How to Arrange Music for Different Instruments
1. The Elements 🔥💧
Arranging music can be a fun way of playing some of your favourite pieces of music and making them your own. Not only are you able to completely change the style and sound of a song, but you can also change the instrumentation to any instruments that you want.
But…how do you actually do it? How do you approach it?
For the purposes of arranging a piece of music, we can break it down into some key elements that make up a song:
- Melodies
- Counter-Melodies
- Chords
- Bass Line
- Rhythm
- Structure
Using these elements you can deconstruct and understand how a song has been put together, which will allow you to put it back together in your own way! The quickest way to work out most of these elements is to know which scale the song is using. Most of the time you can find this out using either; the internet, the sheet music or your ears. If you use your ears, you can work it out by listening for some notes that are included in the song and then use a process of elimination to work out which scale the song must be using.
MELODIES - A melody is the narrator of a song, it's the part of a piece of music that draws the most attention and that you will be listening to most of the time. It will likely be using notes from the scale and more often than not it will be using notes that make up the chord underneath it.
COUNTER-MELODIES - A counter-melody is a secondary (or tertiary) less significant melodic line that adds a little bit of extra interest to a song. While counter-melodies aren’t always present, when arranging pieces of music, its important to try and notice the counter-melodies where possible because these are a good way of making your version of a song sound even more recognisable.
CHORDS - A chord is a group of three or more that are played together in order to form harmony. The most common form of chord is a triad as these form the basis of all other types of chords. In a regular major/minor scale there are only 7 triads to choose from and to use in a song (one starting on each note). Knowing the chords will be essential for filling out the rest of the sound underneath the melody in an arrangement.
BASS LINE - The bass line is also often playing the root note of the chord (a C for a C triad), or one of the other notes from the triad. This means that most of the time the bass note will be included already when you know what chords you are using. However, some songs have a distinctive bass riff or a moving bass line. If this is a key feature in the song, then it's important to include it in an arrangement.
RHYTHM - The rhythm can also be a distinct feature of a song and if this is the case then, once again, you are going to want to include it. However, if the song doesn’t have a particularly distinctive rhythm then you can create your own using the notes from the chord. You can also change the rhythm to affect the style…for example a dance song could become a slow ballad by elongating the notes.
STRUCTURE - Regular pop music will tend to use the verse-chorus structure, these sections are often very repetitive and so when arranging you can do a lot of “copy-paste”-ing and then tweak the repeats to make sure it doesn’t become boring! Knowing how an original song is structured means you can either stick to it, or change it to suit however you want to play. For example, if you want to put an epic 16 bar solo in the arrangement instead of a bridge section.
Once you have worked out each of these elements for your chosen song. Then you can start changing it to suit your style!
2. Instrument Specifics 🎻
One of the best ways to make a song sound unique is by changing the instruments that are being used. If you have access to other musicians then you will want to consider what those instruments are able to do and what pitch they play. It’s also important to understand the new sound and style that you are creating. For example, if you are writing a rock song for a string quartet, then it will likely sound a little more classical then it did and you can lean into that!
If you are in the position of arranging a song for whichever instruments you like, then its important to remember that you will need instruments that are capable of playing a melody, counter-melodies (if needed), chords (or chord notes) and a bass line. This is why typical bands have a bass guitar (for the bass line), a guitar (for the chords), a singer (for the melody) and backing singers, another guitar or keys (for counter-melodies and other chord notes)….they also use a drummer as well, but they just make unnecessary noise in the background…I’m joking of course, a drummer provides the rhythm and someone to laugh at!
Many instruments are able to play all of these elements, such as the piano, the guitar and instruments like the harp. In these cases, you will need to consider the physical capabilities of the musician and what notes the musician can reach at the same time.
Some instruments will have specific techniques that can be used for a desired effect. A good example of this is using pizzicato (plucking) on a string instrument. This creates a a drastically different sound from when bowing a string instrument and this can be a feature that can be included if you want that different quality of sound and a more rhythmic style. Another feature would be pedalling on the piano, adding sustain pedalling into the piano music will help to keep the chords sounding underneath your melody while your hands move around.
If an instrument that is only capable of playing one note at a time is underneath a melody, then you can also use features like arpeggios (playing notes from the chord separately) to outline the chords rather than explicitly playing all of the notes together. Arpeggios are also a great way of adding movement and rhythm to the music.
3. Style and Genre Switching 🩴
When changing the instrumentation for a song or a piece of music, the style and feel of the music will naturally change. However, you have a choice as to whether you lean into the change of style or you rebel against it. As previously mentioned, a good example of this is using a string quartet to play a rock song. The music will naturally sound a little more classical due to the song being played on string instruments, but you can choose whether to write the arrangement in a more classical style or to use the string instruments in a way that rebels against the classical style.
In order to do this you will need to have an idea as to what makes up different styles of music and what some of the idioms are. For the example of a string quartet playing rock music, you may find that it would sound even more classical with flowing lines, simple harmonies and lots of counter-melodies. If you were aiming for a more pop music sound, then you might want to play more rhythmically with some pizzicato and lots of repetition.
On instruments such as the piano or guitar, you have many different directions you can take a piece of music because they are capable of playing in many different styles.
If you want to play in a more jazzy style, you could use 7th chords instead of regular triads. For a rock sound, you could use repeated fifths or power chords (a triad without the middle note) to create a denser and more rocky sound.
Many people will be aware of which style of music they are listening to when hearing a song. The key to being able to arrange music for that style, is to listen and try and work out what features are making it sound like that style of music. Then you can try to recreate that in your own arrangement of whichever song you like!
Matthew Cawood
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