Arrange sheet music for any instrument and level with AI

The short answer

Tell the assistant your instrument and your level, and have it check the arrangement against that level's limits before it hands it over. The limits are public: which keys and time signatures a player at that grade reads, the lowest and highest notes, how short the notes get. We turned them into a skill, scorestarling-arrange-for-level, for 22 instruments from beginner to about Grade 8. It writes the arrangement as a new score, runs a small checking script, and asks one short question if you leave out the instrument or the level. In our test of 19 requests, the script found nothing over the line in all 18 arrangements made with the skill. The same assistant without it left something over the line in 7 of the 18.

What does arranging for a level change?

Five things, in roughly this order: the key, the range, the rhythm, what the other hand or the other players do, and how long a player can go without breathing. A level is a bundle of limits on those five. Exam boards state most of them in the sight-reading tests, which are played at first sight. For a B♭ clarinet the ABRSM test grows like this.

The keys, ranges and rhythms come from the board's syllabus. The phrase length is our estimate, because no board publishes one; it matters because a wind player has to breathe. Middle C is C4. Every other instrument has its own version of this table in the skill's references, with the source of each number.

What does an assistant do when you just ask?

We gave the same request to Claude twice, once with the skill and once without it:

I play clarinet in B-flat, ABRSM Grade 3. Please turn the attached Minuet in G into a clarinet part I can read and play.

Both gave a sensible, correctly transposed part. Without the skill, the piece stayed in G, which a B♭ clarinet reads as A major: three sharps, and a melody that climbs to A5 in bar 4. With the skill, it was moved to B♭ so the clarinet reads C major, and everything stays inside the Grade 3 range.

Without the skill: A major, notes above the range marked

With the skill: C major, inside the range

The skill's script reads the finished file and reports each limit as ok, warn (a little past) or over. For the part on top, two of its six checks failed; these are those two lines and its verdict:

over  key: 3 sharps (major)
      key signatures this level reads: 1 flat, none, 1 sharp
warn  range: B3–A5; this level F3–G5 (written pitch)
      8 notes outside, bars 3, 4, 11, 12, 21, 22, 23
Verdict: above Grade 3

It is the same check that gave the part below the verdict about Grade 3. Because the check is the skill's own, it shows that the skill and its script agree, not that an outside examiner would. Take it as a check on the limits that can be counted. It does not tell you whether the music is good.

What does the same tune look like for other instruments?

Here is the same piece, bars 1 to 4 of the Minuet in G, as the printed page has it and as the skill wrote it for four instruments. The melody stays recognisable in every row. What moves is the key, the octave and the other hand.

As printed (piano)

Piano, complete beginner

Violin, about Grade 1

Ukulele, about Grade 2

Trombone, about Grade 2

The beginner's piano part and the clarinet's written part are the same notes, a fifth below the printed tune. In C major there are no sharps or flats to read, and the right hand can stay in one position. The key is the first decision the skill makes: it picks one from the keys that level reads on that instrument, and moves the tune to fit the range.

What does it do when the request is vague?

It asks, once, and only about what is missing. When the file is a piano score and the request says only "easier for my kid", the instrument is settled and the level is not. This is the reply the skill gave when we asked exactly that for the Minuet in G:

One quick thing first: how long has your child been playing piano? That tells me how simple to make the left hand, the rhythms and the key, so it stays within what they can read and reach.

1) Just starting, first year or less (about Grade 1, the default): melody mostly in one hand position, very simple left hand
2) Second or third year (about Grade 2-3): a little more movement, a simple left-hand accompaniment
3) Past that (about Grade 4 or above): the tune stays almost whole and only the hardest spots are eased

If you're not sure, just say "default" and I'll start with the first-year version.

That is the whole behaviour: at most two short questions, three or four options with a default marked, and no arrangement until the missing answer arrives. If the request already names the instrument and the level, in grades or in plain words such as "beginner" or "second year", it goes straight to work. The steps it follows are these.

1. Find the instrument and levelfrom the request and the file
2. Ask what is missingone short question, options, a default
3. Load one referenceonly the table for that instrument
4. Arrange as a new scorethe original stays untouched
5. Check against the levelok, warn or over for each limit

Does it work for the erhu, guzheng and dizi?

Yes, with less certainty. These instruments are graded by Chinese exam bodies, and none of them publishes the ranges, time signatures or tempi for each grade. The skill's tables for them are built from the techniques each grade adds, so their confidence is marked low, and the grade numbers are the Chinese boards' own, never converted to ABRSM. Here is a song's piano score and the erhu part the skill wrote for a player at about Chinese Grade 3.

Piano score, E♭ minor

Erhu, about Chinese Grade 3

How did we test it?

We wrote 19 requests, each run once with the skill and once without it by Claude, run as Claude Code subagents. The model was not pinned, so a few runs used a different Claude model from the rest. Most used the Minuet in G, the rest Mozart's Sonata K. 545, Joplin's Maple Leaf Rag or the song above. They covered piano from beginner to Grade 5, violin, clarinet, flute, voice, drums, recorder, ukulele, erhu, dizi, guzheng, trombone and horn, an RCM and a Chinese-board level that had to be mapped, a harmonica the skill has no table for, and one request with no level at all. Each answer was scored against statements we wrote beforehand, such as "the key is on that level's list" or "the check finds nothing over the line". The tests ran on MusicXML files, not through the ScoreStarling connection.

Statements met share of those checked

First 12 requests, with the skill100%

First 12, without it76%

Last 7 requests, with the skill97%

Last 7, without it86%

In all, the skill met 150 of 152 statements and the plain assistant 119 of 149. Read that with the following in mind.

• The statements are ours, and some test what the skill teaches: naming the level as "about Grade 3", choosing a key from the level's list, saying how a mapped level was converted. Without the skill, the assistant fails those more often because it was never told to do them.
• The part that is about the music is the check. Of the 18 requests where the script could run on the answer, the plain assistant's arrangement had something over the line in 7 (the clarinet above, the horn, the flute, a Grade 2 piano, a ukulele, a guzheng and a trombone part), and the skill's in none. That check is the skill's own script, so it is a consistency measure, not an outside verdict.
• Where the plain assistant was already good, the skill added nothing: the erhu, dizi and voice requests tied. The two misses with the skill were a recorder part and a trombone part that each had three harder spots instead of at most two; both replies said so.
• One run per request. Runs of the same request differ, so a gap of one statement is not a difference.
• "The melody is still recognisable" was judged by eye on a sample of rendered scores, not on every one.

What can't it do?

It does not know your player. A level is an average, and a student who reads well and plays slowly needs a different part from one who plays by ear. Play every bar before you hand it over, and treat "about Grade 3" as a starting point.

• The numbers are our reading of public syllabi, not an exam board's rule. The grade estimate is reliable to about Grade 5 for piano; above that the sources leave most limits open.
• The Chinese instruments, the descant recorder's written octave, and the boards' grade conversions (RCM, AMEB, the Chinese boards to ABRSM) are less certain than the rest. The skill says "about" and tells you which it used.
• It measures what a script can count. Fingering comfort, bowing, tuning, balance and taste are not counted.
• It arranges; it does not transcribe. Reading a recording or a PDF into notes is the job of the ScoreStarling connection, and the checking script runs on a MusicXML file.
• An arrangement is not an exam piece and is never described as one.

Which instruments and levels are covered?

Twenty-two instruments, from complete beginner to about Grade 8, or Chinese Grade 10. ABRSM's grades are the main ladder. Where the boards for an instrument differ, we use the board that publishes the most.

Anything else, such as a harmonica or a tuba, borrows the closest table and says so, and offers a supported instrument if one fits better.

How do I use it?

The skill is open source, in the same repository as the ScoreStarling plugin: scorestarling-arrange-for-level in HaiyiMei/scorestarling-plugins. In agents that read skills, npx skills add HaiyiMei/scorestarling-plugins installs it with the ScoreStarling skills. Then ask in plain words, with the file or the piece:

• "Make this Grade 3 clarinet, in written pitch."
• "An easier version of this for a six-month ukulele student, with chords."
• "Is this score really Grade 4 for piano?"

With ScoreStarling connected, the assistant can read a PDF, a photo or a recording as the source and save the arrangement as a new score you can play, transpose and download. The original is left as it was. If you only want the piano side of this, how to simplify piano sheet music for adult students is the same idea by hand.

Sources

1. ABRSM, Woodwind Practical Grades Syllabus from 2022, sight-reading parameters and the keys and ranges table (clarinet table above). Unchanged in the Qualification Specification from 2026.
2. ABRSM, Piano Practical Grades syllabus 2025 & 2026; ABRSM, Bowed Strings Syllabus from 2024; ABRSM, Brass Practical Grades Syllabus from 2023; ABRSM, Guitar Syllabus from 2019 and Singing Syllabus from 2018.
3. Trinity College London, Rock & Pop Drums, Guitar and Vocals syllabuses (2018), and RSL (Rockschool) drums and guitar syllabuses (2018).
4. RSL (Rockschool), Contemporary Ukulele Syllabus Guide 2020, cross-checked with the London College of Music Examinations Ukulele Syllabus 2023.
5. Hong Kong Leisure and Cultural Services Department Music Office, compulsory-material syllabi for the erhu, guzheng and dizi, the only official numbers we found for those instruments, and the exam-book catalogues of the Central Conservatory of Music, the China Conservatory and the Chinese Musicians Association.
6. Mutopia Project, Menuet in G, BWV Anh. 114, typeset by Allen Garvin, public domain.
7. The skill, its tables and the full list of sources with a confidence note for each: scorestarling-arrange-for-level. Checked October 14, 2026.

Questions and answers

How do I arrange a piece for a different instrument?

Move the tune into the range the instrument plays comfortably, write it in the pitch that instrument reads (a B♭ clarinet reads a whole tone higher than it sounds), drop what it cannot play, such as the left hand's chords on a wind instrument, and leave rests where a wind player breathes. Then pick a key the player reads easily at their level.

How can I tell what grade an arrangement is?

Exam boards publish what each grade's sight-reading test contains: the keys, time signatures, lowest and highest notes and shortest note values. Compare the arrangement with those limits. A piece is rarely exactly one grade, so say "about Grade 3" rather than "Grade 3".

Can ChatGPT or Claude arrange music for my instrument and level?

They can write a plausible part, and often a good one. In our October 2026 test, the same assistant without a check left something over the requested level in 7 of 18 arrangements: a key with three sharps for a Grade 3 clarinet, or notes above the range. With the check, it found nothing over the level in all 18.

Is an arrangement the same as an exam piece?

No. It is written to be about as hard as a grade, using the board's published limits. Exam boards choose their own pieces and set their own marking, and none of this is an official ABRSM, Trinity or other board material.

Which instruments and levels does it cover?

Twenty-two instruments, from complete beginner to about Grade 8: piano, violin, viola, cello, double bass, flute, oboe, clarinet, bassoon, saxophone, recorder, trumpet, trombone, horn, classical and pop guitar, ukulele, voice, drums, and the Chinese erhu, guzheng and dizi (to Chinese Grade 10, less certain). Other instruments borrow the closest one and say so.