How To Make Sections Feel More Coherent

When it comes to planning an arrangement most approaches offer a limited overview. Although they can be a fantastic starting point for a chart, tools like event lists are mainly used to organize sections and map out orchestration, they don’t actually help with the notes themselves. That’s why it’s necessary to have a few more strategies up your sleeve that operate somewhere between the macro planning approach and the micro tasks such as voicings and intervals. For me, one of the most useful approaches that navigates both areas has been thematic development.

Ever since I started writing music I’ve always found it difficult to come up with lines I’m happy with. Eventually I end up stumbling on something I like but it usually takes much longer than any other area in my writing process. Sometime while running my youth program back in Melbourne, I had a discussion with one of the students about how their university classes were going. Through the conversation, they mentioned how one of the professors had said that all you need to create a piece of music is a theme or motif. My arrogant younger self immediately discounted the concept, leaning on the fact that so much big band literature is built on dozens or more ideas. 

Sometime later while browsing YouTube, I found an interview with the legendary composer John Williams. To my surprise he said that a good melody or theme can be repeated an almost limitless amount of times and can carry an entire movie soundtrack. By hearing him speak about the same concept the student had mentioned, I quickly realized there was some truth behind the approach. I could easily see how John Williams had used simple melodic ideas consistently throughout his film scores and they never felt old or out of place even when I had heard them hundreds of times. 

I decided to test the theory out with my next arrangement, taking a small three note motif from the melody and building the intro with it. To my surprise it was very effective. Not only did it help provide a direction for writing the intro, but it helped the entire piece feel coherent as the sections were linked with similar material. Fast forward to now, I find myself using this technique all of the time both as a compositional tool to create lines and as a planning tool to help develop themes across the entirety of a chart.

The great thing about thematic development is that it doesn’t feel as overwhelming as pure composition and is quite easy to start implementing. To do so, all you have to do is find a small motif in the melody you are arranging and then experiment a little bit with it. That could look like augmenting the rhythm or displacing certain notes by an octave, as well as using it in other capacities such as a riff or perhaps a bass line. There are lots of options to choose from, so use your best judgement and let your ears guide you.

Thanks for taking the time to read this week's entry. Due to a few personal issues I missed sending it out last week but I figure better late than never. Now that we are officially in March, I plan on shifting gears to look at harmony in more detail and share some of the techniques I commonly use to reharmonize a chord progression.

Thanks,

Toshi