Strings, Strings, and More Strings

I bundled up the arrangements, I proofread the sheet music, I emailed the sibelius files to the producer and tomorrow they will all have been tracked by some phenomenal string players.

Today is an exciting day.

These five songs offered a really great study in what strings can do. Typically, I think strings are underutilized in most records. Most producers I've worked with tend to treat strings as a purely textural instrument, usually to make things sound more important. Got a sad songwriter with a guitar? Add a cello playing whole notes, suddenly it's even MORE sad. Got a pop ballad with a lot of high notes and an urgent plea for love? Add a quartet playing whole notes, now it sounds EPIC. And so on and so forth. You'll have more quirky uses of strings, like pizz strings as stand-ins for more typically plucked instruments like mandolins or banjos, but for the most part, pop has figured out where it likes its string players - bored, staring at a page full of footballs.*

It's my opinion that when you have an instrument that can do a lot of stuff, and you have players who've been training since probably age three to play at an exceptional level, at the very least you should give them something fun to do. Otherwise, why bother hiring them?

Of course, there's also the song, which you NEVER want to get in the way of.

RULE ONE OF ARRANGING: ABOVE ALL ELSE, DO NO HARM.

Just like being a doctor. If somebody brings you a song and says "Doctor, I don't know what to do. It was looking so healthy, but now its awesomeness levels are dropping. Can you give it a shot of strings," the last thing you want to do is cause an overdose. You want to get the song up and running as soon as possible, and ideally you want to make it so nobody notices you were even there - no matter how much surgery is required, you don't want to leave scar tissue. Unless they come to you and say "put some awesomeness all over this," in which case you're less of a doctor and more of a cyborg-builder - a laser-eye here, a string sweep there, some horn stabs here, and a jet-pack.

Anyway, we had the five songs. All of them were kind of love ballad-y, but they all had their separate flavors and a different set of strengths and weaknesses. Song 1 was an inspirational ballad. Song 2 was a midtempo, cheery love song with a shuffle feel. Song 3 was closer to the driving rock end of things, and was the darkest of the five. Song 4 was a tender ballad. Song 5 was a lot like Song 4, but with less room to move around and fewer melodic motifs to write around.

Oh, and the session was in a week and I had two other records I was working on that week. Ack!

So, how to go about it?

Arranging Checklist (Big Picture):
1) What are the strengths of this song?
2) What are the weaknesses of this track?
3) What emotional content in this song can I augment?
4) What musical elements should I contribute? IE, Hooks, Melodic Support, Harmonic Color, Just Texture. Additionally, what moments need highlighting?

There are also a ton of technical questions - what instruments will the strings have to contend with, what ranges are free and which are all filled up, so on and so forth. This is the textbook stuff. But the above is the most important list - half your job is objective (what works, what doesn't), and half is subjective (what does this feel, what do I want it to make people feel, and hwo does this connect with me?).

Anyway, let's get started!

SONG ONE
So, Song 1 basically has all strengths and almost no weaknesses. It is, from start to finish, a perfect pop song. The form is locked down solid - so, Verse, Chorus, Verse, Chorus, Bridge, Verse, Chorus. The rhythm section and vocals already provided a great sense of build and delineated the verses from each other, so I just had to follow their marks and make the contrast even greater, mainly by introducing variations in the auxilliary parts from section to section.

The main emotional thrust of the song was, summarized, "life goes wrong, but if you trust and have faith, things will turn out all right." I may not agree with it, but he makes an excellent case for it. So we have two opposite emotions - pain/longing, and triumph. I brought this out by using some frustrating leading tones in the verse (7 going down to 6, 4 to 5) and a lot of use of suspension. Transitional material consists mainly of climbs and runs. Chorus material is big wide intervals and some 4th leaps.

(Important note: Composing is rarely this technical. Right now I'm providing analysis of the moves I made in jargon, but during the writing process it's mainly "Oh, this needs something tender" - sing something tender - write it down. Afterwards, you discover that you had a frustrated leading tone, and you tell everybody you did that on purpose.)

Because the song is so life-affirming, I get to have more fun than normal - lots of tension and release, grand gestures, et cetera. At the same time, the strings don't really get their own "hook" and only move during the empty space - they're massive, but out of the way. Like a really polite elephant who knows how to maneuver well.

SONG TWO
First thing to remember - this song shuffles. I try not to write too much swing into a string part, because string players typically have the least experience swinging, and unless you know who your players are it's best to keep their material idiomatic to the instrument and the repertoire with which they're familiar. For every excellent violinist who loves jazz, there are nine who wouldn't know swing if it were wearing a polyester shirt and gold medallions. And unless I'm bringing in my own players, I like to know that the players will be able to handle the material.

Anyway, to the song:

1) It's laid back, it feels good, there's some non-diatonic harmonic movement.
2) The song doesn't really build too much. I did some subtle variation in parts, but nothing too drastic.
3) It's just a feel-good song, so don't try to make a big statement. This highlights one of the things that an arranger should be conscious of - when to make a song epic and when to keep it more naturalistic in its emotions. A pet peeve of mine is when somebody is expressing a really simple sentiment and the music is WAY too over-the-top. So I made a point not to have the strings do anything too soaring or magical. I wanted to keep things chill.
4) Now, I could have filled a lot of the empty space, but the artist gave me a really helpful sketch of a string part he'd been working on for the song, and I used this not just as a template but as a first draft. It was sparse and mainly highlighted a few key lines. "I've had a lifetime to rehearse" had a really tender line under it, and "I think it's safe to say I love you" had some playful portamento-ing, so I kept those and tried to keep out of the way of the rest of the song. Do no harm.

Incidentally, a really helpful thing on this project was that the artist had made two sketches of string parts for the songs before the producer decided to pull in outside help. It's extremely helpful to meet with the artist and get a sense of what they like and where they come from. As arrangers and orchestrators, it's important to remember that the two main things we offer are outside perspective and technical experience with the instruments, and that's it. Arranging lets me work with incredibly creative people, and the more of their ideas I can incorporate into my work, the better. Art should be a conversation, not an assembly line.

Anyway, onto...

SONG THREE
Sometimes you hear a song and something in you connects with it immediately, so you throw away the checklist. I did that with this one. The moment I heard it, I had the melodic hook, I knew the texture I wanted, and I just went to town on this one and it remains one of my favorite arrangements. And I'll tell you about it NEXT TIME.

to be continued...



*Footballs = whole notes. Coz they look like footballs. Eh?