Arrangements

First, I’d like to apologize to my regular readers for my fairly long absence. Lately, many things have been happening and have taken me away from my post. Hopefully, this won’t happen again.

I mentioned a while back that most songwriters tend to write their songs in an “unplugged” style. I tend to do this myself, most of the time. The harmony I incorporate with the voice, through the lyrics.

Then comes the time to arrange it.

Usually, this is fairly straightforward. You’ve written the song, and while you’ve been writing it and playing it and hearing it inside your head. You usually know how it’s supposed to sound.

Yet, every once in a while, you get that one song which doesn’t behave like the rest.

You should try different things. Changing the tempo. Playing the rhythm with a keyboard instead of a guitar. Changing the strumming pattern. Taking out a verse, adding a bridge. Putting a verse where a chorus should be.

But what if the structure is perfect the way it is?

About sixteen years ago, I wrote this fairly simple song. Two chords in the chorus and two more in the verses. Quite simple, actually. But it sounds good and it has the potential of becoming a hit. But I’ve never performed the song. Why? I could never figure out a proper arrangement for it.

In my mind, this was a fairly upbeat song. Fast tempo, lots of riffs and distorted guitar. The whole band playing along and having fun. Problem is, it didn’t work. I never got it to sound right.

I tried to record it seven times, using seven different arrangements and none of them worked.

A few weeks ago, I was discussing this with a guitarist who used to play with some of the big names, here in Québec. This is one song that I want to record for my next demo, but I have to make it work. He asked me to play it. I did. He listened. He borrowed my guitar and started finger-picking it. Very slowly. I sang along.

To my surprise, it worked! It was so simple! Yet I’d never thought of it…

Which is why I want to talk about working with others for arrangements. I don’t mean that you should turn over all of your songs to others so that they may arrange them, but you should play those more difficult songs to others to get their input.

Some people are very good at this. Actually, there are some people who’s jobs it is to arrange songs. That’s all they do.

You see, some songwriters always get stuck at the “unplugged” part. They have no idea how to arrange their songs. If that’s your case, then that’s OK. It doesn’t mean you won’t make it. It just means that you’ll need someone else to arrange all of your songs for you.

But if you can’t find a particular arrangement for a song, it might be a good idea to try and enlist someone else’s aid. As I said, some people’s jobs are to arrange songs, it’s what they are good at. Some people have a knack for it. If you know someone like that, I suggest you stick close to them.

Of course, some people will ask for money. Others may ask for a co-writing credit. Normally, you shouldn’t share the credit with someone unless they make a major contribution. You may want to try and only share the composing credit and not the lyrical one. Remember our arrangements? 50% for lyrics and 50% for music. Offer them to share the music credit and they end up with 25% of the total credit instead of 50%. And your name should come first. They can’t arrange without your music, can they?