Music and Education

Nathan Howe’s Ten Commandments for Piano Arrangement

Some people have asked me for advice on composing and arranging music. This is the first in a series of practical advice columns for musicians.

1. Choose a good original. An arrangement cannot be good if it is based on a bad original. It’s good to pick something memorable, possibly familiar, but not overdone. Also, your life will be easier if you are arranging something in the public domain. Unless you sell a significant number of copies, it’s not worth arranging a song for which you have to pay royalties.

2. Don’t consider yourself an “arranger.” The title of arranger implies that you reorganize somebody else’s work. Consider yourself a composer and write like one. Although you use the original song as a resource, you must add your own themes and other creative elements.

3. Play the piano. This may seem obvious, but you have to play your arrangements on a piano, preferrably a real piano with hammers and strings. Too many composers just click notes onto the staff without any regard for performance practices. Some of them may accidentally become famous, but they will not become respected among musicians.

4. Don’t copy. Okay, so you are arranging somebody else’s work. That doesn’t mean you can safely use the same chords the original composer used. You must bring something new to the arrangement:

* Change the rhythm
* Apply a recognizable musical style
* Change the chord structure
* Add key changes
* Combine songs into a medley

5. Don’t forget to change. Once you think you have a nice motive going, use it with variations. 1, 5, 1, 5 might be a nice bass line for a few measures, but it will become aggravating after two or three minutes. No matter how nice your original idea is, you can’t do the same thing for the entire song and expect people to listen.

6. Don’t change too much. Although lack of variety is a problem, modern music is essentially built on repeating patterns. If you change so often or so drastically that nothing repeats, the music will also seem boring. Find your most effective patterns and repeat them tastefully.

7. Map your harmonic rhythm. This is real work, but it’s very helpful. With a red pencil, mark the chord changes in your music. Perhaps you change chords once a measure every measure. Maybe you change twice in a measure and then hold the next chord over two measures. Mapping helps you see if your timing between chord changes is too tame to be interesting or too erratic to be listenable.

8. Find an honest friend. A decent musician, if possible. Play your piece (or have him or her do it) and ask for suggestions. It is vital to have a sounding board who isn’t already in love with your piece. Always seriously consider suggestions from such a source.

9. Listen to piano music. This is an ongoing assignment, not just a one-time project in preparation for one arrangement. Listen to the type of music you would like to make. Learn to play in the style of those you admire. Don’t copy, but glean all you can from recordings and sheet music by professionals and good amateurs.

10. Don’t distribute your music until it’s right. Some pieces come in a matter of hours. Others take years of occasional editing and sitting in desk drawers. Until you are satisfied with the music, don’t try to get others to play it. That will just hurt your reputation and frustrate you. Always have more than one project in the works so you can move to something different when you are sick of a piece.

Copyright 2007 Nathan Howe - all rights reserved. Reposting or reprinting without permission is prohibited. For permission, contact the copyright owner through http://nathanhowe.net.