Let’s take a break from the eggnog and turkey, and talk about the fundamentals of our craft.…

What is an arrangement? And how does it apply to our playing on an arranger?

There is much to be learned from listening carefully to instrumental records. The same principles apply when you have a singer, but it is easier to notice when there isn’t! So, what’s the first thing you notice when you listen? Is it the melody? Is it the rhythm? Is it the chord progression?

I think that, when you listen to an arrangement, for me at least it is the change of instrumentation in different segments of the song. It is very rare in a pro arrangement for the same instrument to carry the melody through the whole song. It is also very rare for the same level of backing to plow on through the whole thing as well! It is that contrast between sections that turns a simple melody into an arrangement.

Yet, all too often here I listen to user demos that uses the same sound and backing for the entire piece. Our modern arrangers generally make it all too easy to quickly change sounds that we are playing, and the overall complexity of the backing completely at will. So why do so many of us not think of this? Perhaps it is what I alluded to earlier… We are thinking about the melody, the chords, and the rhythm.

The thing is, that is just the START of the arrangement, not the arrangement itself..! Not until you have added that extra level of interplay between sounds and backing does the whole thing come together. It is that interplay between instrumental voices that allows a 3–4 minute song to not be boring by the end of minute #2!

So maybe, in these final days of such a terrible year, while the turkey and dressing digests, perhaps we could make a New Year’s resolution to think more carefully about this aspect of our music? Try to tell yourself, if you have played 16 bars on one sound, perhaps it is time to change to another! Set up foot switches or easily accessible buttons to completely change your left hand and right hand sounds, and use them like crazy!

If you listen to the great arrangers (the real ones, that is!) like Nelson Riddle, or Quincy Jones, or whoever you like best, try to take note of how often the lead sound and the backing changes. Then pattern your arrangement with this in mind. Let’s make 2021 the year of the arrangement! After all…

We all play ‘arrangers’!

Happy New Year everybody!

🎹🎄🎹❄️🎹🎄🎹

Diki, I smile when I read your post. You are so right in many areas.
I wanted to play guitar like Johnny Smith, he was a jazz guitar player. In my second year of studying guitar, I put away all of his books. The I sat and listened to him play. Bought every record album. Years later I found myself voicing chords in the same way. My jazz lines were his Jazz lines. I had become a mixture of Johnny Smith and John C.

Listen and keep listening to the music you love. Then try to create what you have in you. Do not get so involved in technical thinking that it hurts your playing. I taught my guitar students all the scale modes, then I asked them never to refer to them by name --- or place them in a song. Just play you.
Only my pinion -- I wish you the best in health and joy in the coming year, John C.

I believe very strongly in your approach, bruno...

I think that getting ‘into’ anything is best achieved by osmosis, not book learning. Sure, you can read transcription after transcription of different Bird solos, or read the scores of Beatles arrangements, and yes, with diligence you can play them note for note.

But to capture the ‘soul’ of what you’re trying to achieve, nothing beats immersion, up to your eyeballs, for as long as it takes! Throw away the books, forget about analyzing anything, just close your eyes and let it wash over you for hours, days, weeks. What your mind is doing while you do this is it is building a filter... Instinctively you know whether what you play is idiomatic, is a good representation of the ‘soul’ of what you are trying to do. And that is SO much more useful than to be able to trot out a perfect reproduction of Giant Steps or whatever, but without any true understanding of the reason WHY you are playing the notes..!

I use this method for so much stuff, from getting my head around a novel musical style, say zydeco, or township, or enka, or trying to play more like a guitarist, or an oboist or a cuica player! If you let it wash over you long enough, you build an internal sense for when you get it right, and much more importantly when you get it WRONG! After all, there’s only so much you can do with a keyboard to nail a style or instrument that isn’t a keyboard. But there are a million things you can do wrong, and if your internal filter isn’t set yet, you don’t know it....

Chord voicings no guitarist could play, lines longer than a flautist could breathe through, notes well outside the range of a tenor sax, rhythms no Cuban conga player would play, playing the bass on the ‘one’ in a one drop reggae tune... These are all realism killing things, but you don’t learn them from a book or transcription.

Let that warm bath of musical knowledge wash over you, sink into your skin, permeate your soul, and soon enough you’ll recognize them the minute you play them and note to NEVER play them again! After all, perhaps that’s the goal... Not to learn what to play - but to know instinctively what NOT to play!

Diki, you have a way with words, nice.
John C.

Thank you for sharing your thoughts Diki. I’ve always loved a good arrangement especially a new take on a well known standard. That’s the great thing about this time of the year, is hearing both the old and new arrangements of holiday classics.

Great posts with very valuable usical thoughts. You can learn so much by just listening.

Thanks, guys. I’ve been wanting to start posting on broader topics than the usual ‘mine’s better than yours’ that have mired here for so long. A gardening tool is a gardening tool. What matters is the garden you grow... 😎🎹

One thing that made "Year of the Cat" so great was the solo...But the solo started out with Classical Guitar, then came the Electric Guitar, & then finally the Sax...When the Sax comes in to release all the energy of the other 2 instruments, my hair stands up on my arms. That Sax is so beautiful...