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hey, welcome to 12tone! as you might imagine, I've listened to a lot of music by a lot of
different artists, some good, some not so good.
a lot of that comes down to personal taste, of course, but over the years I've noticed
a couple patterns that tend to indicate that the songwriter is relatively inexperienced.
these signs come in all different shapes and sizes, but at heart, most of them seem to
be making the same basic mistake: they're trying to be clever.
why is that bad?
well, let me explain.
(tick, tick, tick, tick, tock)
I think the best way to show what I mean is with an example, and since I don't want to
dunk on anyone else's music, I'll just use one from my own work.
I've mentioned this a couple times before on this channel, but for those of you who
don't know, my bachelors degree isn't actually in composition or theory: it's in vocal performance.
that's right, in another life, I might've been a professional singer.
anyway, in order to get a performance degree, you have to do what's called a jury, which
is basically a giant showcase.
you spend months writing charts and rehearsing a band, then you put on a show for a couple
judges who decide whether or not you're actually good at music.
at my school, a jury consisted of 7 songs, each with its own requirements.
like, one had to be a musical theater piece, another was supposed to be a jazz song, and
so on, but the one I want to talk about today is the arrangement piece, which could be any
style we wanted, but we couldn't just cover someone else's version: we had to arrange
it ourselves, to show that we had that skillset too.
I decided I was gonna end my show with my own take on Gethsemane from Jesus Christ Superstar,
because back then I could hit that high G. oh, and because it's one of my favorite pieces
of music ever written, but mostly I just wanted to show off my power metal highs.
now, for the most part, I'm pretty proud of this arrangement.
I think I made some really cool changes, like switching the verses to 12/8 for a more complex
time feel, and moving the dynamics around so the song started with just piano and voice,
giving it this really nice intimacy and making space to ramp up the intensity later on.
but there's one decision that, looking back, I really regret, and it showed up in the final
chorus.
it was my grand finale and I wanted to make it big, so I just went for a kitchen sink
approach, bringing in every instrument I possibly could, and one of the instruments I had access
to was a background singer who could sing in a coloratura range, which is a really high
soprano. for reference, when I asked her how high a part I could write, she told me she'd
be fine as long as I didn't go above F6, which is two and a half octaves above middle C.
so yeah, I knew I wanted to get some of those piercing highs in there, to create a sort
of angelic-choir effect.
or at least, that was the goal.
and in theory, it was a good idea, but this is where things started to go off the rails,
because I didn't want to just write a simple whole-note background line.
no, that'd be too easy, and I wanted to show off, so instead I wrote this series of arpeggios
that ran all up and down in that coloratura register, never repeating, getting gradually
higher and more rhythmically intense throughout the section.
it was hard for her to learn and even harder for her to sing, but maybe that would've been
worth it if it made the song better.
except it didn't.
I don't have the original score anymore, I lost it when my hard drive got corrupted last
year, but from what I recall, it was just kinda busy, distracting, and ultimately forgettable.
it didn't need to be there.
so what should I have done instead?
well, if I was doing the arrangement again today, I'd probably give her a call-and-response
countermelody to play against the main vocals, or I might just have her harmonize with me,
but I didn't do that because I wanted to look clever.
I wanted to show that I could write a line like that, and I didn't stop to think about
whether that line was really what the song needed.
and this is what I mean when I say trying to be clever can be a bad thing: a piece of
music is so much more than the sum of its parts, and trying to do as much as you possibly
can with every component can prevent them all from coming together into something cohesive.
in my experience, this tends to show up most in the rhythm: I've seen a lot of unnecessary
syncopation and unnatural phrasing that doesn't really feel like it's connected to what's
happening around it.
it's just there so that this line doesn't sound the same the last one.
this is especially common in covers, where the arranger takes a phrase that was totally
working and jumbles it around to make sure it sounds, I don't know, special? it almost
feels territorial, like you're making sure every part of the song has your fingerprints
on it so that any credit it gets goes to you instead of the original artist, even if you're
not actually making it better.
another place this can happen is the harmony, where you bust out a fancy chord just to show
that you know that chord exists, and I'm definitely guilty of this too.
it's an easy trap to fall into, because once you have these tools it can feel almost wasteful
not to use them, but the thing about advanced harmonic devices is that they're, well, advanced.
they have really specific sounds, and they're not right for every situation, so they're
best used sparingly.
it's good to have them in your back pocket for when you need them, but you have to know
when you actually need them.
same goes for weird melody notes: they can be an absolute revelation if they're executed
properly, but if you just toss a #9 over a major triad for no reason, it's gonna sound…
questionable.
but of course none of this is to say that these clever devices always make music worse:
if complex rhythms and fancy chords automatically ruined songs, we'd never have invented jazz.
so what separates good uses of advanced techniques from less good ones?
well, in a word, context.
experienced songwriters and arrangers aren't just being clever for the fun of it, they're
choosing chords, rhythms, and notes that fit with the overall vision of the piece.
different styles of music have different cleverness thresholds, and jazz is near the high end
of that, but even there, it's not enough just to do weird things.
the art is in making it work.
so how do you actually do that?
well, if you'll excuse another college anecdote, one of the classes I had to take was an introduction
to audio engineering, and in that class, the teacher mentioned that, when he was working
on a mix, he'd always keep a copy of the raw track open so he could go back and compare.
it's easy, when you're hours deep into a project, to get so focused on the small tweaks you're
making that you lose track of the bigger picture, so it helps to occasionally listen to what
it sounded like before you started changing things, to make sure what you're doing is
actually making it better.
and I think a similar approach works here: if you're writing a song from scratch you
may not have a raw track to compare it to, but you can effectively create your own by
simplifying the line as much as possible.
doing some weird syncopation?
try playing it straight.
using fancy jazz chords?
swap them out for triads.
singing a weird note?
replace it with a nearby chord tone.
it may turn out that you were right the first time, but hearing both versions side by side
is a great way to double check that your embellishments actually serve a musical purpose.
if they don't, you're faced with a tough choice.
the most obvious answer is to follow the old writing advice and kill your darlings.
that is, don't let your affection for one piece of your work hurt the rest of it.
if the part isn't working, drop it.
let it go.
maybe write it down somewhere and try it out again in another song, somewhere where it
might work better, but if that's not here, then you're doing a disservice to both the
song and the idea by keeping it.
it can be really hard to take out things you like, but ultimately if you're making the
song better, it's worth the cost.
but what if that doesn't work?
well, that's where things get tricky.
sometimes the simple version is just too bland. sometimes you need to use the clever device,
but it's refusing to cooperate.
what do you do then?
well, then you go deeper.
you steer into the skid, commit to the trick, and make sure you're actually supporting it.
that, I think, is the real secret to using these sorts of techniques: you never just
use them on their own.
there's always more going on in the background to help make them feel natural, so if you're
not there yet, try looking at what's going on around it to see if anyone else can help.
maybe you need to bring other instruments in on the rhythm, or foreshadow it in a previous
section.
maybe your fancy chord needs the melody to sing a particular note, or maybe your melody
needs its note incorporated into the harmony.
that's the great thing about arranging: you're effectively a god. you get to make all the
decisions, and if you really want something to fit, you can move heaven and Earth to make
it happen.
the only thing you can't do is pretend it's already working when it's not.
or, I mean, you can, but probably don't.
that sounds like a bad idea.
one band that really mastered the art of doing complex things without feeling forced was
Pink Floyd, so I thought I'd take this opportunity to recommend my friend Polyphonic's amazing
series on Dark Side Of The Moon over on Nebula.
he's taking an incredibly close look at the entire album, making a whole video about each
individual track.
the first four episodes are already up on Nebula, covering side one of the album, and
I'm really looking forward to the rest of it, so whether you like Polyphonic's work
or you're just a fan of Pink Floyd, I highly recommend checking it out.
plus you'll be supporting Nebula, which is a new streaming service built by some of YouTube's
top educational creators, including Kurzgesagt, Patrick Willems, Up And Atom, and, for some
reason, me. we're really proud of what we've built so far, and we've even managed to arrange
a deal with CuriosityStream where, if you sign up for their site using the link in the
description, not only do you get a free month of access to all their amazing documentaries,
you also get a free Nebula account for as long as you remain a CuriosityStream user,
and with annual plans starting under 20 bucks a year, that's a ridiculous amount of educational
value.
so yeah, link in description, go watch Polyphonic's Dark Side Of The Moon Project, and while you're
there, check out the Working Titles series too, it's all about great TV show intro sequences,
including one I made about my favorite show, The Prisoner.
and hey, thanks for watching, thanks to our Patreon patrons for making these videos possible,
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