Hi there, in this post I’m going to give a brief review of the Berklee Online course “Arranging: Small Ensemble and Horns”. I took this course during the Spring 2021 semester (April - June) and it was taught by Mark Poniatowski.

Course Overview

This course will teach you how to arrange for small horn groups, consisting of 1 trumpet, 1 trombone, 1 alto sax, 1 tenor sax, and 1 baritone sax.

Note that I said “arrange”: it will not teach you to write original melodies suitable for horn sections. What’s the difference? Arranging is taking an existing composition and then making it suitable for a given section.

In terms of the workload, each week consisted of:

  • Lecture “slides”, which took 1-2 hours to go through
  • Videos explaining some concepts in the slides
  • 1 discussion exercise in which you need to answer a question, e.g. “When applying mechanical voicings, what factors other than range might be considered when choosing which technique to use?”
  • An assignment
  • Sometimes there were additional exercises for some concepts

For this post I’m going to try a different format and see how it works out. On to the good vs. the bad…

Course Content

The Good

The actual content of the course delivers on what it promises: you will learn how to write unison and harmonized parts for the horn section! Insight is given as to how the author of the course, Jerry Gates, goes about creating a full arrangement from a melody.

Every topic has examples to explain exactly what they mean.

The Bad

Maybe I’m a cheapskate but I think this course could be combined with its successor, “Arranging: Advanced Horn Writing” (which I’ll be covering soon). The first 3 weeks are spent on very introductory material (chord symbols, rhythm section arranging review, instrument descriptions) - these 3 weeks could be combined into 1. Week 4 & 5 could be merged, 9 & 10 could be merged (maybe including week 8), and week 12 could be an appendix.

There are videos for many examples but they basically mimic what’s found in the text. Also there are a lot of mouth noises in the videos… like, a lot.

Assignments

The Good

The weekly assignments were direct applications of the knowledge you would acquire in the week. The midterm and the final project were particularly interesting: take an existing song and write an arrangement for horns for 32 bars of it.

The Bad

The assignment feedback was non-existent. Multiple assignments I had were simply graded and the comment was “Good.” I’m no prodigy so I’m sure there were things I could have improved for every assignment.

One thing I didn’t like too much about the assignments is that the last 3 weeks are all about the final project, and so you don’t get to submit an assignment directly applying the knowledge you learned that week. (Instead, simple exercises are required to do.)

Live Classes

The Good

The instructor for my section, Mark, is very experienced! He gave lots and lots of good points on what to do and what not to do when creating scores, giving scores to musicians, and other practical scenarios.

The Bad

The live classes felt like they were unstructured, though it’s been a couple months since I attended them so I may be misremembering here.

TL;DR:

  • You will learn how to write for a horn section!
  • The assignments are useful to apply your knowledge
  • The course content could definitely be compacted and possibly combined with its successor course
  • Mark is a knowledgeable fellow but his feedback leaves something to be desired

I’d take this course if you want to write for styles of music that incorporate horn sections (duh!). I want to eventually arrange for big band jazz so this was a no-brainer to take.