Composition/Arrangement Advice?

[TomSinnett]

Hi Janek
I discovered your music about 6 months ago, and absolutely love it! You're a very inspiring musician and person, and I am really impressed that you take so much of your time to answer questions in this forum. I'm a bit new to this, so sorry if this question is a bit long, but here goes!

As part of the final year of my degree, I have to do a major project. I have decided to write/arrange 10 pieces for big band (5 originals, 5 arrangements) to be performed in the new year, and was just wondering if you had studied this much, and if you had any advice on breaking out of the same old structural patterns in composition? I seem to be falling into the trap of melody-development-blowing section-head out and would like to be a bit more structurally inventive........Also, any other advice based on your experience writing for larger ensembles would be greatly appreciated.

Thanks for taking the time to read this.
Tom

[janekbass]

Tom,

thanks for the thread and the kind words.

When it comes to breaking out of any mould I guess the best thing to start with is nothing that you know already. Sounds like kind of a contradiction to start doing something you know nothing about, but it's probably the place where most innovation is going to happen. I would use the knowledge you already have about melodic development and just take that a bit further instead of just suddenly arriving at a blowing section. Maybe you can develop the inner moving parts of the band by maybe what may have been a rather "notey" melody a lot more sparse. First take several notes from your original statement, stretch them out maybe just to whole notes to start with as an exercise, and then using some of the rhythmic aspects of the original statement of the melody, develop counter melodies in the inner moving parts and voicings while you're new longer top voicinngs sustain above.

That's just something that comes off the top of my head, but there are just so many things that you can do to enhance an arrangement. Familiarity of melody is a huge thing to a member of your listening audience, and it helps thread the story of what you're trying to say musically. That doesn't necessarily mean that you have to be blatant with the re statement of the initial melodic figure, being really subtle and masking that development can be a great way to create tension. There's also the option to actually think more like a song writer, and not make the piece of music 9 minutes long with tons of solos. Make the composition intro/verse/chorus/verse/chorus/bridge/chorus/coda and keep it at around 4:30. That way you are more focussed on strong melodic statements that will more than make up for some soloist blowing over some changes.

All just thoughts right off the top of my head right now, but hopefully you can find something in there that might be applicable to the situation you find yourself in right now.

Easy,

Janek