Arranging for Salsa Bands - The Doctor Big Ears Essays

By Paul Gustav Lyons

A guide to arranging for a small horn band for Latin music, and Salsa in particular. Topics include principles of rhythm such as clave, polymeters and polyrhythms and practical advise for intermediate to advanced arrangers.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Lulu.com
• Release date: Feb 20, 2013
• ISBN: 9781300725626

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Arranging for Salsa Bands - The Doctor Big Ears Essays

Arranging for Salsa Bands - The Doctor Big Ears Essays

Copyright © 2013 Paul Gustav Lyons / Paul Lyons Publishing

All rights reserved.

ISBN: 978-1-300-72562-6

No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means including information storage and retrieval systems, without permission in writing from the author. The only exception is by a reviewer, who may quote short excerpts in a review.

Paul Gustav Lyons

Visit my website at www.pelicancafe.net

Printed in the United States of America

First Edition: February 2013

Introduction

One week in 1998 I wrote a few essays about music that I had learned primarily from reading books and composing and arranging for Salsa bands.  I had been working as a musician, music teacher, music copyist, composer and arranger for around ten year’s solid and needed material for my website. I wrote the essays in one 3 day period and I distinctly remember finishing them and then taking my then four-year-old son off to the park and sort of decompressing. I felt like I had just put down on paper what took literally ten years to learn.

At the time of the essays I was extremely paranoid of violating any copyright infringement laws. I had on my shelf a photo that I had purchased at a flea market. The photo, probably from the late 19th Century, is of a group of roguish guys with guns, clad in animal skins and cowboy hats.  These guys seemed simply bad. I remembered the old joke –What is the name of the lawman that went west to write music? Answer:  The Lone Arranger. Based on the guy in the middle looking right, I then conjured up the character of Dr. Big