Last night, I started finishing off what I've been working on for a week: arranging an a cappella version of Bukas Palad's O Hesus, Hilumin Mo (Oh Jesus, Heal in english). By 12:46 AM, I finished my first major choral arrangement.

Yeah, I've been arranging some stuff before, like the additional voices for some songs on Mass of Creation and the intro part for BPOCC's version of Hangad's One Thing I Ask, but all of these are less taxing compared to what I just worked on. I took on a song that was recorded originally as a solo performance, so everything other than the melody came from the creative juices of yours truly.

Now, you see I don't have any formal training in music other than those flimsy piano classes which I didn't even bother completing the first grade when I was wee little. All I have is the knowledge I acquired from all the choir rehearsals, services, concerts I had participated or had witnessed. But I can say that the main inspiration for me to even try my shit on choral arranging is the great Robert Delgado of the Madz and Prayer of St. Francis fame. His works are such beautiful pieces of art. Paulo Tirol and JC Uy, both from Hangad, are also on the list of my primary influences (someone said my project sounds like a Hangad material).

I personally don't care if people would criticize this work of mine. When I was doing some minor arrangements before, some people would have comments about them which are negative in a way, as they disagree on the style and not really on the technical aspect of chorale arranging (which I think is more valid and constructive). Actually, I think they gave comments just because they know that I did the arrangement, someone who seems an unlikely candidate. If other "established" arrangers did them, they would not say anything. But my personal goal for this particular project is purely for self-gratification. And the end result? Is personally satisfying. So booyah if you will not like my work. As far as I am concerned, I am satisfied with what I have done with it.

Click here for the MIDI of my O Hesus, Hilumin Mo arrangement. In my experience, it sounds above average if you play it on QuickTime Player (converting .mid to .mov). However, there are absent notes on the middle part of the song (a definite when I choose to pick Violin as the instrument to play the notes) and the tempo swings weren’t successfully applied to the file. But other than that, there should be no problem.

I will give the score to those who will be interested (hehe, I wish!) after I convert it into a PDF file.

So YAY to my personal achievement!

Me. Write. Soon.