Strings, Strings, and More Strings: Part Deux

Well, the recording session happened, everything went awesomely and I'll be hearing the results as soon as the singer/songwriter recovers from some acid-reflux-induced vocal issue he's been having.

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.

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?

The Four Song Day

Today has been a very productive day, in that I've written four songs. Now, that sounds impressive at first (and it is - this productivity is nearly unprecedented for me, unless you count the week I wrote five string quartet arrangements in five days, including one also for horns and two guitars). But "writing a song" usually doesn't mean starting from scratch.

My files are filled with little pieces of melodies, choruses, song structures, phrases, and other notes. Usually in writing a song one element shows up, goes into a few other elements, and after awhile a song develops. Sometimes I can compose a full melody and chords to a song in thirty minutes if I'm working very consciously and paying close attention to rhythmic and note values. But it's not really a complete song until I've attached passable lyrics. Note, passable - they don't have to be great, and nothing has to be final. But until there is some sort of marriage of words and music, it's not a song, it's still an idea. Today was productive because after revisiting some old correspondence I'd had with a friend, I found myself moved to finish a number of songs, so I did. I expect a few of them will suck tomorrow, but at least one is very good and I'm sure another will be on the way. Three were from existing material and one was thrown together from scratch.

One in particular, tentatively titled "Post-Post Mills" seems to be the keeper of the four. It's kind of in the style of Bruce Hornsby, but more than that it's in some ways a sequel to another song of mine, "Anatomy." They're both in the same key (G), they begin with the same chords (G, Gsus2/B, Csus2), and the melody starts on the same two notes and two beats. They're also about the same people, and deal with similar subject matter, albeit very differently. In advance of any allegations I'll say outright that I troped a lyric from my apartment mate, Dave McNamara. I wrote strings for his new EP, Kid Twist (out soon! Stay posted!) and my favorite line from that is "We age with time / You said you just can't combine your life with mine." So I felt it necessary to include in my own song, "I can't combine / the ways you live your life and I'll end mine."

I suppose what's been most surprising to me as a songwriter is that I've discovered that the more detached and objective a writer I become, the more emotional and involved my songs appear to be. For years I operated under the myth that emotional writing took place when one was emotional, that one didn't enjoy the writing of it and that one had to be feeling it as one put it down. More and more I find that emotional writing requires me to draw from an experience without really opening it up, and that I write my most sincere, brutal work when I'm actually feeling pretty good. Today, for instance, I found myself re-reading old ichat conversations with an ex-lover, and for whatever reason I found myself not depressed but thrown into an excellent mood. This excellent mood continued as I wrote a song that, if my interpretation is right, alludes to suicide a few times. And I felt great afterwards, too. While the song itself was bleak, spiteful, and resentful, I found myself feeling optimistic, open, and giving at the end of it. On the many occasions that I've written songs from an emotional place while feeling very biting emotions, they've tended to be dirges - not the type of music I would want to listen to. So, go writing! Not nearly as miserable as people sell it.

The other day was pretty productive as well, as I got to sketch out song feel and structure for two of Madison's songs. She's going off to Spain in October and in May when she gets back we're going to head into the studio. Working with Madison is probably the easiest of any client I've had to work with - there's absolutely no need for diplomacy or figuring out each other's wavelengths, or even having to reword things. It's simply idea-another idea-go, and in thirty minutes we're done. Which is how it should be done. You can hear in music when it sounds like people really had to work to communicate ideas, and when they just bounced back and forth. Alanis Morissette's Jagged Little Pill, which was written with Glen Ballard (who has written, it should be noted, every song ever written), was famously written in a few sittings, with many of the vocal takes being taken straight from the demos and improvisations they recorded, and I think it's clear that the songs, whatever their imperfections, come across as stronger and more complete than more perfectly sculpted songs that were crafted over time. I'm hoping Madison's record preserves that type of spontaneous feel.

Oh, and she let me transform her slow, 6/8 ballad into a rolling disco/philly soul dance song with motown strings. Score!

What else is new? Plenty, I suppose. For now, I'm going to state three non-career goals for this upcoming school year. 1) Work out regularly with Matt, because if he can gain 20 pounds of muscle after being my weight his whole life, so can I, damnit. 2) Learn passable French. All part of my plan to win her back. 3) Learn how to become a happier, more optimistic person. See second half of number 2 for details.

The New Blog

Around six or seven years ago I switched from Blurty to Livejournal. It seemed the right thing to do at the time - after all, too many of my peers had already made the jump and I was in danger of being left behind. Lemming that I am, I abandoned the awful layout of blurty for the half-decent layout of livejournal, in the process leaving behind the adolescent angst, unfocused attempts at stylistic flourish, and overall lameness that had defined my early-to-mid high school years. Livejournal represented a new era in Andrew maturity.

Well, we all know how that went. Now that I'm on the cusp of 23, entering my last year of school and beginnig my professional life it's time I delete that old, probably embarassing blog and start again with something a little drier, a little more thought out, and overall more positive.

Oh, and I'm totally riding the coat tails of Joel and Brett. Sorry, guys, I'm a poseur and whatever the singular form of sheeple is (sherson?).

So, what's new in my life? First off, I'm writing this from my last day at a temp agency that's been one of my many, many jobs this summer. Tonight is the first night I've had off in a long while. I've been music directing locally in Brooklyn, working this part-time day job, and producing and arranging up in Westchester and Stamford. The more I work on records the more it becomes clear to me that I'd rather be a producer/arranger than a singer/songwriter. I don't have to worry about whether a record or song is in keeping with who I am or my image or any other ego stuff - it's simply answering two questions - "does this sound good?" and "is this what the artist wants?" I have more opportunity to lose myself in the work and less opportunity to lose the work in myself.

Also, producing is AWESOME.

So, right now I'm focusing on finishing school while getting a few solid records under my belt, tightening up my arranging abilities, becoming an all-around studio keyboardist (better rhythm, experience with organ, e pno, and synths, learning how to tune pianos), networking, and starting up a few production companies with the goal of not needing a day job once I get out of school.

Tonight is my last free night in New York for the summer. After this it's production up, then two nights upstate working on the records, airplane to California, sister's wedding, and then back to school for my last year.

Hello, new blog!