The Cat Bus Clarinet Duet

On Friday, I released a video on my YouTube channel, Christy M Creations, of Cat Bus from My Neighbor Totoro. My Neighbor Totoro is one of my favorite Miyazaki movies, and I can probably owe it all to that cute, fluffy Totoro. It never speaks, but it is still the cutest thing in that movie.

The Cat Bus, however, is just what it sounds like. A cat that is shaped like a bus. It's supposed to be the spirits' preferred form of transportation, and invisible to adults. Best of all, though, it has the cutest, most upbeat theme. Because of this playfulness, I thought it would make a good arrangement. A duet seemed the best option because the theme is not terribly intricate and thus didn't need an intricate arrangement. The lower part needed a lower voiced instrument, so clarinet made the most sense and making the first part also a clarinet seemed the best option for the easiest arranging.

The next part was made a lot easier by the book of Miyazaki piano solos I had. With the sheet music, and the soundtrack on repeat, I was able to arrange Cat Bus fairly quickly. The part that took me the longest was finding a key that would make it lay the best on the clarinet. One of the most important things to consider when arranging for clarinet is what we call the break. It's the transition between the lower register and the upper register. There's actually two or so breaks, but the one that stands the biggest problem is going from the throat tones (no fingers, or minimal fingers) to the long mid-tones (all fingers). The other consideration was that I wanted to make the lower part go as low as the clarinet allows. Once I had that figured out, it was time to practice.

Practicing is probably at least 70% of my life right now, and this took a while to practice up to par only because it was kinda low on my list for a while. It's cute, but it's not particularly challenging, and practicing for my job tends to take precedence.

The filming was fairly simple once it was all practiced up, though. Just set up the camera and go sort of deal. I did use a metronome hooked up to my headphones to try and keep the parts together. It worked for the most part, but I think next time I'll also record the audio for each part as I go to make sure the parts are all perfectly in time.

I hope you enjoyed my "behind-the-scenes" sort of look at my arrangement of Cat Bus. Watch it here: