ARRANGING Arranging is the adaptation of a piece of music to a specific vocal and/or instrumental combination. ‘This vocal and instrumental combination may range from a single performer, with or without a small supporting group, to a full orchestra. ‘The success of an arrangement depends on the arranger's musical technique, good taste, and his or her ability to enhance the ausic in a way that is pleasing to both performers and listeners. To this end, arrangers often modify and stylize a piece of music to the extent that they are adding their own musical ideas. In this way, arranging may involve a certain amount of composition. There are many elements to consider in arranging music: form, instrunenta~ tion, style, tonality, melody, harmony, rhythm, etc. We will begin with a discussion of form. Form, in music, is the structure and shape of musical ideas and the planned design in which these areas are repeated, contrasted, and/or varied. To determine the form of a piece of music, one must be principally concerned with its melodic and harmonic content. Form in music may be considered both in relation to the shorter and separate parts of a piece and to a piece as a whole. In this course, we will consider: song form as it relates to jazz, rock, and popular music, and arrangement form (how the various sections of an arrangement are put Together). A. SONG FORM To understand song form we must not only consider melodic and harmonic structure but also lyric structure. Although form will vary from song to song, there are several typical form models thet are often used by songwriters. Diagrams of these form models are used to graphi- cally represent the form of a song. While letters A, B, C, etc. and 4, by ¢, etc. are used to represent a song's melodic and harmonic structure, there are additional terns used to describe songs with lyrics. The following is a discussion of these terms and form diagrams showing their use. 1, Verse and chorus In older song forms, particularly folk music, each verse represents @ co-equal subdivision of the total lyric structure of the song. The same melody is used for each succeeding verse in the song.