Composing and arranging advise for a newbie

So I'm teaching myself in small steps as I go along and so far have come up with the following exercise for myself.

1. Choose a simple song (something like Mary had a little lamb)

2. Harmonise the melody

3. Then move onto arranging and orchestrating the harmonised piece.

This is all from a newbie/beginner perspective so Im leraning/fumbling as I go.

Any advice or constructive criticism of this approach would be appreciated.

I'd read that harmonising simple songs is a good activity for beginners so have decided to try it and now want to exapnd it into a arranging exercise.

I'm using software to do this as I cant play an instrument and have been teaching myself theory as I go along.

Is this a good way for a newbie to appraoch composing and arranging ?

thanks for any help

I personally don't favor this method of harmonizing melodies by someone else as much as it is popular, and tend to find it unnatural, if not even mechanical. So I wouldn't advise you to do that, but to invent your own melodies and harmonies around them, considering we often have the harmony in mind when we think about the melody. Now, this has something to do with actual composing.

OP:

I'm speaking as a hack arranger, novice composer and future music teacher here.

Because you are currently teaching yourself music theory, I'd advise you to take what you're doing one step further: take existing melodies AND harmonies and then orchestrate them. Like in jazz improvisation, you have to learn to play in existing styles before being able to create an effective original style. Imitation is the best teacher and the precursor to effective originality.

Km7 does have a point in that taking someone else's melody may encourage banal thinking, but on the other hand it should encourage you to take existing ideas and freshen them up in ways that aesthetically work for you. It's what I've been doing for a couple years arranging pieces. It also gives you practice in "filling in" the tonal blanks of harmony.