Anyhow, I'm not going to finish the whole series because, let's face it, there's only so much interesting material I can pull out of arrangements you can't see to songs you've never heard, especially if those songs won't be released for another four or five months. But here's a little bit of fun about my favorite arrangement of the bunch.
First off, the basic stats of the song - Fm with a direct modulation to Gm, bpm 110 except for a click-less ending. The chords are as follows per section:
Intro: Fm | Db Eb | Cm Fm | Db Eb | 2x
Verse: Fm | Db Eb | Cm Fm | Db Eb | 2x
Prechorus: Fm | Db | Eb | Cm 2x
Chorus: Fm | Db Eb | Cm Fm | Db Eb | 2x
So, except for a bit of variation in the Prechorus, we pretty much have a looping chord progression in an entirely diatonic song (in my favorite minor key - Fm).
So, the first questions are, what in this song works?
1) Except for the key change, the chord progression totally works. It provides a driving framework and a definite darkness of mood.
2) Melody has a LOT of motion, which gives me freedom to move around.
3) Driving, steady drum part (by the excellent Dave McNamara, whose solo work you should buy right now off of itunes. Do it!
4) Very clear lyrical concept.
So what do I gots to do?
1) The instrumentation does very little - we need a lead line hook that can drive the song forward and grab you.
2) More coloristic development and variation upon repeats.
3) The harmony is very triadic. If we want to bring out the darkness and nuance, we'll need a few funky extensions and inversions.
The moment I heard the song a melody popped into my head:
The first idea you have is usually the best. I decided to base the entire arrangement upon three techniques - highlighting the existing lead melody (matching or harmonizing a vocal or piano line), harmonic embellishment, and development of the string melody. The String Theme pops up in the intro, at selected places to demarcate where sections begin and end, and always during the chorus.
The song has a really strong drum entrance - we open with some sweet piano and the drums make for a considerable darkening of the mood, so I thought I'd double the impact by having the strings enter at the same time, on non-chord tones (the chord is a Db^7, the strings are playing a Bbm - giving us a nice rub). They consistently fill in 11ths, 13ths, 9ths, and 7ths, and at times the cello does counterpoint with the bass guitar to provide the illusion of inversions.
The melody, meanwhile, pops up all over the place in little variations - at the start of Verse Two:
And at the start of prechorus three:
But the most fun came in the form of my favorite form of variation: The Copy-Paste error.
Whenever an arrangement is going along at a brisk pace and everything's really cooking, a copy-paste error is bound to happen. You think you counted the bars correctly, you drop everything in, and suddenly BAM, everything is off by an eighth note or a half or even a full measure. This happens in Sibelius, in Logic, in ProTools - any software I get my hands on, I'm bound to do a copy-paste error. I always catch them before sending out the project, but I listen to them first because, more often than not, they actually sound really cool. My first solo EP (coming out soon!) closes with a copy-paste error that we liked so much we kept.
For the string arrangement about which this entire post has been written, the copy paste error occurs after almost 36 straight measures of strings, so we're in serious need of a break. In the copy-paste error, the string theme at the top of the chorus - the most consistent aspect of the arrangement - comes in a full measure late. Meaning, our rhythmic sense of the phrase is different, the melody's color completely changes, and we get a full measure of no strings, which our ears are very grateful for. After that comes another copy-paste error, this time off-setting the pattern by an 8th-note and giving it a little extra push out of the song.
Human error and software error, when kept in check, can be our greatest allies in the making of any artform. Be open to your mistakes - they'll often be the coolest things you do.
