Textures in Arrangement or the Lack Thereof
I wrote this post last Friday, but didn’t get a chance to post it til today:
I am at the Northeast Regional Folk Alliance here in upstate New York and I have seen literally dozens of people perform. All of them gave me something to write about, and one in particular gave me my idea for a column today.
A good songwriter with a true voice and interesting chord progressions. He was also the inspiration for the column about an “entre” into your song. I found that though the songs seemed good, the melodies interesting and musical, I was not drawn into any of the songs. The lyrics passed over me like a misty rain. I knew I had gotten wet, but had no sense of being rained upon.
In any event, this is about texture and dynamics. This singer-songwriter definitely used dynamics, but it didn’t have that much impact for me. The reason being his two side men, both good players who knew their instrument and were musical, were ultimately inexperienced as sidemen.
For some reason, when we first begin to play an instrument, we think we have to play all the time. And that is what these two sidemen did.
My pal wrote four songs, one of which was completely different than the other three, though two of those three you could tell came from the same composer.
But thanks to the two sidemen and they way they were used, every song had exactly the same texture, the same colour. And these side men did everything that they do, in every one of the songs. All the songs sounded the same, and though there was good playing going on, there was not the musical conversation that makes a good rendition great.
Using the same sounds or textures on everything is to make it all the same. Imagine if you put large amounts of ketchup on say, eggs benedict, ice cream, steak, and zucchini. It would all taste like ketchup no matter what you cooked.
Think of your arrangements with that in mind. If you strum every song, then the are going to sound the same, if you finger pick every song; or you arpeggiate ever chord. What ever you do, if you do it all the time, it loses impact, it becomes the norm and then invisible. It makes your songs sound the same.
james lee stanley
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Reader Comments (2)
James,
Great post...this is much like what Vance Gilbert said in his performance workshop... one woman had a beautiful voice, but it just lulled the audience, the words were not jumping out at us. He had her "undersing"; to speak a line rather than singing them all. The improvement was immediate and dramatic. Same thing with another singer's guitar... he was asked to mute the strings when he started singing...I've been doing some of these things unconsciously, imitating better performers whom I've seen. As the leader of a new trio, I am very aware of the overplaying that can happen. My guys thankfully know how to keep it simple, and we are constantly striving to do less.
Have you ever noticed on many pop, country and rock recordings where the arrangement is very 'thick' from the start and then, usually after an instrumental, all the instruments go on holiday for a chorus except maybe the drummer and bass and what a breath of fresh air that turns out to be? And you know, that in lesser hands, everybody in the band would be blowing through that last chorus and, like JLS writes, it all sounds like a wall of sound and listener=fatigue sets in.