Posts tagged "jazz arranging"

The first major project in this semester's jazz arranging class was a simple, 8-bar melody orchestration for brass and rhythm section—all told, no more than 15 seconds of music. The idea was to give us an opportunity to hear how we're doing before applying what we know to a full-length big band chart. The project was due on Monday, and we recorded them all live in a two-hour demo session Wednesday afternoon (I got to play in the trombone section, which was both fun and repetitive).

In keeping with tradition, I thought I'd post a recording of my project, along with a few comments. To tell you the truth, before I heard it out loud with the right instrumentation, I thought I had done a pretty good job. Once I did hear it, it still wasn't terrible—but there are a few things I wish I had done differently. Here, to begin with, is the recording:

Just Friends, 8-Bar brass orchestration

And, for reference, the score:

And now, some comments:

1. In bars 4-6, I decided to go with unison trumpets supported by trombones in density (one of several stock techniques we've been learning). I do like the effect, but the trombone harmonies I decided on are extremely plain. If I did this exercise again, I'd probably change the chord on beat 3 of bar 5 to add some extra color. Either that, or have the trombone chord slide up a half step and then back down again with the trumpet lead.
2. The trombone rhythms in 4-6 are completely out of sync with the trumpets. If nothing else, move both half notes back one eighth note to line them up with the trumpets, and take out that silly punch on beat 1 of bar 6 (the rhythm section can handle the setup for beat 2 just fine on its own).
3. I'm also not a fan of my trombone lead lines; I chose them more with regard to their intervallic relationship with the lead trumpet than for their own melodic integrity. I'm especially unhappy with beats 1-2 of bar 6, where the lead trombone actually moves down a third at a key climax of the passage—it just doesn't seem to fit. Either of the above two corrections, however, would seem to fix this problem by keeping the intensity relatively high until after bar 6.

So, hopefully by writing this down I will have solidified these particular lessons in my head, and might be able to avoid them on my full big band chart. That's due in April, so if you follow along, I imagine you'll get to find out if I succeed or not.

Yesterday evening I spent a lot of time hammering out some new lead lines for various sections of my jazz arranging project. This is probably the longest piece of music I've ever written, so I'm finding it a bit difficult to keep my eyes on the big picture; instead, I'm discovering I have a tendency to "chunk" things too much, such that each successive section of the piece follows right after the one before it with very little transitional material.

Actually, in Wednesday's class we talked about this issue quite a bit; the lecture was given by guest artist Lyle Mays, and he spent most of his time discussing how each section of his piece proceeded naturally from the next. It was a bit eye-opening for me; up until now we haven't really spent much class time on how transitions are supposed to work.

That said, the topic has come up from time to time; here are some of the techniques I've learned so far, some from my lab instructor and some from the Lyle Mays session on Wednesday:

1. Overlap. Before switching to a new texture, introduce it as a background, while the original texture is still going on. For instance, if you're about to hand the melody off from the brass to the saxes, bring the saxes in with background figures a couple of bars beforehand. This one has been suggested quite often, and works quite nicely.
2. Pedal point. Kind of an obvious trick, but it's one of the few I know at this point: when transitioning between choruses, adding a vamp of several bars over a pedal bass note can help build tension. (I think I overuse this.)
3. Sequencing (and other development strategies). Again, towards the end of a section, it's kind of nice to take a piece of the last melody phrase and pass it around to different instruments in different keys/registers. This seems to help build tension and volume; I'm using this technique to introduce my shout chorus. (Seems like this is often combined with pedal point.)

If you need melodic material for a transitional section (or background figures), take a look at the themes you've used already, including the head melody. There's probably material there you can adapt (or just flat reuse) to make your transitions work. You might think you're cheating, or that the audience will be annoyed at having to hear the same material again, but if you don't overdo it, it actually lends a great deal of cohesion to the piece.

So that's what I've learned so far. Anybody else have any ideas?

This semester in jazz arranging, I'm learning the basics of big band writing; in fact, the primary project for the whole semester is a single big band chart. The project is broken down logically into smaller assignments by chorus: for example, one week I might have to bring in the lead line for the head chorus, and the next week I'd follow it up with the melody for my sax soli. I like the approach; I think my brain is hard-wired to think of complex wholes in terms of small building blocks.

Sometimes, however, I find myself using too many different kinds of blocks. Each week my lab instructor has given me the same advice: "don't write everything you know all at once." Case in point: my original head chorus started with a simple unison small group melody, but expanded to harmony and then counterpoint within two or three bars. By the end of the first 32 bars, it had built itself up into one hot mess.

My lab instructor gave me the usual advice: "don't write everything you know;" in this case, he meant that using too many different textures in a single 32-bar chorus could be a bit overwhelming, taking away from the cohesion of the section and leaving you nowhere to go for the rest of the chart. Instead, he suggested, why not start the small group in three-part harmony and then have one instrument wander off into counterpoint occasionally throughout the chorus? So that's what I did, and the end result is a lot better.

I think this is sort of a common problem among artists in new mediums; we get so excited about the new expressive tools at our disposal that we forget simplicity. We also forget that the observer of the art will not pay it nearly as much attention as we did when we were making it; and so something that seems repetitive or over-simplified from the artist's standpoint may actually be just right in the eye (ear?) of the beholder.

This is not, of course, to say that complexity is to be avoided at all costs …it's just that it might be a good idea to build up to it instead of introducing it all at once.

Well, my first semester of jazz arranging at UNT is drawing to a close; I thought I'd go ahead and post some of the better recordings here.

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