Mariachi Band - Level 2 - Digital Download SKU: A0.1404760 Composed by Traditional Mexican Folk Song. Arranged by Donald Jay Smith. Mariachi. Mariachi Band. 9 pages. Donald Jay Smith Music #987820. Published by Donald Jay Smith Music (A0.1404760). This is from a collection of pieces I originally arranged for my Middle School Mariachi Band at Curtis Corner Middle School in Wakefield, Rhode Island. Since that time, I have used these arrangements with all ages through college, pros, and especially two families that happened to have the correct instrumentation between the parents and their children. At the middle school, the strings were more advanced than the trumpets and I needed to deal with young string players only being familiar playing sharp keys and brass players only being familiar with flat keys. My solution for one of the first arrangements was in “Mexican Hat Dance”. I assigned the violins two simple double stops (their first double stops: one finger in low first position while bowing both the A and E string-the first finger on the E string is an F chord and first finger on the A string is a C7 chord). I split the four songs, two in flat keys two in sharp keys. The trumpets were assigned several unfamiliar pitches in the sharp keys like G#, but with plenty of repetition and not technically challenging figures except in the bridge of “Mexican Hat Dance”. I intended to cover that part of the song on my trumpet, but the trumpets always rose up and nailed it!The set we usually played included: “La Cucaracha”, “Cielito Lindo”, De Colores”, and “Mexican Hat Dance”, all available here (soon).
