Lesson I - 2:  Creating an Original Arrangement for a Guitar Led Trio

Guitar, Bass, and Percussion

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Appendix I:  Introduction to Arranging

Lesson I-1:  Adding a Guitar Solo to an Existing Arrangement

Lesson 1-3:  Creating an Original Arrangement for Larger Ensembles

Appendix I TEF's

As guitarists in the 21st century, we have a lot of options available to us, that heretofore were dreams at best.  Computer programs such as "Band In A Box", and even our old friend, TablEdit, can be used to simulate any setting a guitarist may wish- duo, trio, quartet, big band, string orchestra.  The success is often predicated on the abilities of the programmer.  But there will never be a computer that will replace the warmth and magic of a completely live performance.  This lesson assumes that you have put together your core group, a guitar trio, with the guitar, bass (either a standup or an electric "Fender"), and percussion.  Let's also assume that you're just getting started and you don't have many if any tunes in your group's new portfolio.

Probably the most common form of arrangement in the history of Jazz and popular music is (what I once heard the great saxophonist Bud Shank call) a "High Head Arrangement".  You pick a key, tempo, and maybe when the rhythm section joins in, and maybe the number of choruses, and how to end it.  Then you play it.  Some of the most exciting music ever played came from arrangements this way.   All jazz and pop groups do it at least a certain amount of time.  Do you remember Mickey's comments about "Rhythm Changes"?  Rhythm Changes and Blues are two prime candidates for "High Head" arrangements.

A modification to this technique is to pass out a "lead sheet", or a minimum score with the original melody and chord lines.  This technique has been around since music began to be notated.  J. S. Bach and his contemporaries would give the organist or harpsichordist a bass line with chords above it in numbers, and the keyboardist would improvise an accompaniment.   In one of Mickey's lessons, I showed how to use TablEdit to create a chord chart for a tune.

In no way am I criticizing or belittling these time honored techniques when I say that often we're going to want or need a little more structure to our arrangements.   Here's an example from a true life experience I had, and the processes I used to create several arrangements:

One Sunday recently, I was listening to our local jazz oriented radio station which was broadcasting the works of the great Benny Goodman.  All of Benny's tunes and arrangements are classics and are very well known.  I was particularly moved by his arrangement of the 1920's hit for Eubie Blake and Andy Razaf, "Memories Of You".  I've known of this tune all of my life, but something in Benny's performance struck me as particularly charming.  And I found myself whistling the tune all that Sunday and most of the next week.  It became the number one candidate for this lesson.

The chord progression of parts of "Memories Of You" is very reminiscent of some other tunes I play, like George Gershwin's "Liza", Dubin and Burke's "Tiptoe Through the Tulips", and even Fats Waller's well loved favorite "Ain't Misbehavin'".  I had to decide on a key.  The truth is that any tune can be arranged in any key, especially if it's for a keyboard or a melody instrument.  But the guitar has some great attributes that favor tunes in certain keys.  That is, the harmony starts with an ascending bassline, mostly chromatic until it gets to the IV chord.  The melody starts with the 5th of the tonic.  The span of the melody is an octave and a fifth.  That might explain why the tune is a popular instrumental, but seldom sung.  I decided that the key of F was a good candidate in which to begin, spanning the C on the 2nd string to the G at the 15th fret of the 1st string.  G would work, but was a little too high.  E, also, would be a good candidate, especially for a guitar solo, but if I found a clarinetist, saxophonist, or horn player, E would cause them problems.  Eb, D, Db, and C would work, as well, but it didn't give the tonal range that E, F, or G would give on a standard tuned guitar.  F seemed the best compromise.

In my fakebook, I found "Memories Of You" in the key of Eb.  My first task was to transpose it up to F and produce a lead sheet:

I've used the chord names from the transposed fakebook score.  Note, by the way, the little "measure numbers" that TablEdit can be programmed to insert.  It is a very handy feature.  Click on this link to listen to a MIDI playback:  Memories Of You Lead Sheet.  You'll need an audio player like Gom (www.gom.com) to listen to the MIDI.

When I played through this the first time, my thoughts were "man, is this ever square! It's not what Benny played nor is it what I've been whistling."  If we analyze the composition, the melody is A - A - B - A.  The harmony is slightly modified in the A parts, but since we can't whistle in harmony (at least most of us!), let's just concentrate on the 1st 8 measures or the first A part, and the B or Bridge.  Here's what I discovered I was whistling:

My Whistling Improvisation of Memories Of You

I've raised everything an octave, and put the stems up in anticipation of the harmony I'll add.  Measure 9 is a separation of the A and B parts for this part.  Note all the different rhythm variations, like anticipating the beat, or delaying, then shorting values.  In Measure 8 on the last beat, the D and Db notes lead to the C note that starts the first repeat of the A section.  Measures 16 and 17 are a little improv I whistled instead a holding the C note for two measures.  To listen to the A and B parts that I modified a little, click on this link:  Modified Melody.

At this point, we have:

We need:

Tempo:  This is a moderate tempo song.  To keep that tempo we need to be between say 80 and 100 quarter notes per minute.  I finally decided on 88 as the tempo.  That means that each 32 bar chorus will be approximately 90 seconds in length.

Number of Choruses to be Played:  Two choruses, plus an intro and an ending will give us a little more than three minutes.  If we expand that to three choruses, that's going to be almost five minutes.  My challenge is to keep our audience interested for that long. 

Intro:   I originally decided upon a two-measure intro, with the bass playing a solo on I - vi - ii - V7 harmony, our old buddy, the two-measure turnaround.  After playing with it for a while, I dropped that idea in favor of playing the first 8 measures as a guitar solo, and having the bass and percussion come in.

Ending:  Not having any particularly inspired ending, I decided on a double repeat of the last two measures, II7 - V7 - I.  The first time it's played with bass notes on the guitar, the second as natural harmonics.  The last repeat will be similar to the measures 33 and 34, except on the last measure, I'll go up an octave with the ending tonic harmony, which is going to be an F 6/9 chord.

"The Batting Order":   The guitar plays the first chorus, and an improvisation of the second chorus.  The Bass will play the A part of the third chorus.  The guitar returns for the Bridge, final A part, and the ending.  The percussion will play brushes on cymbals and the snare.

All that's left to do is to make a three module TEF of 100 measures (3x32 ms. [3 choruses], 4 ms. ending) and fill in the blanks.  In the Attachments for this lesson I've created a blank TEF called Memories Of You Worksheet - Trio.  It's got the tempo, syncopation, and panning all set up, a couple of extra measures for creating an intro, plus I've included a generic percussion part that works on most tunes of this tempo. All you have to do is to fill in the blanks for the bass and guitar, or modify it to suit your ideas for the tune.

Let's listen to a MIDI of the arrangement and I'll explain what's going on with each instrument-  Memories Of You.

My arrangement is as follows:

As mentioned above, the percussion part here is a generic swing part that seems to work with practically any tune from this era.  Feel free to customize it as you desire, but be careful not to detract or overpower the other parts.

Arranging the Individual Parts

Guitar Part:  Guitar styles are as varied as there are guitarists and I encourage you to write a lead from the melody in your particular style.  My opinion is that the better known the melody, the more important it is to have an interesting arrangement of the parts that are faithful to the melody.  That's the part that the audience is going to sing along and get their feet tapping.  If you're having problems putting it in your style, try this:  write it out as a single note melody line.  It doesn't take too many times before you'll start to hear it in your mind's orchestra.  The single note method always works and gives you something to play until you can create something special.  Your subconscious will work on it while you're doing something else.  It's strangely satisfying to awake at 3 a.m. with a fully developed idea.  You can always refer to Mickey's Lessons 50, 51, and 52 to get ideas on improvising around the melody.

An additional technique used by some fingerstyle guitarists is to write a guitar arrangement based on the piano arrangement of the sheet music.  Often, piano parts play very interestingly with little modification.

For those of you that might be interested in my thought process while arranging Memories of You, I'll explain the guitar part of the arrangement:

First of all, I've never heard a guitar solo of this tune, so I really can't be called a musical thief, as many times I am!  I've heard Eubie Blake, the composer, play and sing this great tune.  Other than the simple modifications we talked about earlier, I believe the melody is beautiful and certainly, an old favorite. Therefore, my goal was to arrange in a complementary fashion, accentuating the melody but adding an interesting harmony.  Measures 1 through 8 are a solo guitar.  I used rich full spectrum chords with the aforementioned chromatic bass line.

Measure 4 has an interesting G9 chord that could have as easily used the open 2nd string's B note instead of the 5th string, 14th fret.  The first time I played through the arrangement I subconciously added the addition chords in this melody.  I decided that the notated fingering aids movement to the G7b9 chord.

Measure 5:  Note the use of a first inversion F triad.  That chord facilitates movement to the A dim7 that follows, plus has a great sound.

Measure 6:  This measure is a copy of the Measure 5 harmony, only a fourth lower, a first inversion C triad (V) to an Eb dim7 (bvii dim7).

Measures 7 and 8:  A simple II7 - ii7 - V9 - I6 - V7 progression and turn-around.

Measures 9 through 16: This part has the entrance of the bass and percussion, so instead of repeating measures 1 - 8, I raised the guitar harmony an octave to give a closer spacing to the chords, and I made the part a little less busy due to having the bass fill in.

Measure 16 is the lead-in to the Bridge (I6 - III7+5-III7).  Many musicologists will argue that the Bridge is a modulation to the Key of D min.  That makes the A7+5 - A7 actually a V7+5 - V7 in D min instead of the III7 harmony I first described.  Also, I could have used an open A string instead of the full barre chord.  But it's a lot easier to play a fretted chord staccato than open strings.  And it gives us the added ease of transitioning to the barred D min7 chord of Measure 17.

Measures 17 through 24 are the Bridge.  I've continued the philosophy started at Measure 9.  Measures 23 and 24 have a chord progression that I've forced against the improvised melody. 

Measures 25 through 32 are a repeat of the A section.  I chose to repeat the 1st 8 measures to give a fuller more active sound with the bass in contrast to the other parts.

Measures 33 through 64 are my ideas for an improvisation in the 2nd chorus.

Measures 65 through 80 feature the Bassist's solo with the guitar comping.  Note in the first 8 measures, the guitar's chords punctuate and fill in, rather than perform a constant rhythm.  The next 8 measures the guitar plays the rhythm using melody chords (a technique that will be the focus of Appendix III) to contrast the Bassist's lower register solo.

Measures 81 through 88 are the last Bridge.  The guitar returns to the lead, but this time an octave lower than the first Bridge.  There are a  couple of chords used, but basically adhering to the modified melody we started with.

Measures 89 through 96 are the last repeat of the A section and for a completely new approach, I've put the melody in the guitar's bass while adding our "chunk" rhythm in melody chords, as an inversion of the very first A section pass.  Technically, it's probably easier to play than the other A sections, but it gives, at least to my ears a fullness like adding a 2nd guitar.

Measures 97 through 100 are the ending, basically a repeat of measures 95 and 96.  Measures 97 and 98 feature naturally harmonics.  Measures 99 and 100 return to the high register of the guitar ascending to the final F6/9 of Measure 100.  The technique I used is very common to the point of cliché.  I expect that students wishing to "roll their own" of this tune will undoubtedly have a more creative ending than this one!  But, it works.

That's about all there is to it, 99% work, and 1% inspiration.  It's much, much easier to modify an existing idea or concept than to create an absolutely new and unique one.  I'd be willing to wager that while we were discussing a possible arrangement, you came up with several ideas entirely different from these.

Appendix I TEF's:  As guitarist/arrangers, even the smallest group, a trio or duo, will most likely have a bass.  Actually, for those of us with the year of experience with TablEdit, writing bass solos is as easy as writing a guitar solo.  In fact, you can do so on your guitar.  Just make sure that the highest string you use is the 3rd or G string.  Another tip is to use single notes only, avoiding intervals or chords, unless they are arpeggiated.  The low frequency of the Bass, whether it's a standup acoustic or a Fender bass, makes chord playing sound muddy and distracting.   If you just have to try to write chords for your bassist, make sure they are as close to the bridge end of the fretboard as possible, and use them sparingly. 

You write your Bass solo on a Guitar TAB staff using the above guidelines.  Copy from the Guitar TAB staff, remembering to only highlight strings 3, 4, 5, and 6.  Paste on the Bass TAB staff.  For those guitarists that don't have very much experience writing bass solos, I've transposed Mickey's 18 riffs of Group G in Bb to the bass.  When you're writing a bass solo into your arrangement you can use these riffs as bass solos to help you generate ideas, especially if you don't use Mickey's riffs for the guitar.

Additionally, for those of you that may have forgotten, in Lesson 17, I included a four-instrument template for use with creating your own standards.  It's for clarinet, guitar, bass, and a simple percussion part.  It's easily adaptable by copying and deleting the MIDI modules.  Look for it at Clarinet-Guitar-Bass-Template .  Many of the standards that I created in Soloing Review Lesson or in other lessons have bass and percussion parts based on Mickey's guitar riffs and the simple percussion of the template.  In fact, I hope I don't sound critical of Mickey's work when I say that some of his riffs sound certainly as good if not better on the bass than on the guitar, at least to me.

All that's left to do now is to start churning them out!  Just keep it FUN!