How I Arrange Music For VoicePlay

hey Jeff how do you arrange music for voice play good question let's figure it out there's actually a bunch of ways that you can arrange a song for an acapella group for example you can just sit in the room with your group for a while and sing the song a bunch of times until you have a completed arrangement this method does work and when a voice player first started out this is how we did a lot of our arrangements but it is time-consuming and can also result in creative differences oh yeah well I do like that g7 chord and you're a scrotum hat Daniel you could always pay somebody to arrange a song for your group but depending on what their skill level is how much they're getting paid and what their vision is for the song that you've asked them to arrange the results can be a mixed bag whenever voice play has had to hire arrangers in the past we always look for the best but no matter what we tend to tweak the final arrangement at least a little bit that's just who we are y'all right back there you could also sit down with paper and pencil and score a chart with your bare hands but don't do that you're not a bear unless of course you are there and then enjoy that trial right so we've discovered that there are a lot of ways you can get the job done and none of them aren't wrong or right but here's how I do it first the tools you'll need and this is kind of like the bare minimum set up and you can get a lot more fancy but if you start here you're in a good place so a computer a USB microphone a phone and a piece of reporting software capable of MIDI logic pro tools Cubase Ableton Live don't worry if this sounds expensive or complicated it's really not just stick with me here let's look at a song that I recently arranged bridge over troubled water trouble [Music] I [Music] honestly finding a place to start with a song is often the hardest part but once boys play decides on a song that we're going to do it's just a matter of setting a deadline and then getting to work the very first thing I do is I go find the original track on iTunes or Apple music I buy it download it and throw it into logic boom done then I listen to the song a handful of times and while I'm listening I'm trying to look for places where I can add moments what can I say about this song that the original artist didn't say how can I add something to the body of work without being too kitchen sinky after I'd listened a handful of times and got a feel for the tune or in this case reef amiloride to myself with it I head to YouTube and look for as many different versions as I can get ahold of to see what other people have done with the song sometimes somebody has had your exact same idea sometimes somebody else's cover of a song will send you in a direction you've never ever would have thought I knew pretty much right away that I wanted this song to start simply and I thought that if we put the melody in the bassline at the very beginning of the song it would add something new to the overall body of work that the world hadn't necessarily seen before you feeling small additionally bridge over troubled water has a huge drum entrance towards the last verse personally I always wanted that moment to be bigger this with my chance [Music] so with those two things in mind my first task is to sit down and plug the entire song out in MIDI now each audio program is going to have a different input method but this is how it works in logic the program that I use basically you just open up a new MIDI track command click there you have your note and then just option drag all the way through the song until you have the melody plotted out once the melody is in I move on to the bass line once I have the melody and the bass line finished then the fun starts in voice play we have five voices so I'll give each voice part its own color so I can differentiate the parts visually in the MIDI tracks [Music] you then I start filling in moments important and all the while I'm doing that and trying to think about what are these chords gonna sound like as who's or odds or delays or inversions or countermelodies or just space for the vocalist the lead vocalist to play there are no wrong answers here but in my experience there are answers that are more right than others how long does this process take typically when I sit down to do just the MIDI part of the arrangement that first part that can take anywhere from between six to eight hours if it's just a single song medleys take a little longer and are a little harder but maybe that's obvious once I got the song MIDI now I take a break I am a firm believer in the Don Draper way of working on something no the other Don Draper way of working on something what I find that after I've worked on something for a long time and really focused on it once I take a break my brain will keep spinning away and keep working on it and I'll have some of my best ideas when I am in the worst places you ready to settle this like men cath sure say hello to Abby and Tim who's had a great idea ah which is why it's always important to have your phone with you to record your ideas into your voice memos app or something like that and never marry an Italian once I have all my ideas down in MIDI I actually sing every single part even the tenor lines what I actually do is I sing them down the octave and then I pitched them up because honestly I just don't sound that good at singing in Earl's world it's at this point once I've actually sung in all the parts and I have a rough mix together that I can actually hear with my ears but I've only been here ahead this whole time and sometimes the arrangement is perfect just the way it is more often than not I have to do some edits and racing a couple things because some of the places where I thought was going to be great ended up being turds happens so once I've edited and made changes and I've gotten that rough demo together I will do what is probably my least favorite part of this whole process but definitely the most helpful and that is sending the demo out to the other four guys so they can listen to it and then tell me how much I suck hey what's up man thanks seriously though this part of the process might be the most important getting honest feedback from people who are hearing your song your arrangement for the very first time can be painful but if you put your ego and your pride aside you can get some really valuable feedback on what works and what doesn't oh yeah well your face looks like a toilet like I said it's important to not take things personally once everyone has given me notes I'll make final edits for the complainers I mean guys and then send them the final demo along with their own part dominant rehearsal track so their part will be panned left or maybe door left not allowed this works and then the other parts of a pan right if you're wearing headphones right now it sounds like this [Music] Oh Bertram with a we found that over the years this is the fastest and best way for us to learn music which is why if you've asked us for a sheet music for one of our Arrangements before we probably don't have it because we don't really use it that ends up being like the very very very last step of the process so all told this entire process will probably take anywhere from a couple eight-hour days to maybe like a week of work from initial concept to final demo to having reversal tracks out to the guys I know that there are some people out there that can knock out an arrangement in a couple hours I'm not one of those people this is the way that I've found tends to be the best for us and for me and if something is going to live on the Internet forever I want it to be the best possible version that I can do or that we as a group can do so yeah I think the the work is worth it in closing I think there are a few key takeaways that you should remember one it's not enough for your arrangement to just be an acapella copy of the original song you are better and more creative than that say something new to try to keep it simple some of the best groups out there are doing pretty simple arrangements a great arrangement should be easy to sing and easy to listen to without having had like years and years of music theory to understand it 3 edit edit edit if you can find somebody to listen to your arrangement for you and give honest feedback that's super helpful and of course try not to take it too personally for a ranch for the voices that you have in your group not the voices that you wish you have in your group for example if your tenor doesn't like singing high F sharps or singing and Klingon maybe make a different choice so that's it thanks for watching as always if you guys have comments or questions please drop them below and I'll see you next time [Music] bring your when you're on the street oh yeah [Music]

Channel: Geoff Castellucci

Views: 83,448

Rating: 4.9886603 out of 5

Keywords: geoffcastellucci, bass, acappella, music, voiceplay, cover, bridgeovertroubledwater, pentatonix

Id: lpdIwOnjndg

Length: 10min 59sec (659 seconds)

Published: Mon Mar 30 2020