By Susan Wenner
People Editor/Publisher
Fifth generation Floridian, Les Smith called Seminole County his home for many years but the hobby he began locally has now become his passion and a business.
Smith shared that he started playing trumpet in grade 6 but by grade 9 he entered Seminole High School and joined the band.
His connection to the county goes back to Sanford in 1949, attending Sanford Grammar School, Sanford Junior High School and Seminole High School (which was then on French Avenue at the top of the hill) and graduating from Seminole High School in 1957. He later received his Bachelors degree from University of Florida, Masters degree from Ohio University and Ph.D. from Florida State University. His military service included active duty as an Army officer from 1961 to1963 and then worked in various radio, television and motion picture facilities and on the faculties of St. Petersburg College, University of West Florida, University of North Texas and University of Florida.
“In my junior year, that would be 1955/1956, the band director, Mr. Ernest Cowley, realized he needed another bass player and asked if I would switch from trumpet to sousaphone,” he said. “I did, and I loved it! When I got to college, I played sousaphone and concert tuba in the band all four years. I completed work on my bachelor’s degree in 1961, ending (I thought) my tuba-playing days.”
He married Cynthia Canning in 1961 and they have one child, Hallie.
“Once in Gainesville, I found that some of my friends and colleagues played in the Gainesville Community Band,” he said. “They kept working on me to join, and I finally did. I bought a tuba, took lessons and finally got to the point where I could, again, function fairly decently in a wind band. After a while, a Gainesville church hired me to play as part of its brass quintet four or five times a year. Just for fun, I tried putting together a few arrangements for the church group, got some encouragement from the minister of music and my fellow quintet members, and began working on arrangements in earnest.”
He further elaborated by saying, “My other hobby, the main one, the real one, is arranging music for brass quintet. A brass quintet normally consists of a tuba, a trombone, a horn in F (French horn) and two trumpets in B-flat. I use the Finale music notation program to compose the arrangements. Once the score is completed, Finale generates a part for each instrument and an audio file of the score. I then use the Hal Leonard Company’s ‘Arrange Me’ web site to upload the score, the five parts and the audio file. Hal Leonard lists the title for sale on the digital download section of two of its online retail music outlets, Sheet Music Plus and Sheet Music Direct. On those two web sites, a customer can look at sample pages of the score and listen to the audio file, then decide whether to make a purchase. If you visit either of those retail web sites, you’ll see that the publisher of my arrangements is ‘Sweetwater Brass Press.’ That’s actually just me. I enjoy the creative process of doing these arrangements and the astounding thing is, occasionally someone actually buys one!”
Since 2007 Smith has been working at this and now 17 years later, he has 117 titles listed on the two retail web sites, ranging from pop to classical to hymns to Christmas carols to old-time hits to novelty to folk music and more.
His most popular arrangement was cited as Walter Bratton’s “Teddy Bears' Picnic,” which he said he originally arranged it for brass quintet and it sold “pretty well.”
He added, “Then I got to thinking, ‘I bet this would sound good as a tuba trio arrangement.’ So, I adapted the brass quintet version to be played by three tubas: euphonium, tuba and bass tuba and uploaded the result to the Arrange Me web site. The tuba trio version of ‘Teddy Bears' Picnic’ has now outsold every other number including the original brass quintet arrangement!”
The most fun arrangement, Smith mentioned was “actually two.” He told of a time when he and Bill Kirchhoff worked at the Hotel Windsor where Frank N. Mebane, Jr. was manager and senior partner.
“As part of the evening entertainment for guests, Mr. Mebane would sometimes get together with the house band and sing either of two songs, ‘Somebody Stole My Gal’ and ‘Has Anybody Seen My Gal,’” he said. “Bill and I really thought that was a hoot, so those two songs were probably the most entertaining for me to arrange. I framed both in a sort of ricky-tick 1920’s style. It was great fun.”
The most rewarding and worthwhile part of this, Smith shared is the process of creation.
“Sometimes, I play back an arrangement that I did previously, say several months ago, and think, ‘Wow! Did I actually do that one? It’s really good,’” he said. “Of course, it’s also rewarding when someone buys one.
I certainly am proficient in using Finale, which is a very complex program and I’m pretty good at doing arrangements for brass quintet.
I want to continue producing arrangements as long as I can.
I’ve actually expanded a little and have done several arrangements for tuba trio.”
For more information about Smith go to https://www.sheetmusicplus.com/en/explore?q=Sweetwater+Brass+Press&lang=null
