What's It All About, Alfie?

What are you talking about?

Many of you probably don't know what the heck I'm talking about. What is a musical or choral arrangement? Arrangements are the backbone of the a cappella world. Typically these groups "cover" songs and rarely compose new material. The songs they cover have orchestral or rock band treatments and someone has to score them for human voices. It's hard to imagine how to pull off "Stairway To Heaven" without electric guitars and drums, but choral arrangers solve problems like that. Few people really grasp the concept of "arranging", unless they've sung in an a cappella group or have played with a jazz band or small orchestra.

Bach and Handel composed choral works. They wrote out every note for every part and that's something everyone basically understands. I guess a lot of people figure that's how all music finds its genesis - that these choral treatments spring fully grown out of the hands of the composer. Or maybe they are "traditional", like hymns in the book at church. They evolved from folks just singing them and eventually writing them down. Well, these are some of the ways these works got to be, so y'all are not that far off the mark.

But when I speak about arranging music, a lot of my friends listen, raise their eyebrows and secretly wonder what I'm talking about. So I know a lot of people don't know what it is.

This is what I'm talking about

On YouTube, I found the perfect way to show you. There are singers around the globe posting videos of themselves singing all the parts of a cappella arrangements, and they call it "Multitrack Acapella" and "Barbershop Multitrack". If you see some of these videos, it makes the pieces and parts of an a cappella arrangement graphically clear. Try plugging in those as search terms into YouTube and you'll strike the mother load.

I'm working with a couple of these multi-trackers. What they are able to do is a testament to their talents, which are myriad, but also to the enabling technologies of audio recording on personal computers and the power of the Internet community. These artists work in their dorm rooms, at home and sometimes in a good bathroom (you sing in the shower, right?) to produce videos that attract hundreds of thousands, even millions of fans.

Take a look for yourself

I've worked with two wonderful artists who excel at this work. We've never met, but we've joined through the Internet to complete several projects, establishing a simple, web-based working relationship. One is Danny Fong and the other is Jean-Baptiste Craipeau.

Danny Fong:

See more at Danny's YouTube channel: http://www.youtube.com/user/daniscool99

Jean-Baptiste Craipeau:

See more at JB's YouTube channel: http://www.youtube.com/user/jibcraip

Shahdaroba is completed!

I still need a little cleanup on the document, but this weeks work is basically finished. Would you like a peek at it? Here's page 2, where I had some fun:

You can see some of the things I mentioned in my tip sheet employed here. Chords-chords-chords, using cliches like the bell chords in mm. 17 and 18. They sound really cool and then there's a glissando in mm. 21-22. See the little counter melodies here and there? And that bass line.... Let your singers do some fun stuff.

I finished on Friday so I get the weekend off!