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Maybe a Forest defender's heard, one providing the score (8)

Ross

I believe the answer is:

arranger

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'one providing the score' is the definition.
(I know that arrangers provide musical scores)

'maybe a forest defender's heard' is the wordplay.
'maybe' becomes 'a' (I can't justify this - if you can you should give a lot more credence to this answer).
'a forest defender' becomes 'ranger' (forest rangers look after a forest).
'heard' indicates a 'sounds like' (homophone) clue.
'ranger' sounds like 'rranger'.
'a'+'rranger'='ARRANGER'

Can you help me to learn more?

(Other definitions for arranger that I've seen before include "One who organises" , "Orchestrator" , "One who adapts music" , "Rare gran (anag.)" , "One adapting a piece of music" .)

I've seen this clue in The Times.
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