ARRANGING
CHRISTMAS STRINGS | Jared Haschek
It doesn’t matter what church variety you are, going to be just perfect for you at Christmas. the horns, I’m sure I would have brought the
or whether your play hymns, Hillsong or hard That’s when you get to be creative (because, strings in here instead, doing a similar thing. I
rock, if you’ve got some string players in your you know, you’re part of the Creative Team, voiced the horns close together roughly around
congregation, Christmas is the time they are right?) and write your own arrangement, tailor middle C, and I wasn’t afraid of having some
guaranteed a gig. made for your church musicians. I got to do this nice warm dissonances. The very first horn
for Hillsong Worship’s 2017 Christmas album, chord is an F#m7 chord, and I voiced it with
The next problem, though, is what to do with The Peace Project, so I’m going to pull apart my the trombone on the E below middle C, then
them. You might have a great improvising arrangement Hark and explain my approach. the French horns on the F# and A (a 2nd and
violinist who can just do their thing with the
4th above), then the flugelhorn on top on the
band, but once you have more than one, things For The Peace Project, we triple-tracked middle C#. Having the 7th as the lowest note
can get messy. They could play the melody an 8 piece string section (4 violins, 2 violas, of my chord didn’t matter, because the horns
off the lead sheet from Song Select, but that’s 1 cello, 1 bass) and an ‘orchestral’ horn were playing in the context of a produced track,
pretty boring. Or, if you’re doing exclusively section of trumpet/flugelhorn, 2 French horns, which had a bass guitar down on a low F#,
well-known modern Christmas songs, you can and trombone. Because I had these warm, providing us with our actual bass note. Having
buy a fantastic string arrangement from Praise orchestral-sounding horns, I had a bit more the interval of a 2nd on the bottom of our horn
Charts, or an orchestration from Word Choral freedom with how I used the strings. section just warmed things up.
However, there’s going to be songs that don’t The first entry in this song is during the first pre- I continued with these harmony horns right
fall into those categories. They might be chorus (0:32 in the recording), where the horns throughout the song, only giving them breaks in
originals, or just not-so-famous gems that are come in playing 4-part chords. If I didn’t have verse 2 and pre-chorus 3. This gave me plenty
or LifeWay.
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November 2019
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