From Piano to Band

The next step in my composing process is orchestrating what I have written on the piano into what ever group of instruments that I decide are necessary for the piece. I begin by transferring what I play on the real piano into midi. I usually do this so I have more freedom of the piano sounds, and more importantly, it will be in tune. I then started to individually play all the different parts, apart from guitar, on my midi keyboard. This can be anything from drums to oboe.

I Don’t Know Why

I decided that I wanted to keep the orchestration for this song fairly stripped back so that the melodies had more space to breath.

I kept the piano part almost the same as the demo I recorded on the real piano. The only thing I changed was the ending, as the piano was just playing what the vocals were going to sing. Other than that, everything else was just the same. I also added a very simple organ part.

The bass was played on the keyboard and I tried to keep it very simple. I basically just doubled what the left hand of the piano plays, but I always feel that the bass is not meant to show off; it’s just there to fill out, well, the bass.

When writing the drum part, I also wanted to keep it simple as it’s not really an extravagant song. The only thing that wasn’t basic about the drums was the kick drum pattern, following the bass line, which doesn’t always repeat the way you expect.

For the guitars, I luckily wrote it in E Major which is a very friendly key for the guitar, as I was able to use chord voicing’s that utilise the open strings to create a full, lush sound. I knew that I wanted acoustic guitars as soon as I added the drums. It really fills out the sound and lets the piano sit back.

Until The Dawn

This time, because the piano part I came up with wasn’t fully fleshed out, I decided to almost start a fresh and redo the piano for this one. The piano is only really important for the first half of the song so after the full band comes in, it was just filling a space. This allowed the piano to be less complex in the second half of the song.

I added an orchestral section for the introduction of the piece. The beginning has some deep, warm, dissonant strings that are later joined by percussion, woodwind and French horn which transition into the section that sounds like Hollywood film music.

I tried to make the bass busier in this piece, as I felt like it needed more drive, and there was more going on to warrant the bass playing some funkier lines.

The drums were pretty interesting in this piece as I felt that, since it was such an upbeat song with lots going on, the drums could really go for it. So, I added lots of fun fills. For example, the fill going across the bar making it sound like its 5/4 but its actually all in four, as well as some double kick drum fun.

As discussed previously, I knew that I wanted brass playing lines on top of everything throughout the piece. I tried to arrange it as if it was a quartet (2 trumpets and 2 trombones) which seemed to work quite nicely. Unfortunately, I had to use midi brass. :(

There are three main guitars; the rhythm guitar which was a classic rock part, a wet guitar which played high parts with lots of effects on them, and I had lead guitars which essentially just doubled the brass section to try and mask the fact that its midi brass.

The Chance

The first thing I had to do for this piece was transpose it. I knew that I wanted to have a female vocal and I knew I wanted it to end with a big, high belt. So I asked my female vocalist what note she would be comfortable holding a long belt for. She chose B, so I transposed the song from Eb to A.

Because of this, the piano part just didn’t sound as good so I had to make some minor adjustments, but it pretty much stayed the same as the demo.

The orchestral instruments were strings, woodwind, percussion and various tuned percussion like timpani and glockenspiel. My approach to arranging these instruments was to just go through every single one of them and work out where the closest note of the chord is in the nicest sounding part of the instruments range, and come up with individual melodies for them. I also doubled the string instruments with woodwind instruments of an equivalent range i.e. violins and flutes etc.

Toughest Type

Since I felt that this piece was very rhythmically driven, I had a lot of fun creating a drum part for it. I wanted it to have lots of fun fills, groove changes and in-sync kick drum patterns.

I used the exact piano part from the demo, but since I knew I wanted it to sound kind of 80s rock, I added a mildly cheesy synth part. This is sometimes in unison with the piano and at other times, it adds a counterpart.

I let the bass be a bit busier at points. However, throughout the verses I really wanted it to lock in with the kick drum. Since I wanted the piece to sound big, I really tried to utilise the low B string on a 5 string bass when writing the part.

I tried to make the lead guitar become its own vocal line throughout the piece, and it always has its own melody that interacts with the vocals. There are 2 other guitar parts; a main dirty rhythm which is always locked in with the drums and bass and, in the chorus, I wanted a bit of sparkly, clean, high end just to bring out the rhythm of the guitar.