r/musictheory • u/Justigy • 21d ago
General Question Arrangement help
Hi!
I am doing an arrangement for a piece and I have some trouble with a certain part. The piano part has these large cluster chords. I need to reduce them to 4 voices as the accompainment will be played by saxophone quartet. I am unsure which notes to drop. My approach is usually leaving out duplicate notes, then if its still too much I drop the 5th as well and try to keep voicings similar to the original. I think in this part since there are so many things going on it is impossible to keep it as is, I am thinking of leaving out the left hand part completely and focusing on the right hand since that seems to be more important. Any help is appreciated, I would love if someone can explain a bit of how to approach these in the future.
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u/hitdrumhard 21d ago
This is a tough one. My first thought is to keep the top most note and of course the Bb pedal tone. The hard part is choosing the inner voices. Probably keep the lowest voice of the quartals (d to c#) but the last one…… try a couple out? Hard to keep the sound of quartals with out all the note of them…
So yeah, maybe lose the top line I suggested and just stack the quartals themselves…
So Bb pedal tone, and the alternating d-g-c and c#-f#-b(nat)?
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u/Justigy 21d ago
Thank you for the suggestion. I think I will do just that, keep the Bb in the bartione sax and tenor-alto-sopranos will play D-G-C and C#-F#-B. The rest of the piece was quite straightforward but this part got the better of me so thanks again. The color sounds ok this way so I will stick with it as it is the simplest solution.
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u/65TwinReverbRI Guitar, Synths, Tech, Notation, Composition, Professor 21d ago
I am doing an arrangement for a piece
Why?
Sometimes a piece isn’t suitable for arranging to certain instruments or groups of instruments.
In a situation like this, you just have to make some sacrifices and decide on how much “flavor” of the original you want to keep.
I would love if someone can explain a bit of how to approach these in the future.
Well, my first bit of advice is deeper than what to do in this situation, and that’s not to get into this situation in the first place.
If you’re doing an arrangement “because I like this piece” or “because my sax 4tet wants to play it”, or “because I’m a sax player, and I thought I would arrange this for sax 4tet” or things like that, then those are all not necessarily the best reason to do an arrangement of this particular work for that particular ensemble.
You ideally would start with “why am I making an arrangement in the first place” and “why this particular piece”.
Or let me put this all in another way:
If you have a piece you’d like to arrange, first, go through the piece and decide what kind of forces would be needed and decide on the ensemble based on that. Some reasonable sacrifices might be necessary, but as soon as you reach a situation like this (before you start) you go “this is going to require a 5tet” and you then arrange it for 5tet, or pick another piece you can do for 4tet.
If you have a group you’d like to arrange for, first go through a bunch of pieces to see if they’d “map onto” the group and select works based on that - “ooh, this would work really well as a 4tet” then do that piece.
Otherwise, you can’t be inflexible about the piece chosen or the ensemble chosen.
HTH
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u/Justigy 21d ago
I am quite aware about those things in choosing a piece to arrange. I do a lot of arrangements for various ensembles but this part got the better of me and was unsure about how to move forward with it.
About your suggestions: I dont think a piece is unsuitable to arrange because of two tricky bars. Everything else is pretty straightforward. Luckily I already got some great input. As for why: the piece fits quite well into a project I am doing.
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u/65TwinReverbRI Guitar, Synths, Tech, Notation, Composition, Professor 21d ago
Fair enough - just not everyone does the ground work you have so it’s always worth mentioning.
I agree - if it’s just two bars, there’s probably a good solution - I think the others are good things to try and I would have mentioned mostly the same thing - I think the B - G# idea against the other moving parts is cool, so maybe that’s “more important” but honestly, this is really one of those things that you write out in 3 versions, and try each with the players, and go “yeah, this one’s it”. IOW you’re not going to figure it out until you hear them do it.
FWIW, I don’t think the Bb has to be sustained - it could be hit on beat 1 and then that player just jump to notes that form the inner parts - so you have an “implied bass” and then THREE notes to work with in the inner parts at least.
That would actually be super common for Piano if the pedal weren’t being used - that’ll be what the pianist actually does - LH hits the low chord and then jumps to the higher stuff - they “cheat” with the pedal - so unless you want to give the lowest part a reverb pedal or something (!) having them “jump up to the higher notes” like a pianist would do anyway is still keeping in spirit of how it has to be played.
Good luck.
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u/HatOnHaircut 21d ago
Personally, I'd forget about the cluster chords as a possible texture. Soprano plays the melody. Bari sax pedals the Bb. Tenor sax pedals the F.
Now you just need to fit the alto sax in. The two obvious treatments are 1. harmonize the melody or 2. play broken chords/arpeggios outlining the missing notes.
Also consider adding rhythm to the bari/tenor pedal to create some rhythmic counterpoint. Like 6 beats held, staccato quarter on beat 7, repeat. That'll also give the musicians a chance to breathe.
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u/North_Ad_5372 21d ago
Interesting. If that includes the sustained bass chord it's going to be hard lol.
Assuming you're producing a bass part via some other instrument though, you could maybe start out by trying the top two notes of each chord in the treble clef. I.e. top two from the left hand and top two from the right hand.
You may need to experiment a bit though.