Gladiolus Rag (1907)....Scott Joplin.

[Steve Harrison]

To my ears, this is one of Joplin's best rags and the trickiest one yet to arrange for banjo. When I first set eyes on the piano score, it frightened the pants off me, it was written in Ab/Db, there were octave notes everywhere and two x four 8ve. runs.

I experimented with various keys and settled for F/Bb and shortened the four octave runs to two octaves by doubling back on some of the notes. I also put some of the bars into a lower octave and all in all, it makes a pretty acceptable arrangement for banjo.

I've added a second banjo part, the midi of which I've recorded an octave lower than written so that it doesn't overwhelm the melody.

The midi and scores are in the library....Steve.