When Traditional Voicing Techniques Fail

Happy New Year! It’s crazy to think we are now in 2025 but I’m looking forward to what the year has in store. After a much needed break over the Christmas period, I’m back into all things jazz arranging and have just looked at the results of the last newsletter’s poll. It seems the topic of voicings just barely beat out developing an arrangement, so for this month I’m going to focus on a variety of voicing topics in this newsletter. Don’t worry if you voted for something else, I’ll make sure to hit all of the major topics people voted for as the year goes on. Thank you to everyone who responded, it really does help me know what you all enjoy hearing about and I’m excited to dive into these topics with you.

When you think of arranging, almost always the word voicing comes to mind. That’s because a lot of people understand theory and harmony but don’t actually know how to use it practically when writing for a group of instruments like a horn section. In my experience, even when you do get a bit of voicing experience it doesn’t necessarily mean that you can write great voicings. At least that’s what happened to me.

Coming out of university I was ready to hit the ground running and write as many arrangements as I could. During my studies I had already written dozens of charts, mostly of pretty amateur quality, but at the time I thought I knew everything and nothing was going to stop me. I had learnt a number of different voicing strategies which I was eager to unleash onto my new clients, however, what I wasn’t prepared for was to have issues with those techniques.

You see, I knew the theory and had even applied the techniques in plenty of early arrangements, but I hadn’t connected the theory behind each voicing with the aural experience they provided. When a voicing landed and sounded great, I just thought it was because I had used an appropriate technique. And to be fair, sometimes that was the case, but it was a fluke that it had worked because I wasn’t looking at the whole picture. 

Fast forward to 2017 when I moved back to Australia, I began writing for a reduced size big band which played the music of Count Basie. It required me to transcribe a number of classic charts and alter them to fit the smaller instrumentation. I thought I was doing a great job but after the first performance one of my best friends, and an exceptional arranger in his own right, Niels Rosendahl, came up to me and mentioned some of the issues with the revoiced horn parts. Particularly that the voicings were prominently in the upper register across the band in all of the charts. At the time my ego got the better of me and I shrugged the critique off stupidly. It wasn’t until 2020 when I really started to understand what Niels was talking about.

Coming out of the various lockdowns of the year led to a number of restrictions which affected the bands I was writing for. One such band had to be reduced to 3 horns which meant revoicing the entire book. Faced with the challenge of removing a considerable amount of harmonization in the horn parts I was unsure of what to do. Fortunately, the band was playing every week so I could adjust the music based on how successful my voicings turned out. I initially relied on using stock voicing techniques across the 3 horns but realized this actually led to far weaker, and oftentimes less stable horn parts when played live. Knowing that I had to try another approach I recalled the conversation with Niels years earlier and figured I should try and voice based on register instead. 

Rather than simply thinking about voicing techniques like closed, open, drop 2 etc. I looked at the three horns I was writing for (trumpet, tenor, and trombone) and looked at the registers they were playing in for each voicing. Almost every time I relied on closed voicings the trumpet note brought the other two instruments into a higher register than the trumpet. As a result, the balance of the voicing was impacted and the two lower notes were heard more prominently. A big problem when the trumpet was playing the melody and I wanted that to come out the strongest.

To combat this, I started revoicing the lower horns to be in the same, or lower, register to the trumpet, producing a more balanced sound. The next step was to find notes in that register that made sense with both the trumpet part as well as the accompanying chord progression. At times it definitely felt like a complex puzzle but when I found a voicing which nailed all three components it was very satisfying. After reworking the arrangements to be voiced in this manner I noticed a few things. The players enjoyed the charts more, the overall sound of the voicings was more solid and better suited the music, and ultimately that voicing techniques are useful but the aural effect of voicings is far more important than the actual theory behind them. With all that said, here is an example using this type of approach.

Ironically, when I look back at the arranging classes I originally took, the first class was on range and register. Almost as if it was taught to be more important than the voicing techniques I was introduced to later. Fortunately I had Niels to intervene in my life otherwise I may still be thinking about theory first and music later. 

The voicing approach explained in this newsletter has changed my arranging trajectory completely. By prioritizing register I have made new personal discoveries with harmony and voicings I never would have experienced otherwise. There’s nothing wrong with plugging in techniques that you learn and there is definitely a time and place for that approach, but once you understand the mechanics it is also important to break from the techniques and think about how they can aid (or perhaps not) the music you are writing. 

Looking to next week, there are so many voicing topics that can be explored. I think it might be worth looking at the classics, specifically closed position voicings and what notes to include or exclude from them. As they are so common in arrangements of all sorts, I figure everyone will be able to enjoy some aspect of it. Thanks again for taking the time to read this newsletter and as always, if you have any questions or simply want to chat, feel free to reply to this email and I’ll try to respond in a timely manner. 

Thanks,

Toshi