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Kabukibear

Happy Strumming!

Location: Palm Beach Gardens, Florida

Joined: Mar 22 2007

Composing means you are writing completely original music. If you write down a melody you have in your head you are composing music. Arranging means you take music someone else has composed and alter it. It can be as small an alteration as changing the chord voicing so that it fits the range of a particular instrument. For example, if you were to take a piano piece and not change the actual piece much, just get it to fit the limits of a guitar, it's considered an arrangement. However, they all bleed over. You might take a piece of music and make it almost unrecognizable. This is still considered arranging because it's based upon someone elses music. It probably can be argued that this is composing as well. Transcribing is simply writing out a piece of music, note for note. For example, if you were to listen to Beethoven's Fur Elise and write it all out for the piano, this is a transcription. A strict transcription is the music, note for note, for the instrument it was intended. You can write out a piece of music for a different instrument, but almost always it wont' be completely note for note and in the proper ranges so you can't call it a direct transcription; it starts to bleed in on arrangement.

So in closing...
Strict Transcribing - You write out the music exactly as played for the instruments that are being played
Loose Transcribing/Strict Arranging - You take someone elses music and try to stay as true to their original piece as possible, altering the music only when necessary for the instrument you're arranging for
Loose Arranging/Loose Composing - You take someone elses music but you change it around quite a bit, adding your own musical ideas
Strict Composing - You write your own music that's 100% (or as close to it as you can come) original.

I just made up these terms but this is how I view it, hope it helps.