments. But I don’t just play – I help arrange and conduct music too! I’ll get to that in my next post!

My first piece was Super Mario Galaxy 2 Staff Credits, which is the ending song to, as you probably guessed, the videogame Super Mario Galaxy 2. All in all, an extremely tiring endeavor, but well worth it. I cosplayed as Mario for conducting and even coordinated a fun Wii-like start to the music using the projector and help from our tech team.