Musical Arrangement

Baji J. Ram Rao
21:39 +0530 Sun. 23-May-2021

I attended a seven-continuous days, two hours per day course from Mon. 17-May-2021 to Sun. 23-May-2021:

Basics of Music Arrangement 101

The course was conducted by Anand Sahastrabudhe, professional composer, arranger and conductor since 1999.
A disciple of Anil Mohile, he was music assistant for live concerts of Lata Mangeshkar and Laxmikant-Pyarelal.

Anil Mohile (1941-2012) was a music composer for several Marathi and Hindi films. He worked closely with Lata Mangeshkar for many years.
He arranged music for 85 films, including the Amitabh Bachchan starrers Don(1978) and Sharaabi(1984).
He also composed music with Arun Paudwal under the moniker, “Anil-Arun”. Anuradha Paudwal had sung many songs under the composition of this music composer pair.

Notating music

Earlier I had also attended Anand guruji’s course: Notation: no tension for singers (NNTS) -- music in written form for singers, keyboard players, guitarists, strings section, woodwinds section, brass section, percussion section, …

When music is aurally perceived, why is notation: visual representation important?
Written music allows a composer to convey precise and detailed information to the orchestra musicians who will ultimately perform that composer’s work.
The more detailed the musical notation, the more precise a performer will be. Musical notation is akin to literacy.

Assignment

As part of the coursework, an assignment was to compose a prelude for the song, “Twinkle Twinkle Little Star” -- a popular English lullaby.
The lyrics are from “The Star”, an early-19th-century English poem by Jane Taylor, first published in 1806.

We were also expected to explain the thinking that led to our choices and also play our composition to the teacher and the whole class.


My explanation:

Being a soft childrens’ song, I chose a moderato tempo of 90 beats/min.
The keyscale was C♯ major.

I imagine a night landscape in soft blue light with mountains in the distance and a clear starry sky above. This makes me think of the sounds of a pan flute.
So I chose a 3-bar long pan flute opening. Actually I start in the middle of the first bar, so it’s really 2½ bars.
Then 3 bars of B♭ trumpet.
And I depict the twinkling of the stars with 2 bars of Glockenspiel going diminuendo.
Then the song itself.

Here is my music composition -- my life’s first composition.

A Eureka moment for me was:

When you’re writing musical score for trumpet, you need to remember the trumpet is a transposing instrument.
That is, notation for the trumpet is written a major second above the desired sound (for complicated historical reasons).

So when you write a C (सफ़ेद एक), you’ll get a B♭ sound(काली पाँच).
For example, playing a written middle C on a transposing instrument produces a pitch other than middle C;
Playing a written C on clarinet or soprano saxophone produces a concert B♭ (i.e. B♭ at concert pitch), so these are referred to as B♭ instruments.

While I had read about this earlier, it really sank in practically, only when composing for the assignment.
Shocking discoveries only happen when racing against time, to complete an assignment to meet a deadline!
Ç’est la vie!

What were the complicated historical reasons?

Before valves were invented in the 19th century, horns and trumpets could play only the notes of the harmonic overtone series from a single fundamental pitch.
So, all horn music was written as if for a fundamental pitch of C.
Crooks a.k.a shanks(exchangeable segments of brass tubing) could make a single instrument a transposing instrument into almost any chromatic key.