Creating Arrangements and Rainbow Ripples 1.0

Necessity is the mother of invention.  I was not trained in the basic skills of arranging music or music composition. I was a performance major.  My interest wasn't sparked in these areas until after school when I went out into the "real world" and tried to make a career in music.  Performing for general audiences changed the way I played. I realized almost immediately that although I had a world class education from The Juillliard School and I could technically play anything, I would need to invest time in developing new creative skill sets in order to reinvent myself.  While I still had all of the extremely high standards I learned from my education and background, I began to think a lot more about the performances themselves and how I could begin to use my expertly crafted "technique" to expand my performances. Thus began a journey for me that ultimately led to developing basic skills in arranging and composition.

Now ten years later looking back, most of what I've learned has been through trial and error.  I learned on the job in a way that was the complete opposite of how I was taught in traditional music school.   I started with ideas and very little skill but over time I was slowly able to develop new abilities.  

In this article I will discuss some of the skills I use when arranging. I will then discuss a project I am currently working on.  I hope this article will bring clarity to the aspiring performing artist who may be interested in expanding into arranging and composition.

I would like to clarify that in this article I will sometimes be using the terms "arranger" and "composer" interchangeably.  This is because at least in my personal process of developing these abilities, I have found that they both contain many similarities.  For proper execution they both require an absolute fluency in musical language.  With that said I fully recognize that both are separate and unique specializations to many musicians.

The Process

Here are several pillars in my process that I believe should be explored and mastered when attempting to arrange and rework a piece of music.

1) Develop fluency in the music. Learn the music and embrace the process of Recomposition.

The process of arranging simply begins with learning the music.  I urge you to review my article "The Process of Recomposition" to familiarize yourself with my definition of "learning the music." It's very important to "Recompose" the piece in order to develop fluency.  Your fluency will be one of the primary tools used that allows you to develop ideas off of the original material.  Without fluency your ideas may not have a grounded point of reference and they may not make sense.  It takes a lot of hard work and dedication but you absolutely must develop fluency to be successful at arranging.  

2) Try and be creative. "Learn" to let ideas flow

Once you are fluent try and be creative.  Notice how I wrote "learn" to let ideas flow.  While for some people musical ideas come naturally, others may have to work at it especially if you are trained in the current music education environment.  

This comes differently to people.  There aren't any right and wrong answers here.  There are only ideas and some work better than others.  None are perfect.  There is no such thing as a "perfect idea."  Perfection is only the "state of mind" one must attain for ideas to flow and connect to one another.  Within that state of mind there are only infinite possibilities and no dead ends.  

3) Once ideas are flowing be open to changing them (or letting them evolve)

This is very difficult.  As concert performers trained in this historical period of "over recorded" music, we are taught both directly and indirectly that music must ultimately take some sort of "final form." This couldn't be further from the truth.  In many ways, the process of developing compositional and arranging skill sets can simply be defined as "breaking free" of this fundamentally destructive mindset.  The creative process is never finished.  You will never be finished.  Embrace this mindset!

4) Don't throw things away

This is a common problem among beginners.  Young composer/arrangers may feel that their early attempts at writing or arranging are worthless and since newer examples are "better," the older ones should end up in the trash.  While I don't dispute that composers evolve, I've found that sometimes an idea that comes out may simply not be good for the current project at hand. However, it may be useful for future projects.   Don't throw anything away!  Always keep in mind that nobody is as "close" to your music as you.  You may not have as clear a perspective as you think!  Only time brings clarity.  Allow the process to happen and don't throw things away.  

5) Don't be afraid

I've always found that one of the primary factors holding back aspiring arrangers and composers from being as creative as possible is their own insecurities and beliefs in common music myths. Students are inclined to believe statements like "I am not a composer," "I don't know anything about arranging" or especially "I am not trained in it therefore I can't do it."  Trying is half the battle. You may find that at first you don't have a lot of ideas but if you stay with it and you know the music well enough you should be able to come up with something eventually.  It is completely natural and organic but it requires an open state of mind and it truly takes time.  Be patient and keep at it!


Now that I've spent a little bit of time examining the process, we will take a look at how it relates specifically to one of my current projects.  Rainbow Ripples 1.0 is a work in progress. As new iterations are released and this series of articles continues you will see me relying more and more on the the things I mention in the process above.

Rainbow Ripples 1.0

Over the years I have possibly performed the solo xylophone part (on marimba) to "Rainbow Ripples" by G.H Green hundreds of times.  It's always worked well on the marimba as an encore piece for a general audience.  However, I've also always felt that more could be done with it (in addition to playing the piece with piano or mallet keyboard accompaniment).  I would often try and stretch the solo section and improvise over the chords. After that, I would try taking certain sections at different tempi and changing things up here and there.  The great thing about Rainbow Ripples and ragtime in general is that the music naturally lends itself well to improvisation.  This makes it easy to expand sections and write simple theme and variations off of the original material.  

Why 1.0?

I thought it would be productive to share my process for educational purposes.  The creative process sometimes happens all at once but it also sometimes happens in tiers.  I find this especially true when arranging a work I've played a great deal in the past.  I wanted to put a video up but I wasn't sure where the process would take me.  Once I became aware the project would have tiers, I decided to entitle the first iteration 1.0.

Ragtime

For this project I first spent some time thinking about ragtime music from a pedagogical perspective.  This may seem strange but why not?  This is in fact how so many of us percussionists around the world are introduced to this music.  I was not necessarily inspired to play the xylophone or marimba from listening to G.H Green Rags.  Like many, I came to them only after I decided to begin learning how to play mallet keyboard instruments.  

Any serious mallet keyboard player has some experience with this music even if it's only from learning one or two rags.  I don't profess to be an expert in ragtime music but I have my background and experience to draw from as well as countless performances for audiences around the country and the world.  

From a pedagogical perspective performing ragtime can be a challenging yet fun way to improve on mallet keyboard percussion instrument fundamentals.  Whether or not you are a true fan of the music, performing ragtime accomplishes several important things. 

1) It fixes a wealth of basic technical 2 mallet issues

From double stops, to scales, to arpeggios this music is full of useful tools to address "the basics." You'll learn how to play and develop true accuracy and fluency via tonal "easy to hear" music.  

2) Ragtime teaches finesse and touch

Learning to play the beautiful lines in ragtime definitely requires a light touch and a true ability to create a line.  (see my article "Creating Lines of Music on Mallet Keyboard Instruments") However, I'm especially thinking about the double stops here.  It's so difficult to truly learn how to play double stops together in a rag without squeezing, controlling, and contorting the phrase. Developing this technique while retaining true intentional phrasing (see my article "Accidental vs. Intentional" Phrasing) is truly a challenge best learned in ragtime.  

3) It teaches improvisation

If you learn ragtime the correct way, then you will not only learn the written music but you will learn the chords that form the musical scaffolding and you will then attempt improvisation.  In my opinion learning ragtime without spending some time discussing improvisation is not as valuable an experience and simply learning the notes.  

4) It has major historical relevance

Percussion overall as a major art form is still relatively new but ragtime and xylophone are a major part of 20th century American history.  When taking an unbiased survey of all of the 2 mallet literature, some of it is good but much of it is only "decent" at best.  On the other hand the works of G.H Green and other ragtime music is stylized and clear.  This music has paid its dues and been proven.  It will teach you much about what works and what doesn't work on the xylophone, marimba, and beyond.

Breakdown of Rainbow Ripples 1.0 

or...what I have so far

Although as I pointed out above Rainbow Ripples works well as an encore piece as written, I would often find myself wanting to use it in other places on my program.  This is because the sheer variety of shows I play requires me to constantly tweak my presentation to fits the needs of different situations.  One size fits all rarely works for me.

With this in mind I tried to expand the work to make it more of a show piece that told a slightly larger story filled with more dramatic ups and downs.  Rainbow Ripples 1.0 is nothing more than the beginning or skeletal structure of that process.  It is the first iteration of my solo arrangement of Rainbow Ripples so there's not much here yet. Just the planting of a few ideas that will certainly grow.

-I started by creating a short introduction using the dominant D7 chord.  This replaces the sudden start of the piece as written.  There is nothing wrong with the standard introduction, this is just a different way of doing it.

-The original material is then stated at least once for good measure.  After the original material is stated, I expand the idea the 2nd time around.  I expand the idea by turning the original material from 16th notes to sextuplets and then working my way up the instrument using bent G Major chords.  I then run down the instruments in arpeggiated G7 32nd note passages.  This makes things a bit more interesting for the listener.  

-The next transition is as written into the solo section.  I have altered this section quite a bit by turning it into a 12-bar Blues with a transition bringing the section to a close.  I've been hearing it this way for a long time.  In Rainbow Ripples 1.0 this idea is so far extremely undeveloped so I am basically improvising and yes...I am well aware the time is basically non existent at this point.  

-I am currently trying to turn the ending into a sort of meltdown where everything comes together again and gets faster and faster until it crashes (or melts down) once again.  Instead of going right into the ending section I include a short G7 cadenza and then improvise a little bit in a slow tempo around the ending theme's chord progression.  I then fully state the end theme one time down an octave.  Finally, a glissando brings me to the ending theme at full tempo with a slight accelerando to the end.  

-I conclude the piece with a fermata on C7 into CMaj and a giant rit. gliss up and down the instrument.

In a nutshell

So in a nutshell what I've tried to do here is turn "Rainbow Ripples" into more of a total musical journey.  I took a great piece of music by a great composer and started the process of weaving a tale around it.  Let's see where the journey goes...