Well, dear readers, there is much confusion over what exactly constitutes an “arrangement” and what constitutes and “orchestration.” Since I’ll be talking about a couple of my favorites of the CDs I’ve produced, ones that were truly labors of love and ones which I feel really represent me as a producer, the arrangements are integral. I’ve been involved in the arrangements from the very beginning of my recording career. It’s something that just comes naturally to me. Whether it was a solo singer or a compilation album with multiple songs and singers, I was either very hands on in terms of giving notes and comments or doing them with the MDs or doing them myself. I never took credit in the early days, but finally someone said I was a fool not to take credit, but even when I started to I shared the credit with whoever the MD was. So, what is an arrangement and what is an orchestration. An orchestration is something I could never do in a million years. It is what our very own elmore does expertly. We give him a tape or a lead sheet or a piano part, and he assigns the instruments to the various piano part lines we’ve come up with, plus he adds inner lines of his own for the various instruments. For example, on The Brain From Planet X, he got lead sheets with chords for every song – those lead sheets also had the piano accompaniment for all the vamps and specific figures I wanted. They were also on the tape. So, for example, the opening vamp of the title song is something that I wrote in a very specific way and elmore took that and came up with a brilliant orchestration of exactly what I was playing – and I do mean brilliant, even though it was just for five instruments. It perfectly captured the world of the song and instantly put you in the right frame of mind. So, the vamp was mine – the realization for the band was elmore’s. I write very specific feels and vamps and he was great about interpreting them. But he also came up with wonderful inner lines for instruments, especially in the song Things Are Gonna Be Changing Around Here, most especially in the bridge – wonderful work.
So, let me talk about a couple of specific arrangements and how I approach that sort of thing. An arrangement is basically a routine of the song you’re doing – it’s usually called, in fact, routining. I talked about Joey, Joey, Joey yesterday – a brilliant and unique arrangement of a standard. When we were doing the Lost In Boston or Unsung Musicals albums, I did try to be true to the song and rarely did anything, save for maybe extending an ending or putting an instrumental in. For example, when Guy Haines recorded one of my favorite Sondheim songs, What Can You Lose, it’s basically what Sondheim wrote with several arrangement changes, most specifically when he gets very weird with his chords at the end – I thought his opening vamp was amazing and that he didn’t use it enough – so I used it wherever I could. We simplified the weird chords at the end, and I really didn’t like the way the song finished, on the line “There’s too much to lose” it just sort of peters out after that in one or two bars – so I put the opening vamp there, too and it really was magic when we heard it. Then Larry orchestrated it wonderfully. There was an instrumental section in the middle, and he’d assigned a sax for the solo. When I heard it, it just didn’t move me or get to me or work for me. So, as is my wont, I turned to poor Larry and said that it didn’t work for me and said let’s figure out an alternative. Our wonderful guitarist, Kevin Kuhn, was coming in, and I said why don’t we put it on electric guitar and have him do all the vamps, too. Larry said to try it – well, it was so perfect, so RIGHT and we all just knew it instantly. It remains one of my favorite tracks of all that I’ve done.
And then came Unsung Irving Berlin. What a blessing that album was – to be allowed to go into Irving Berlin’s files, where no one had gone, and to unearth unbelievable treasures that hadn’t been heard. Some songs were just sketches, some were very complete, but we had to do a lot of work on them. On that album, Lanny Meyers was the MD and orchestrator. For the number that I wanted to open the CD with, A Lovely Day For A Walk, I sat with Lanny in his studio and told him that I wanted it to sound like a big, brassy, MGM Technicolor musical, like Easter Parade. We came up with several fun vamp things and transition things, and routined the song as if we were doing it for the silver screen. I came up with an extended ending and putting the tune into what we call the rideout, which is the musical ending to the song. Then he orchestrated it to a fare-thee-well and if you listen to that track there’s no way you won’t hear that our goal was met. Of course, it helps to have Liz Callaway and Harry Groener singing, and we added a big MGM-style chorus. For Crista Moore’s A Beautiful Day In Brooklyn I came up with an opening vamp and Lanny went from there, just making magic out of a glorious Berlin tune. For Liz’s song Nothing More To Say, it was a lot more difficult. I’d found this single sheet in the Berlin filing cabinet and it had only a melody line and lyric, no chords, no harmonization – but oh did I love that lyric and oh did I love the melody line. So, I told Lanny to harmonize it and oh did he do a brilliant job – in the Berlin style, of course. If we’d done that song as written it would have lasted about thirty seconds – we had to take it and make much more out of it. Listen to Liz Larsen’s brilliant If You Haven’t Got An Ear For Music – the middle orchestral section is all Lanny and utterly fantastic. Things like that are why I love being a producer – those sessions, to me, are everything.
But my favorite arrangements that I’ve worked on are mostly on the Peter Pan and Cinderella albums. Those two albums say more about my musical and dramatic sensibilities than almost any other. I loved the idea of doing a Peter Pan (and then Cinderella) that would tell the story by using songs from a whole slew of different songs by different writers used for different productions. The joy on Peter Pan was doing the put-togethers, like You Can Fly and I’m Flying and making that number soar as if you were really flying. With Todd Ellison, the MD, I figured out how the two songs would go together – we came up with a wonderful arrangement in about two hours. And I told him I wanted a flying ballet in the middle, so we left a hole for that. I knew what I wanted it to be – I wanted not only exciting flying music, but I also wanted floating on clouds music and I wanted to put in fun quotes from other flying music, like ET and Superman. Anyway, I just couldn’t figure it out. It was driving me crazy, actually. One day, I was walking down Broadway and I don’t know why, but it all just came to me in a flash, every bit of it. I went to a phone booth (I don’t think I had a cell phone), and I called Todd, who wasn’t home. So, I left a message, and the message was me singing at the top of my lungs on Broadway the entire flying ballet as I heard it, every single note of it. And it never changed. Todd transcribed it for piano, we inserted it where it belonged and we gave it to Larry to orchestrate and boy did he do an amazing job. For trivia fans, that’s Guy Haines playing the wind machine. I had a lot of fun with the pirate music – we did some original J.M. Barrie songs, and when we were in the studio and rehearsing it just didn’t seem to have the oomph I wanted, so I went in to Lee Wilkof and Gregg Jbara and told Lee to talk really high and for Gregg to talk really low – it was so funny when they did it, that that became a running gag. For Cinderella, I did a similar kind of arrangement for the put-together of Impossible and Suddenly It Happens. I wanted the excitement of the pumpkin changing into the coach and the whirlwind drive and again Todd and I worked up the routine and David Siegel really delivered the orchestration goods.
I also had a good deal of fun on the arrangements of Prime Time Musicals, I think one of my most unknown albums and one of which I’m particularly proud. For the opening number, Come To The Supermarket In Old Peking I had an idea right away – I’d just done the cast album of the revival of The King and I, which had a very distinctive opening musical statement. So, I thought it would be really funny to ape it and that’s what we did, right down to the shouting of the chorus, which then leads into the Cole Porter music. For Too Happy Dancing, I wanted it to sound like a Silly Symphony, and Brad Ellis really did a great job orchestrating it that way. The vocalist on that song was Jennifer Piech, who I’d seen and loved in Titanic – so, I got her number and asked her if she’d like to join our merry troupe. We rehearsed the number and I knew she’d be great. She came into the studio and was so nervous she was literally shaking. You could hear it in her voice. I just began doing takes, and we’d listen, and I’d go back in the room with her and calm her and by take four she was totally getting into it and by take six we were done. I said my usual opening phrase to her – “the microphone is your friend.” Once singers understand that, they adjust and relax and the difference is astonishing.
On the Bacharach album, I knew I wanted to start with a musical joke. Since we were opening the album with What’s New, Pussycat, with Jason Graae singing, I thought it would be funny to play the opening music from Cats followed by the smashing of a window – it was exactly what I wanted, and we brought back the Cats music at the end and Jason did hilarious vocals around it. On Christiane Noll’s A Broadway Love Story, the arrangements were total joy to work on. That as a concept album and I wanted every song to move the story forward without rewriting lyrics or cheating in any way. And I wanted it to make sense musically. So, in one song we’d have an accompaniment figure or tune from another song weaving in and out in the underscore. It’s subtle but for those who are paying attention it’s there. And I got to do a musical joke I’d always wanted to do – in You’re Just In Love, which we made a left brain/right brain duet for Christiane and her alter-ego, after she sings (without any accompaniment) “I hear music and there’s no one there” we put in a beat of silence then played the theme from The Twilight Zone. Then after she sings “I smell blossoms and the trees are bare” we put in the MUSICAL line from I Remember from Evening Primrose, the musical line whose lyric is “Bare as coat racks, spread like broken umbrellas.” Those kinds of things always tickle me and for those who get them, it’s a little fun musical nudge. And that is the art of arranging.
Well, why don’t we all click on the Unseemly Button below, which is the art of getting to the next page.
Yesterday was not a bad day at all. In fact, it was a rather nice day all around. I got up and did the long jog right away. I then had to answer a lot of e-mails and have a few telephonic calls. I then picked up the DVDs of the Kevin and Sean show. I then did a few errands then came home. Kevin came by and picked up two DVDs (he’ll give one to Sean), and then I toddled over to Jerry’s deli and sat for ninety minutes, having a sandwich and fries and proofing the first three chapters of the new book. I hadn’t really looked at it since I finished, and so far I’m really happy with it. It’s got a whole different feel than the other two Hofstetter mysteries, and that has to do with the fact that its setting is really fun (and very different than the last two books) and mainly because Adriana doesn’t interact with people her own age (save for best pal Billy) – she only interacts with people much older than her, and I just like the feel of this book. Whether others will remains to be seen. I also like the fact that the book is filled with rain and food. After that, I came back home, packaged up some orders, answered more e-mails and by then it was almost six-thirty.
Last night I watched a motion picture entitled Midnight Lace, starring Miss Doris Day, Mr. Rex Harrison, Miss Myrna Loy, and Mr. John Gavin. I saw it back when it came out at the wonderful Picwood Theater in Westwood. I liked it very much, but I must say watching it now it’s quite an irritating film. The writing is really bad, and the direction, while glossy, is so studio bound it’s stultifying. No one is more of a Doris fan than I, but in a few scenes in this film you actually just want the killer to off her – she’s so annoying and over the top you just want to slap her silly and say shut UP. The region two transfer is merely adequate – muddy-looking, many generations away from the camera negative, and murky.
Today I have very little planned, so I’ll be doing more proofing (at a different restaurant), the Handy Man has to come and see if he can fix the blinds in my dining room – they broke yesterday and I can’t raise them. And best of all, the two new Kritzerland CDs will be live at www.kritzerland.com, probably by the time you’re reading these here notes in the morning. The original cast album of Anya, and the first ever complete release of the score to the marvelously marvelous Philippe de Broca classic, That Man From Rio by Georges Delerue. Check ’em out and order if you’re of a mind to.
Well, dear readers, I must take the day, I must do the things I do, I must, for example, get up, do the long jog, do a few errands and whatnot, hopefully print out lots of orders, and proof. Today’s topic of discussion: It’s Friday – what is currently in your CD player and your DVD/video player? I’ll start – CD, Unsung Irving Berlin – haven’t heard it in YEARS. Also, a bunch of soundtracks. DVD, next up is The Helen Morgan Story, The Silver Chalice and a bunch of Claude Lelouch films. Your turn. Let’s have loads of lovely postings, shall we, whilst I continue on my trip down memory lane, which I’m very much enjoying.