Arranging vs Composing

There was a gentleman who told me that he had a professor who said "arranging was the same thing as composing."
Au contraire mon frère, ce n'est pas vrai. There is a huge DIFFERENCE.   I think the best way for me to talk about this is to talk about the arranging field with some history.


Origins
According my research, arranging as we know it started with Fletcher Henderson, Don Redman, and Paul Whitman (with Henderson and Redman being influenced by Louis Armstrong playing with them briefly).  We hear popular songs which are "arranged" for this type of music and bands in NYC.  They would take songs made popular form musicals and later on, movies, and play them in their ensembles.  Think about songs we all play/learn from our Fake Books:
How High the Moon
Almost Like Being in Love
My Favorite Things
All the Things You Are
Star Eyes
There Will never be Another You
I love You
Over the Rainbow
Someday My Prince Will Come


These are all from MOVIES and MUSICALS.  These were not premiered by Ella, Dizzy, and Bird but made famous in the African-American community by them.  Let it be known, they did not write these!


We all know Fletcher Henderson's frustration.  However, a great thing happened when he was arranging for Benny Goodman.  Now, how much money did he make off the record sales
of Benny Goodman.  Zero.  WHY?  Because those were his ARRANGEMENTS, not his compositions.

Ella Fitzgerald made us all learn the changes of How High the Moon; however, Nancy Hamilton and Morgan Lewis made a profit off of her albums!

Frank Sinatra's sound was made by Nelson Riddle and Billy May (just to name a few).  How much money did they make from records?  We don't know, but I assure you, with me knowing LA union rules, probably nothing.  Why?  They ARRANGED the songs


The 70's
Many people still to this day listen to the music of Earth Wind and Fire, Marvin Gaye, Michael Jackson, and Stevie Wonder.  They all had fabulous arrangers: Charles Stepney, TOM TOM 84, Jerry Hey, Paul Riser, and David Van De Pitte.  Could you imagine Reasons without the symphony?  Or the descending Db major 7th chord on My Cherie Amour?  At the end of the day, it's not their music, it's someone else's.


Marching Band
I have two friends who repeatedly annoy me with something.  They place their name on their arrangements and do not place the composers name on it.  BIG NO NO! It is your arrangement, true, but it's NOT your music.  This does not set a good example of your students in this field.  They need to learn to READ the credits and find out who wrote it. (Oops, I said "read").

I remember when I arranged for the University of Michigan Marching Band.   They had to pay Jobete and Black Bull Music for permission to perform the music (this was the most expensive show that year).  Why am I saying this?  They can, at any given time, audit your arrangements. How blasphemous would it be to have your music audited and Stevie Wonder's name isn't on it?  At the end of the day, it's not my music, it's someone else's.




Point and Summary
Arranging, no matter what, is still the reworking of someone else's idea.  I don't care how fancy it is, it is someone else's melodic idea and their form.  Yes, you can use melodic development, fragmentation, transposition, retrograde, inversion, and retrograde-inversion all throughout the piece (which are compositional techniques.) However, at the end of the day, it's not my music, it's someone else's.

I love arranging.  It taught me instrumentation.  It allowed me to test out of the instrumentation class (Music 371) at the University of Michigan.  I will probably arrange until my last breath (I'm actually looking for another marching band to arrange for routinely).   However, I won't receive any royalties from any of my fifty jazz-band arrangements (with multiple difficulty variations) and 150 marching-band arrangements.  If I were to receive a royalty, it would be pennies at best. Why?  It's not my music.

Dead German's Greatest Hits and Music that swings!

We often make a fatal mistake of attempting to separate the so-called classical tradition of African American music with our rich and profoundly influential improvisational traditions. Ellington, Strayhorn, Monk and Mingus should appear on any list of African American composers. We should never accept the superficial and racist divisions of "high" and "low" or "classical" or "vernacular." To accept this division is to embrace the very racial barriers that we attempt to overcome. Our music is profound because we have made American music something much more than a pale reflection of European traditions. 
-Anthony Davis, Composer

As a composer, I find myself defending at times my love for jazz, R&B, and hip-hop with some of my academic colleagues.  This battle has been on-going since I first stepped on the University of Michigan's campus on August 21, 1995.   What has irked me is when people hear my "classical-style" compositions, they would say remarks such as "Oh, it's so jazzy" with a tone of belittlement.  At times, I almost felt ashamed to incorporated the influences of my youth in my symphonic repertoire.  

However, when I look at the music of Bright Sheng, a composer I respect highly, he incorporates Chinese-influenced melodies in his music repeatedly with no shame.  The same of Arturo Màrquez, composer of the famed "Danzon No. 2", and Zhou Long, Pulitzer Prize winning composer.

In Fall of 2002, I stopped composing in the classical style.  I focused on marching and jazz band arranging, composing tunes, and learning how to be a good teacher in the Detroit Public School (which I loved).  Why?  I was tired of competing with dead Germans and Austrians.  How frustrating is it to pour your heart out on a twenty minute opus only to be turned down routinely by conductors? Yet, I would arrange the hottest song on the radio and it would be played immediately by any marching band in the city.  Better yet, I would arrange a chart for Ben's Friends Big Band and it would be programmed on the next concert.

With years of coercing by Damian Crutcher, Armand Hall, Jamal Duncan, Kelvin  Washington, and Ed Quick, I turned to the concert band.   I loved it.  I wrote five band pieces in fourteen months and I thank them for their support and encouragement!

Another change of events happened which I thought would never happened.  I returned to academia in the fall of 2010 to finish my Master's of Music at Kansas State University.  I then returned to orchestral composition. Craig Weston was an amazing teacher and was open to the incorporation of non-European styles in my music.  

With all this being said, I still see a problem with trying to compete with Dead German's Greatest Hits.  Orchestras still won't play my music.  Maybe it sucks.  Maybe it doesn't; however, the issue is the same with fellow composers.

Solution: 

1) I am no longer by the LEAST apologetic for my love for jazz, R&B, and hip-hop.  That's right. Hip-Hop. While I am reading essays of Joshua Rifkin, it is accompanied by KRS-One or CL Smooth.  When I read biographies of the Second Viennese School, be sure to know that Basie is being played.

2) If I write a non-commissioned composition, I understand that it probably won't be played any time soon.  I am okay with that.  No one asked me to write it so they won't program it.  In the words of myself, Brandon Williams, and Ibrahim Jones, "It is what it is!"

3) I attempted to write a "what is this?".  What's a "What is This"?  I wanted to write a large opus that had all my musical loves: classical, jazz, R&B, and hip-hop/rap.  Think about West Side Story.  Is it a musical? Operetta?  Who cares, it's great music.  

        In my youth, I didn't understand how to put it together.  I did everything backwards.  I wrote the music first and then tried to write a script/libretto.  Not too smart.  I abandoned the project.

       I will never forget the words of my friend and Sinfonian brother William Tonnisen, "Hey man, you should finish that opera.  There was some good music in there."  Jay Berckley also gave me similar encouragement.

      In December of 2009, I recorded one of the arias from that unfinished "What is this" with the group Relativity/Trio Nomadian (Damon Warmack, Demetrius Nabors, and Nate Winn aka Tightus Pocketus) .  It was a composition entitled "Daddy's Little Girl."  By the time I added the orchestra to the recording, I realized I finally had the composition EXACTLY how I wanted it.

I then thought to myself, "Maybe I should finish the 'What is this'"?

        As time went by, I knew I needed to write a story FIRST before composing (that didn't always happened but I did finish the story this time. )

        I remembered earlier on in 1997, Bright Sheng gave me some suggestions for my libretto (great ones I must add) but it just wasn't coming together.  However, after an in-depth conversation with Anniece Warren in January 2011 about my music, I finally came up with the story.  Actually, I came up with several different stories which I'll eventually (Lord willing) write to all of them.  

         I officially wrote the storyboard in October 2011 (I came up with the storyboard in Feb but I didn't write it down).  Initially, I was going to just place a short synopsis in the liner notes of my CD; however, thanks to the critique ofLaKindra Parker, I went ahead and wrote it as a novel.  However, this lead me to another issue: what about the music?  How is this going be labeled? It can't just be a "What is this?";

         

       One of my good friends asked me why not make my book, A Tale of Two Fools, an opera, oratorio, or musical?  Problems and more problems.

         A) An opera company wouldn't play it..flat out...refer to the title of this blog and change the word ""German" to "Italian".

         B) A musical COULD happen; however, I don't want to have a pit of seven people.  This isn't the fifties.  How many musicals have the large pits that is required of West Side Story?  In the age where Broadway is using a Motif instead having live trumpets, I can forget about having my dream-sized pit.  Plus, there is not trumpet synth in the world that could come CLOSE to sounding like Jon Faddis, Sean Jones, Byron Stripling, and Oscar Brashear put together.  Also, four string players are not going to cut it.  I want to tell this story symphonically and I'm sticking by it.

         C) Oratorio/Concert Version could work also and be financially feasible. I may do put it in this format later on.

4)  In the end, I decided to make this a Novel/CD companion (James Aikman calls this project a musical drama).  There would be great possibilities from this.  I could get the singers I want whenever they were available (the beauty of multi-track recording [thank you ProTools] ).  I could also use whatever instrumentation I wanted.  Let's talk about the cons. I would be forced to stay within the 80 minutes confinement of a CD.  Aikman also suggested that I stay around 75 minutes to avoid possible CD-replication errors (great advice).  Granted, I could do a two-CD set but that would drive my cost up astronomically.  In the end, I went with about 76 minutes of music having to drop three songs off the CD (about twelve minutes worth of music.)

What about digital download? There's not a time-frame for that     I'll answer that one later.

 In conclusion, I realize many conflicts are internal.  I have resolved mine.  This CD, my musical drama  A Tale of Two Fools: A Soundtrack of a Universal Language  will have classical, jazz, R&B and hip-hop and I make no apologies for the amalgamation of styles.  

I look at musical trailblazers like Daisy Newman who created the African-American Reading sessions with the Detroit Symphony; Anthony Davis, the father of opera politica america; and Henry Lewis who are/were unapologetic of their vision and passion.  I stand to imitate.

Now that I have started this blog, I will use this to talk about my creative processes of my compositions, librettos, novels, videos, and in-depth writings/discussions about A Tale of Two Fools.  

Much Love,

Chad "Sir Wick" Hughes

PS: I currently have a commission with the University of Alabama.  I asked Demondrae 
Thurman, the conductor/soloist I am writing for, that I wanted to write a jazz movement in his euphonium concerto.  He said "Go for it!"