Being With You

Smokey Robinson's "Being With You" spent five weeks at number one on the Hot Soul Singles chart during the Spring of 1981 and reached number two on the Billboard Hot 100 chart, his highest charting solo hit on the pop charts. The song was a number one hit in the UK for two weeks in June 1981, becoming Robinson's second UK #1 single and his first as a solo artist. It would mark his last appearance at the top of the UK Singles Chart.

Tortured Soloist

It's another delightful love song where the poor tenor is tortured about his love for a woman who probably isn't worth it. Nothing like a little drama to make a hit song! This allowed a few openings for the patter to take a slightly different perspective than the tortured soloist, but I avoided going so far as to break the drama entirely.

A Simple Variation

You'll see below I pass the patter back and forth between sections that alternate singing "oo" or "ah". This creates a lovely continuity suggestive of strings while the movement of the line between voice parts adds variation and interest. then all parts join to emphasize the concluding thought of each verse:

Closing Shop For Now

It has been a great project these last 6 months arranging a song a week. Now I got to put it aside and devote myself to my day job, prepare for the trip to sing in Cuba, and kick back a little to enjoy summer. There may be a few more songs over the next few months, but not at the weekly pace. I potted the tomato plants for the deck and mulched the strawberry patch. The sailing club opens next week.

Setting this goal for myself was quite productive. Each week the list grew and grew. Like a lot of things in this world, it was a series of tiny steps: a measure or two at a time, an idea that hits you at the gym solves a problem and suddenly a song lurches forward towards completion. The weeks go by, and by Friday sometimes the weeks' song is finished and sometimes you're just getting started. But by Sunday night, it has to be finished, so make it happen and eventually the songs just start stacking up.

And here is the stack of work since November:

A Groovy Kind of Love

Ain't Nothing Like the Real Thing

Ain't That Peculiar?

Baby, I Need Your Lovin'

Being With You

Blue Bayou

Botch-A-Me

Cruisin'

Gypsy Woman

Hit the Road, Jack

I Can't Get Next To You

Love Hurts

Na Na Hey Hey Kiss Him Goodbye

Nowhere To Run

People Get Ready

Shahdaroba

Talking About My Baby

That's the Way Love Is

There Is Nothin' Like a Dame

Tracks of My Tears

Unchain My Heart

Wild Ox Moan

You Are Everything

You Don't Know Me

You're All I Need to Get By

These are all men's a cappella with the exception of "Botch-A-Me", which is SATB with jazz band. That piece is my third commission for Polymnia Choral Society and will be premiered in their final concert of the 2010 season.

I will be happy to send samples to anyone who wants to consider one of these for their ensemble. Just drop me a note.

Bob

Cruise With Me Baby!

"Cruisin'" is a 1979 single written, produced, and recorded by William "Smokey" Robinson for Motown Records' Tamla label. One of Robinson's most successful singles outside of his work with The Miracles, "Cruisin'" peaked at number-four on the Billboard Hot 100.

Bob Dylan once said of "Smokey" Robinson, that he is "America's greatest living poet." Regarding his nickname, "Smokey" Robinson tells the story that, when he was a boy, his Uncle Claude christened him Smokey Joe, which the young William, a Western-movie enthusiast, at first assumed to be "his cowboy name for me". Some time later, he learned the deeper significance of his nickname: It derived from smokey, a pejorative term for dark-skinned blacks. "I'm doing this," his uncle told the light-skinned boy, "so you won't ever forget that you're black."

Smokey's easy poetry shines in Cruisin':

The music is playin' for love,

cruisin' is made for love,

I love it when we're cruisin' together.

Some Diggity, Regular Patter

Cruisin' is one of those songs that's totally mellow and echoes the whole grove of the theme. Sometimes it's intentionally not clear whether the song is really about driving with your girlfriend or something much more intimate. This song really gets hot. I applied just a little diggity, as you'll see below, and really simple patter. There's no clever dialog between the ensemble and the soloist. This mood is not to be broken - there is some serious love-making going on here and you gotta just stay out of the way! So it's chords, chords, chords, structure, layers, supportive patter and just a little diggity to achieve the charm of Robinson's lovely song:

Hey, How Did You Do It?

I spent the week in California on business and had no time to work on this or any other music. I have a stretch of hard work ahead at Palm, and this song plus my next were pretty nearly completed before I left. Yes, I've been working ahead of the pace again. It looks as if I'll take a pause starting next week at the six month mark of this project.

With luck, I'll finish Being With You by next week.

Nowhere To Run, Baby!

"Nowhere to Run" is a 1965 pop single by Martha & the Vandellas for the Gordy (Motown) label and is one of the group's signature songs. The song, written and produced by Motown's main production team of Holland-Dozier-Holland, depicts the story of a woman trapped in a bad relationship with a man she cannot help but love. Holand-Dozier-Holland and the Funk Brothers band gave the song a large, hard-driving instrumentation sound similar of the sound of prior "Dancing In The Street" with snow chains used as percussion alongside the tambourine and drums.

This version was ranked #358 on Rolling Stone's list of The 500 Greatest Songs of All Time.

The record's brass-heavy arrangement and chorus of "nowhere to run to, baby/nowhere to hide" have made the song a popular one at sporting events, whether played in its original version or reinterpreted by a marching band. The song has also been seen as one of the songs played heavy by troops during the Vietnam War and has since been a title and inspiration in TV shows such as Quantum Leap and Murphy Brown.

This is a song that really rocks, and should be an enormous amount of fun for an a cappella group. The trick with a piece like this is to expand the groove and use variation to create tension and energy without a brass section, drums and snow chains. You got to use the forces you have and do it vocally!

Silence is Golden

It's as taught in Zen - things are made of their opposites. Music is made up of silence just as it is made out of sounds. Negative space makes the positive space more powerful and impressive, and that's what we're going for with Nowhere To Run. I create silence and hushed intensity to allow headroom for the big stuff, making it seem even bigger. For example, when I have the upper voices hit some of their chords like brass hits, they explode out of this quieter space driving the intensity higher.

Another Problem

The song is a dance song. It does not need to go anywhere. It starts at Defcon 7 or 8 and stays there start to finish. As I've said before, your audience probably won't be dancing - they will be all ears and all the dancing will probably be in their mind's eye. If verse 1, verse 2 and verse 3 are all the same, they will begin wondering if they left the oven on back home. You don't want them drifting off like that! You gotta develop things and vary them without breaking the driving force concept of the piece.

To do this, I broke down one verse into a taut duet with the soloist against the tenor 2's. This diminishes the volume in a way that draws in the listener to something even more intense than staying at full overdrive. The bass line continues underneath keeping up the rhythmic underpinnings, making the verse a kind of trio. You'll see this below. Hmm, more silence to create space and tension....

What Else?

Well, I try to develop patter instead of nonsense sounds imitating guitars, drums and instruments. Don't get me wrong, I love the chung-chung and beatbox stuff. But when I have the opportunity for voices to sing, and can weave a vocal texture that stimulates the mind, it's just a lot a fun! My basses are always ribbing me about the stupid sounds I make them sing, so I try to give them more words to contribute something greater to the whole. Basses can really add a whole other dimension singing words.

Patter usually echoes the lyrics and sentiments of the solo line. One thing I often do is use patter is to create tensions against the main lyric. You know the tenor is always wailing on about how "She left me" and "What will I do without her", "Can I get her back", and all that stuff we love in pop songs.

I found when I give my backup voices a position of their own and a perspective that is other than that of the soloist, it creates drama, and sometimes it creates comedic tension and hilarity. It's perfect, for example, when the tenor is wondering what went wrong and the basses, with their low tones, become the natural voice of reason and authority. They adopt a position of telling it "like it is", saying things like "I told you so" and "It's just wrong" and "If I were you, this is what I'd do".

In Nowhere To Run, I let the basses be this third person witness to the "trapped" soloist, and you can see how this creates so much drama and fun, adding another dimension to the overall expression. I let them become quite outrageous.

As I drive to the finish with the final verse, I break it down once again, and use the layering technique to build the energy back to climax. This is driven further underneath with the basses' patter becoming wilder and more insistent so the climax reaches a dizzying point, ending with a big "brass" hit on a really dirty chord by all voices. The silence afterwards is deafening!

Next week: Cruisin'

You're All I Need To Get By

This weeks contribution is a wonderful song about just plain good love. Whew! Enough about broken hearts, lost love and all that! No sorrow nor blues here, but rather just plain tons of good vibes:

"Like an eagle protects his nest, for you I'll do my best,

Stand by you like a tree, dare anybody to try and move me."

The Composers

Written by real-life couple Nickolas Ashford & Valerie Simpson, You're All I Need To Get By became one of the few Motown recordings of the 1960s that was not recorded with the familiar "Motown sound". Instead, it had a more soulful and gospel-oriented theme surrounding it that was influenced by the writers, who also sang the background vocals on the original recording.

The Covers

That first recording by Marvin Gaye and Tammi Terrell peaked at number 7 on the Billboard Hot 100 and number 1 on Billboard's Hot R&B/Soul Singles chart for five weeks, becoming one of the longest-running number one R&B hits of 1968 and the most successful duet recording of Marvin Gaye's entire career. Other covers:

Dionne Warwick 1969

Diana Ross 1970

Aretha Franklin 1971

Michael McDonald 2004

Structure, structure, structure....

And chords, and counter melodies. This arrangement pulls a lot of my tip sheet together in one place. You see some of the counter melodies here in the bass line, giving it interest but also adding interplay against the main melody. Delightful chords, with well-led voice lines lend a smooth sound bringing out wonderful colors. Notice the bass line variation - 4 measures one way, and then 4 measures another way.

There are always several things going on, changing in a fluid manner but held together by structure, structure, structure. The basses exhibit a bit of fun diggity here and there. Meanwhile, their patter progresses - what I need, what I want, all, I, need....

It was a big holiday week and I got to share it across several traditions. Hope you enjoyed it and I hope the creek near you is subsiding....

Next week: Nowhere To Run

You Are Everything

I had a lot of fun this week arranging You Are Everything, a soul song written by Thom Bell and Linda Creed. Originally recorded by the Philadelphia soul group The Stylistics, it was released in 1971 as a single produced by Bell. This version became a Top 10 hit for the group, peaking at #9 on the Billboard Hot 100 chart. The first significant cover was by one-time Motown singing duo, Diana Ross & Marvin Gaye.

The Composers

Thom Bell is a Jamaican born, American, Grammy Award-winning songwriter and producer, best known as one of the creators of the Philadelphia style of soul music in the 1970s. He moved to Philadelphia as a child, he was classically trained and became a leading force in soul music working first with The Delfonics and later The Stylistics. Linda Creed was a Grammy Award-winning American singer-songwriter who teamed up with Thom Bell to produce some of the most successful Philadelphia soul groups of the 1970s. Her career was launched in 1970 when singer Dusty Springfield recorded her song Free Girl. Her career ended early due to breast cancer and she died shortly before Whitney Houston took her last hit, Greatest Love of All to number one on the billboard chart in 1986. In 1992, she was inducted into the Songwriters Hall of Fame.

What's It All About, Bobby?

The song is about the saddest love of all: lost love. The song is arguably one of the most powerful torch songs ever written. This duo had a touch. Michael McDonald covered the song on his CD, Motown, reasserting its classic and enduring quality.

The song is verse, chorus, verse, chorus. It's all over in little over 2 minutes but like a secret weapon, it invades your heart inflicting terrible damage before you realize what happened. The song changes key every time you blink; the harmonic prowess is impressive. This gives an arranger a lot to play with. There are color shifts and modulations - things are very fluid, all aimed at milking the tear ducts. It's the kind of song audiences just love and you can score big by just delighting in the craft of the composition.

Bringing Out the Power of the Song: Layers

As an arranger, you highlight the emotional message and draw it out. I begin this arrangement with the solo singing against the bare bass line and a hummed baritone line, tracing a wonderful harmony, much as I might use cellos if I had them. Then I add in the 2nd tenors, allowing the harmonic vistas open some more. Before the verse completes, I bring in the 1st tenors with a brief melodic motif as they join the party. As these layers are added, the verse seems to unfold panoramically, much as the lyric unfolds the emotional pain of the narrator:

Today I saw somebody, who looked just like you.

She walked like you do, I thought it was you.

And then she turned a corner. I called out your name.

I felt so ashamed, 'cause it wasn't you, wasn't you.

At this point, your audience is hooked - the eyes begin to well up and it's "all over but the crying". This is what you want. Get in, do your damage and they will love you for it!

More Layers

In the snippet below, you'll see the things I talk about in my tip sheet: structure, chords, use of melodic motifs, great bass line. But here I also employ layers to augment the emotional impact. With an orchestra, you bring different instruments to bear, playing them off one another and perhaps adding them atop one another, deepening the impact as the various sections are added. It's the same with choral arranging. As the climax of the song arrives, I employ layers to play voices against one another harmonically and to progressively get all voices enunciating the main lyric together:

How can I forget when each face that I see brings back memories of being with you?

Oh, baby, I just can't go on living life as I do, comparing each one with you.

'Cause they just won't do. They're not you, no baby!

and the emotional climax is driven home delicately but relentlessly. Believe me, the audience will take notice although they probably won't notice the mechanism:

Psychedelic Soul!

I Can't Get Next To You

Composed by Norman Jesse Whitfield and Barrett Strong for the Temptations on the Gordy label, I Can't Get Next To You became a number one hit in 1969 on the Billboard chart. This song heralded the beginning of "psychedelic soul". Strong was the first hit maker on Berry Gordy's Motown label, with the song "Money (That's What I Want)". The single was the second of the Temptations' four number-one hits on the United States pop charts, and was also one of the best-selling singles the group released. ABC, a song released in the following year by fellow Motown act The Jackson Five, uses the same bridge section, featuring identifiable use of the stated "ya!" as well as the percussion.

A bluesier, slow burn version was recorded the following year by Al Green. The theme of the song, how having all the powers in the world means nothing if a man cannot impress the woman he loves is very similar to the lyrics of Ira Gershwin's 1935 standard "I Can't Get Started With You".

I started the bluesy Al Green version, favoring the jazzier improv section to build the harmonics for my backing ensemble. After pecolating along for verses 1 and two in this delicious funk, my arrangement suddenly breaks into quick time, playing on the Temptations' "Chick-a-booms" before flying off into urgent psychedelia, letting soloists trade 8's to the finish.

Here you can see the Al Green style intro, where I let pairs of voices trade triplet figures before letting the lower voices settle into a swing framework and the upper voices draw out those jazzy colors I mentioned earlier.

Sailing, Summer, Fun

The sailing season is starting soon in Boston. I completed a lot of work since November and might finish another work or two in the coming weeks, but I'm planning to stand down for a time, consolidate and develop my new work, and do a little sailing. Learning track files are in progress for the new work, and I'm beginning to market the songs to a cappella bands, men's choirs and the wider world. There's a lot of work to be done and the task is shifting a bit for the time being. I met a local choir director today looking to start a men's a cappella group and number one on her list was Motown. We talked. I think I'll be busy.

How About the Real Thing, Bob?

One of my friends wrote me about the video clip I posted last week of Ain't Nothing Like the Real Thing, asking me, "Where's the singing?" You can't blame her - my blogs are all about singing and she did not understand that the ink is barely dry on the pages of my new arrangement. It takes a long time to teach new music to humans and have the singing come out beautifully. In Blue of a Kind, some of the songs we've learned took many months before they were ready for "prime time".

Bring On the Ringers

So I have taken to hiring professionals to sing my new works. Yes, these guys are top notch, but still these pieces have many parts, many variations, many lyrics and even ringers take time to produce a fair rendition. They are students with a schedule of classes, exams and etc., not to mention lives of their own and they are cutting their teeth on new works. In any case, I have started hiring these guys to do the groundwork and speed things up for another group of men with lives, Blue of a Kind.

So Where Is the Real Thing, Bob?

Right here. I did this arrangement back in November. It starts out based on the classic Drifters cover, and switches over to a Brazilian Samba treatment you may have heard by Michael Buble. As the tempo heats up, the backup lyrics spin progressively further out of control. I decided to ask Jean-Baptiste Craipeau in France to record the learning tracks. Life happened. Exams came and went, JB got the chance to work on it. And now here it is - 30 seconds of it anyway. Have a listen, and get a sense of what it is we're doing. D2 - this is for you!

Taking This Week Off

I've got another piece nearly completed and I'm the boss. This weekend is a choral festival and I won't have the usual amount of time to complete. I'm preparing to go to Cuba with the Yale Alumni Chorus in June/July. This weekend is my first set of rehearsals with them and we have a performance on Sunday. My next work will be I Can't Get Next To You.