Dear Prudence….

For our next chorus concert, we are doing an entire concert of The Beatles. And I do likey the Fab Four.

This also extends to the small ensemble in which I sing, called OutLoud! So I decided to arrange a song for us to sing– that being Dear Prudence.

(One of my New Years resolutions was to arrange at least one song for OutLoud!)

While I am not a huge fan of the White Album, there are a few songs on it that I quite enjoy. And Dear Prudence is probably in my top 5 in their whole catalog. There are things about it that just stick with me: the simple melody, the innocent lyrics, the bridge (awesome), Beatles-esque harmonies….

Le Sigh.

Anyway, I sat down on Saturday and started banging out the arrangement. By Sunday morning it was basically done, so I printed it and brought copies to rehearsal last night.

And we sang through it.

I wish I could report it being a transcendent experience for me, but it wasn’t. I was nervous and we only just read it down– no digging in to fix things. And it didn’t help that a majority of the guys had never heard the song before, so they had no frame of reference for the arrangement.

But it’s a fairly straightforward arrangement with just some additional harmonizations and such. And when I listen to it (in my music writing program) it’s a pretty solid arrangement. And doable since it even has piano accompaniment.

At the end of the day, though, I still arranged it. And we still sang it. And the director told everyone to keep it and do some YouTube education so they could learn the piece.

So… Maybe this will get performed in front of an audience at some point? Here’s hoping.