Hi everyone.
I've been transcribing a few songs by ear for a while but I never shared them with anyone, so I've decided to dysty sharing here instead of keeping them to myself. Right now I've only actually written up one song in a complete score that i posted to MuseScore last year, but I'm hoping to make a lot more.
Rustboro City Theme (Pokemon Ruby & Sapphire)
My MuseScore upload (https://musescore.com/user/5249116/scores/5244041)
YouTube (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dtoOhwP162c)
ZIP archive with .mus/.mid/.pdf (https://mega.nz/#!PzwBkQ5K!Dx7y6U1CWurM1nIDFaEEIlyJyeGAlZnzaDXLRqztbd0)
I'd love to hear feedback and notes on formatting so it's the best it can be before I try submitting it to the site.
First things first, welcome! It's always nice to see new faces trying out arranging.
Before I get into giving feedback on the arrangement, I'd just like to say that I'm astounded that there isn't an arrangement for this yet on-site. You've made a pretty good start, but there are some things to work on (which is totally normal as you say this is your first full arrangement.)
- The first thing to do is to have a look at the formatting guidelines (https://www.ninsheetmusic.org/forum/index.php?topic=481.0) which tell you exactly how your sheet has to look for it to be accepted onto the site. Since it looks like you're writing your stuff in musescore first, it might also be a good idea to check out Trasdegi's handy program (https://www.ninsheetmusic.org/forum/index.php?topic=10136.0) that helps when transferring from musescore to finale. If there's anything that you need that your finale can't do (which might be a lot of things if you're using notepad) then post here (https://www.ninsheetmusic.org/forum/index.php?topic=685.0) and one of us will try and sort it out for you!
- Worthy of its own comment: rhythm groupings. These are something that a lot of people struggle with/find confusing when they first start, so no worries that there are some errors in your sheet. What you need to do is (unless the rhythm is really simple) show the third beat of the bar (in 4/4). This means rewriting some note lengths in your arrangement; let me give some examples:
Bars 4-5 with incorrect rhythm groupings
https://cdn.discordapp.com/attachments/492809359961882625/544104002111930382/unknown.png
Bars 4-5 with correct rhythm groupings
https://cdn.discordapp.com/attachments/492809359961882625/544104219825799178/unknown.png
Bars 8-9 with incorrect rhythm groupings
https://cdn.discordapp.com/attachments/492809359961882625/544104336402153482/unknown.png
Bars 8-9 with correct rhythm groupings
https://cdn.discordapp.com/attachments/492809359961882625/544104489104441346/unknown.png
There are some more places with incorrect rhythm groupings, but it might be good to see if you can find them yourself! (If you have any trouble with that, do ask though!) - The trills might be more appropriately written as mordents. (That's probably how the performer will play them anyway.)
- The bass looks mostly accurate, but there are some places (particularly at the ends of bars) where you've missed extra movement in the bass. I'd have a look through the bass part again and see if you can find those bits that you've missed (remember that if you're having trouble hearing it you can always slow down the audio on youtube.)
- At the moment, this arrangement only includes the melody and bass. That's alright, but it might be nice to try and get some more of the piece in. Often a good way to do that is to include harmony underneath the melody line in the right hand where possible (the textures often works out nicer that way, rather than putting the harmony in a low register with the bass.)
- You've got some nice articulations written in at the final bar that really add some flair at that particular moment. I'd suggest seeing if you could make the rest of the arrangement a little more stylish by adding articulations elsewhere (though there is definitely something to be said about not overpowering the arrangement with vast amounts of articulations). See if you can find some happy medium.
I hope that gives you enough stuff to think about, and if you have any questions about anything I've said (or other stuff), definitely ask!
Thank you so much for your feedback. I've never really paid attention to rhythm groupings, so I was not surprised in the least that I had a lot of work to do there. I'll take your notes into consideration and continue to work on it!