NOTES FROM THE AUTHOR

I first wrote this arrangement during the 2020-21 quarantine school year, as the final project for my online composing class. I wanted to add some elements that weren’t in the original song since I thought writing an arrangement that was “too similar” to the original would make me a fraud, so I added pizzicato accompaniment for a sense of playfulness and texture. In the original, the vocals, orchestra, and added percussion culminate into a duet, so I made up for my lack of these assets with moving eighth notes, sustained chords, and gradually increasing dynamics.

When revising my arrangement again this year, my first thought after listening to the machine-generated audio was that I had mistranslated the original song somehow, turning the accompaniment messy and chaotic. My second thought was that I should have chosen a better song; the melody of “A Million Dreams” is repetitive, the lyrics somewhat childish, the story arc filled with overused movie tropes.

But I suppose the song makes sense, looking back, for the angsty teen I was at the time that I first arranged it. Nihilistic, cynical, but wishing for a happy ending anyway. At its core, “A Million Dreams” tells a message about a passionate guy hoping for a future of endless possibility. It describes a sentiment most artists can relate to: a desire to be a part of something bigger and to leave an impact on the world.

My arrangement was an interpretation of this message that reflected how I felt in eighth grade, wanting so badly to matter to a world that didn’t seem to care, to be known and seen and understood by strangers who only saw my face as computer pixels. With the music theory knowledge I had since gained, I cleaned up some weird notes and added a section but was otherwise proud of my eighth-grade creation.

Although my arrangement wasn’t entirely true to the original score, it was, in a way, true to how I felt as a person. And I hope the arrangement rings true for you, too.

Josephine Tu ’25

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