Eh, why not. Arranging tips

Deciding WHAT to arrange (assuming it hasn't been decided for you already):

take into account who your audience is, and what your forces are. Have a clear understanding of the sonar capabilities of your instruments so that you can listen to works and imagine where the melodies/sonorities would lie best on which instrument and where. Or perhaps you want to REinterpret the sound to a new medium. The important thing in order to save your time is that you can conceptualize something that will work before you start putting pen to paper. Otherwise it's like working with a puzzle that may or may not be missing pieces.

Once you have decided on a piece to arrange:

Step 1: determine the legal ramifications of what you're doing. If you're going to arrange without getting permission, realize that you open yourself to action. For works owned by record labels in the USA, permission is required. In some countries it's different (for example in England I don't believe you need to obtain permission for non-commercial use). No one will sue a starving composer, but if you end up making lots of money, lawyers have a way of getting interested.

Step 2: If you haven't already, determine your forces

Step 3: Map out the form of the piece, then map out the form of the arrangement, as well as any notes you think you might forget. Do you want it to be shorter because of some performance time constraint? Figure out where you can steal some time without sounding unnatural. Perhaps something interesting in an entire section of the piece doesn't work with your forces: cut it! Perhaps you can repeat a pivotal section that DOES work with your forces.

Step 4: Set up all commonalities. Does the piece have an instrument that you can carry over 100% literally? Write that first. You may as well put down what you can the easiest!

Step 5: what I do at this point is straight up composition. You write some sections tutti, you write some sections by voice. This part has no tricks, it's just work.

Random tips:

-don't be afrad to change registers. It's an arrangement, it will NOT sound exactly the same. You can either do your best with mimicing what was originally written, or you can take it a slightly different direction so it works, or you can reinvent it entirely.

-don't be afraid of rewriting a harmony or two or harmonizing a melody line if it'll tastefully spice things up without changing the feel. The idea is for the original tune to be completely recognizeable and sound natural. The "cooler" the piece sounds, the more natural it is. But if you get TOO "cool", it starts NOT sounding like the tune. Should not be done capriciously, make your purpose totally clear throughout the piece: if you want to deviate from the original tune, you have to be consistent about it.

-listen to feedback and criticism. If the musicians are complaining, you've probably done something wrong. The idea is to write something PLAYABLE.

Just felt like sharing.

Peace!

This is all very good advice. Something I'd also add is use instruments that will fit the piece and can actually play the stuff in there. I've played badly arranged pieces, and then you just want to go :headwall:

Yea, I think arranging is a fun thing to do. I do it to learn new orchestration tricks ;)

I agree, this is all good advice. I should be common sense, but I somehow lose that when arranging. I tend not to be a very good arranger because I have feel this bizarre obligation to be as faithful to the original as possible; I may consciously realise that I don't have to do that, but somehow I always try, resulting in a transcription, not an arrangement.

I broadly agree with everything here. My approach to arranging (and I do a lot of it) is to think of the piece very much as an original composition for which some aspects have already been determined. Some people I write for get a bit funny about the fact that I've changed or added something from the original because they regard it as gospel and think my job is just to re-score - literally to double lines - for different forces. Whereas, I conceive of an arrangement as being a largely new piece, and try to make it fit the ensemble as well as possible rather than just copying and pasting from the original. If I try to think of the piece as 'just an arrangement' I tend to produce lower quality work. Sometimes this can take the music in a very different direction - I did an ABBA arrangement recently in which the orchestral colour in one section was completely the opposite to that in the song, whilst at the end I managed to get parts of four different songs together in counterpoint. Needless to say, neither sounded strange because I made it fit the medium and the rest of the piece.