What I am about to tell you is probably going to come as quite shocking. In fact, it may totally blow your mind. Are you ready? Here goes. Not every song that’s ever been commercially successful was a great piece of music.
Did I just blow your mind? Did your world come to an end? If so, I’m sorry for starting your day off with such a horrible revelation but somebody had to tell you the truth.
Some songs just aren’t that great.
If that’s the case, what made them a hit. What was the secret sauce that the composer put into them that turned a dull piece of music and a lame lyric into a monster smash?
Well, there is a lot that goes into a musical production and many things that can account for a song’s success. We’re going to discuss one of those things today…arrangement.
Ah yes, the arrangement. That cherry on the banana split. That eye shadow, lip gloss and mascara that turns a plain girl into a raving beauty. That frosting on the cake.
If you listen to a lot of songs, especially in the pop/rock genre, you will notice something about a lot of these songs. They don’t have much movement in them outside of the arrangement. It’s really the same thing over and over with more stuff thrown on top of it.
Now there are exceptions. Listen to Uriah Heep’s “Easy Living.” That song comes at you right out of the starting gate and never lets up until the last note. There is literally no change in dynamic or anything through the entire song. Granted, it’s a short song and quite uptempo, so you can get away with it. But make no mistake about it. That song had nothing to do with arrangement. It was just brute force club you over the head and leave you bleeding.
If you want to hear songs that really depend on arrangement, listen to some ballads. These are the classic tunes when it comes to a piece of music starting out as plain Jane and finishing as Angelina Joli. Just how do they do that? Well, here’s an example of how they’d go about beefing up a ballad as the song progressed.
Typical song might start with an intro. This intro will usually just be a solo piano with a little reverb on it. Actually, maybe a lot of reverb on it. You know how those ballad pianos sound.
When we hit the first verse, nothing changes. We continue with that ballad piano. Now, if the first verse goes into a second verse then maybe the drums will quietly come in on the second verse. If there’s no second verse and it goes right into the chorus then we’ll probably have some laid back drums and quiet strings.
Okay, the song is still kind of dull. So when the next verse starts we begin adding some instruments to the song. Maybe a bass comes in with some French horns softly in the background. Then when we get to the next chorus the violins join in.
Then we get to the bridge or instrumental break and the power ballad lead guitar joins the mix. Finally, on the last chorus, the whole orchestra joins and it’s wall to wall sound until finally we get to the last line of the chorus, the tag, and everything drops out except the piano. At the end, we might hear some soft strings conclude the piece.
That’s what we call building an arrangement. We’ve taken a song that, if played just on the piano, would have sounded dull and lifeless and turned it into a raving beauty.
Now don’t get me wrong. Not all ballads are dull and lifeless. Some are quite beautiful and would even sound good played just on the piano. But there is no question how much an arrangement adds to a song. In many cases, it can make or break a song.
So, when you go about writing a song, any song, do you do it with the arrangement in mind? Well, you can, but it’s not a requirement. Sometimes an arrangement will just come to you. Other times, as you’re writing, you’ll hear the strings coming in there or the timpani and cymbals charging their way into that last chorus.
And then there are those times when you just don’t have a clue what to do with a song. You’ve recorded the basic piano and vocal and can’t even begin to imagine where to go with it.
When that happens, go to the video tape. Read a book on arranging. Listen to some other songs in the genre you’re writing for. See what other arrangers have done.
Contrary to what a lot of people believe, arranging is not composing. You can be a great writer but a lousy arranger or you can be a lousy composer but a great arranger. You have the ability to hear a great song and know just what to do to make it better. You know just when to bring in each instrument.
However you go about arranging your songs, the only real rule is that you want the arrangement to build over time. Imagine you start your song off with the orchestra in full force and then suddenly after the first chorus you have the rest of the song with just a piano and vocal. Your audience is going to not only be let down, they’re going to be scratching their heads wondering what just happened.
Granted, that’s an exaggerated example. But you would be surprised how many beginning arrangers drop the ball in this area. They box themselves into a corner where there is just no place left to go after the previous chorus. They’ve already brought in every instrument known to man so the final chorus of the piece won’t be any more dramatic than the one before it. That’s bad, very bad.
Think of your arrangement in terms of a line graph where the graph begins at zero and then goes up to whatever number it reaches at the end. You want that line to be always on the rise even if it’s slowly on the rise. In fact, the slower your arrangement progresses, the more dramatic the effect. Of course if it’s too slow, your audience might not stick around for the finish. That’s the tricky part.
So think about your arrangement when you’re writing your songs.
A good one just might make or break that song.
For The Love Of Music,
Steven “Wags” Wagenheim