High Level Song Arrangement (Web Blog Article Link)

[Jim Fogle]

https://ledgernote.com/columns/music-theory/song-arrangement-tips/

There are a few forum users that create fantastic song arrangements. I'm hoping they will chime in with their thoughts about the content of the blog article as well as some ways they've found that Cakewalk by BandLab can assist with song arrangement.

I'm a beginner and have no formal music training so my thoughts reflect my background.  Song arrangement is going to greatly depend on genre, mood and setting.  A rock song will be arranged differently than a big band standard will be arranged differently than an orchestra score.  Happy songs are typically arranged in major keys while sad songs are in minor keys.  A song will be arranged differently for live play (where resources MAY be limited) than it will for studio play.

What do you think?

[CJ Jacobson]

12 minutes ago, fogle622 said:

A rock song will be arranged differently than a big band standard will be arranged differently than an orchestra score.  Happy songs are typically arranged in major keys while sad songs are in minor keys.  A song will be arranged differently for live play (where resources MAY be limited) than it will for studio play.

What do you think?

I think all songs are arranged differently, depending on who is writing it. Everyone has different styles, even if you are writing for the same genre. Also, everyone has a different understanding on music theory. That plays a lot in arrangement.

Think of it like this. You can have 50 painting of a sun setting into the ocean. painted by 50 different artist. All 50 artist will go about painting it a different way, but still ending up with a sunset into the ocean.

[chuckebaby]

I tend to stay away from giving songwriting advice. I will help/assist with the engineering process and I'll even go as far as giving my opinion (which doesn't always go over that well) But Its hard to tell someone, "you shouldn't do this or do that". The artists who have gone on to become very successful are the ones who dared to be different.

I learned a lot about songwriting from listening to the Beatles. Their earlier albums were classic pop blueprints. But when you look at what they did on Sgt. Peppers, They threw out the classic pop song mold and created bizarre arrangements. Some would consider this an instant fail. It turned out to be genius.

[marcL]

I totally agree! You cannot "learn" music and all other kind of art like science. Maybe you can learn some basics about chords and arrangements in school/university (as I did), but it is not the key to write brilliant songs and arrangements! Also, it is not the only thing just to do it different than everyone else. It requires a lot of intuition and phantasy.

Me too, I learned a lot of listening and analyzing my favorite songs. But I/we began immediately to do it in our own way. In the beginning it was much easier to play the songs of our idols, but then we were persistently working on our own songs until they came to life! So the playing ideas of my band mates have influenced my songwriting and arranging, too.

[msmcleod]

Interesting topic.

I had one of the devs at work come up to me asking about a project at home he was working on, to try to write music based on AI.

Resisting the temptation to laugh and tell him how mad he was, I gave him a few pointers and outlined the scale of the problem, but also recommended some reading on theory and code libraries (e.g. Juce).

However one thing I did say, is if he restricted his compositions to doing say Bach chorales (which are based on a pretty strict set of harmony rules), then *maybe* he'd get some usable results.

But in general trying to quantify musical arrangements, or come up with a set of rules on something so subjective is more or less impossible.

[msmcleod]

Going back to the original topic, there are a bunch of pretty standard arrangements for pop songs.

If you took all the Beatles songs and wrote down their arrangements as far as intro/verse/chorus/bridge etc, you'll see a pattern that matches a lot of songs today.

Likewise with chord progressions.

One fun exercise for writers block is to restrict yourself to one of these arrangements and/or a particular chord progression. Then see what comes out.

[Jim Fogle]

One person known primarily as an arranger is Jimmie Haskell, http://www.jimmiehaskell.com/about-jimmie-haskell.html.  Another famous arranger was Dave Bartholomew, https://www.rockhall.com/inductees/dave-bartholomew.   Last, one person well known for his arrangements was Tommy Newson with the Tonight Show with Johnny Carson, http://www.legacy.com/ns/tommy-newsom-obituary/87687489

I think it's interesting that many arrangers also produce.  If you've watched any episodes of the television show, Songland, you'll notice it appears there is as much time and effort spent on arrangement as on crafting words.