Using practice parts for a fugue

A while back, I made a string orchestra arrangement of Bach’s Contrapunctus I from The Art of Fugue.  I am currently working on this arrangement with my KSU Philharmonic orchestra as a last minute add-on piece to our October 1 program.  My orchestra is a mix of non-music majors and music education majors playing secondary instruments.  It’s a fantastic, fun group and we are making great strides in our music making.

We are in a bit of a time crunch, so utilizing MP3 tracks as a practice tool is a good idea.  A fugue is about the melodic lines and how they interact with each other.  Also, the rhythms can be somewhat tricky to count.

Since I already had the arrangement of this piece in Finale, it was simple to export as a standard (type 1) MIDI file using the “save as” feature.

From there, I transferred the MIDI file into Garageband using drag & drop right into the empty area of a new Garageband project.  Separate string tracks were created and I added a metronome click.

Finally, I exported MP3 tracks for each instrument using the “share” menu.  Prior to exporting, I raised the featured instrument’s volume. To deemphasize the other tracks, I lowered their volume and changed them to electric piano.

Hope this arrangement and the tracks may work for your orchestra!

Download MP3 practice parts: 

MIDI File: Contrapunctus I Fugue

PDF of the arrangement: Contrapunctus I Fugue

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