The Complete Idiot''s Guide to Music Theory

Part 6:
Arranging
246
A song outlined using the Nashville Number System.

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Chapter 19:
Lead Sheets and Scores
247
A four-part choral arrangement.
Jazz It Up for Big Bands
Another popular ensemble—particularly among high school and college 
musicians—is the 
big band
, or 
jazz band
. A typical jazz band includes a lot of
instruments, which results in a fairly large piece of music. For example, whereas
a choral score might get two groups of staves on a page, a jazz band score typi-
cally takes a whole page just to display all the different instruments.

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Part 6:
Arranging
248
What instruments are we talking about? The typical big band has some or all of
the following, listed from top to bottom on the score:
◆
Woodwinds
: Flute (sometimes played by a sax player), soprano sax (some-
times played by an alto or tenor sax player), one to three alto saxes, one to
three tenor saxes, one or two baritone saxes
◆
Brass:
Three to five trumpets, three to five trombones
◆
Rhythm section: 
Guitar, piano, bass, drums, other percussion (such as
congas or tambourine)
That’s a lot of instruments to put on a single page! But, as you can see in the
example on page 249, they all fit.
When you create a big band score, you have a choice of how you deal with
transposing instruments. You can create a concert key score, with all instru-
ments written in concert key; if you take this approach, you have to make sure
you transpose the individual parts when you create them. Alternately, you can
create a transposed score in which each instrument is written in its transposed
key; this type of score might be harder for the conductor to read, but it more
accurately represents what the musicians see on their individual parts.
Creating parts for the rhythm section is particularly interesting. In most cases you
can use slash notation and indicate the chord changes, but you don’t have to create
fully realized parts. The big exception to this is when you have important rhythms
that you want the rhythm section to reinforce; you can note these rhythms using
slash notes, as shown in the fifth measure of the example on page 250.
Strike Up the (Concert) Band
An even bigger band to write for is the 
concert band
. Unlike a jazz band, a con-
cert band includes virtually all the brass and woodwind instruments, along with
a full percussion section—snare drums, bass drums, timpani, marimba, and so
forth. A concert band is almost like an orchestra, but without strings.
Concert bands evolved from traditional marching bands. Not only did the musi-
cians get to sit down, the instrumentation was also augmented from the slightly
more Spartan marching ensembles.
When you’re writing a concert band score, you include the following groups of
instruments, in top-to-bottom order:
◆
Woodwinds
: Piccolo, flute, oboe, English horn, clarinet, alto clarinet, bass
clarinet, bassoon, alto saxophone, tenor saxophone, baritone saxophone 
◆