The Secret Code to Music Arranging

In this video I hope to convince you that the humble act of arranging a piece of music can be totally transformative, a good arranger can make a modest song into something amazing and an amazing song into something even better.
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Mussorgsky Pictures at an Exhibition (Kissin)
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Can you tell which composer is a cheat?
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Berio Folk Songs
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Ades Three Studies from Couperin
• Adès: Les Tours de pas...
Coleman Hawkins Body and Soul
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Vanity Fair article
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Joni Mitchell Both Sides 1970
Now • Joni Mitchell - Both S...
Joni Mitchell performance 2000
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Luscent Reacts
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James McGlynn
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Joni Mitchell Interview
• Joni Mitchell Interview

[@DavidBennettPiano]

Excellent video as always David! I love all the different camera angles and animations! Great work 😊

[@klarsen91]

Your videoediting keeps getting better and bettter! The content in of it self is top notch as always!

[@ericrakestraw664]

My sentiments exactly! As with Adam Neely, I wish David would upload new content more frequently, but I understand that his busy schedule makes that difficult, so I'm happy with any new videos that we get.

[@mustysheep3977]

​@@ericrakestraw664 his editing might be getting better because he is taking his time

[@dcx45]

So watchable ...

[@Jwellsuhhuh]

@@mustysheep3977 but he is utilizing tactics like various backgrounds and transition styles to keep the video compelling for a wider audience, which takes strategy and effort. Who cares if it takes longer? It’s pretty good considering he is also a professional composer

[@mustysheep3977]

@@Jwellsuhhuh read my comment again, I am not complaining. though looking back on it, I dont even know why I put that useless comment

[@jenova2239]

I’m the first opening lines, “no one dreams of becoming this” it’s really funny because it was my childhood dream (still is but is more of a hobby than a career right now) to become an arranger

[@auldthymer]

When Linda Ronstadt collaborated with Nelson Riddle, THAT'S when I became interested in arranging.

[@brandonmacey964]

A good arranger is a composer, period..

[@Nooticus]

Absolutely the same here with me!

[@truefilm6991]

Awesome as always! I am actually an arranger. Sometimes gorgeous gospel tunes, sometimes piano reductions for my students. I love it. You find out the hidden (or not so hidden) genius of some musicians and of course when you have the freedom to write for orchestra, you can include, say, those gorgeous French horn lines, string runs, woodwind textures, funky horn sections and sometimes beautiful reharmonizations.

[@eoinbroadfoot2884]

I would like to have a career as an arranger. How exactly did you do it?

[@mikeciul8599]

@@eoinbroadfoot2884 me too! I want to know! Also, I love that "doing covers" is actually secret code for arranging. 💜

[@kingavenuemusic]

Another famous example of arranging in classical music is Rhapsody in Blue. As I remember the story, Gershwin didn't feel confident with his own orchestration skills, and the tight deadline for the commission didn't give him the time to learn. So he asked Ferde Grofe to orchestrate it, and that's the version we almost always hear. Similar to the Ravel Pictures, it's Grofe just as much as it is Gershwin.

[@mikeoas]

Very much so, although Grofe orchestrated Rhapsody in Blue three times ... the third (symphonic) version is the one typically performed now, while the first was very much geared towards the ensemble at the premiere (Paul Whiteman's jazz band, for whom Grofe was its pianist) and the second was for a smaller "pit orchestra". Gershwin also did intend to orchestrate it himself, but sadly passed away before he had the chance.

[@JonHarris77]

Another reason we arrange is to make use of the instruments we have at hand. As a church musician/arranger, I don't have access to a full orchestra or big band. It's a mix of whatever volunteers I can find (different week by week) augmented with a very limited budget for hiring. So it's a fun challenge to arrange for the available musicians and their skill levels!

[@richardbarcaricchio]

The amount of work it would've taken to put this video together... astounds me. So fun, so educational. Thanks, mate.

[@DavidRussell323]

I'm an arranger too! I think you're right that people don't necessarily imagine "arranging" as the purest expression of their own musicality--folks not in the field may think, "why not compose original music instead of relying on the crutch of using stuff that someone else wrote?". But it's really interesting to me that so many musicians on youtube nowadays arrange & perform tracks extremely frequently to not only study how their favorite music was built, but also to develop their own styles and sensibilities when it comes to making the kind of music they like to make. And even then, arranging is even a great way to develop an audience for whatever the musician would want to do later, like you mentioned with Collier. It's all part of the folk process--the everblooming story constantly being told and retold by musicians to celebrate what they love in new ways, and it keeps tunes alive like watering the big musical garden. I see arranging as *most* of what music-making is all about: putting together all the elements of a piece, and then putting some melody on it. Whether or not the melody is "original" or from someone else isn't all that important because the essence of the process is exactly the same. And it can be so funny to spend days working on some fantastic new piece and then put, like, the flintstones melody on top and it actually works (re: your mood switch point around 8:40) Awesome video addressing the many ways arranging and arrangers have been around since forever--and I loved all the compositing and cutshots lmao. The "regional chef" metaphor was absolutely perfect; I'm gonna keep that one in mind hah

[@james_subosits]

David, this is probably my favorite video you've uploaded - the quality really shines through in this video. I know playing the KZbin game sucks. However, you're good at communicating about music in an audience-friendly way, please keep up the fantastic work.

[@Nooticus]

Agreed! Incredibly well-made video

[@peterschaffter826]

For me, arranging is an interpretive act allowing a composer to "perform" another composer's work. I thoroughly enjoy doing it. Thanks for an exceptionally good video, David, with particular appreciation for the love you give Joni Mitchell.

[@JonHarris77]

Great video, nice to see some love for us arrangers! It's an invisible job most people don't even realize needs to be done.

[@ShanevsDCsniperr]

love when the camera shows your painting again and it's ben levin

[@Nooticus]

Absolutely one of your best videos. This is a truly inspiring video for someone like me whose dream job is actually an arranger! I think there are more of us out there than you think David! All the little easter eggs and jokes in this video haven’t gone amiss! Legendary work!

[@utha2665]

One that gets forgotten about is Percy Grainger's Lincolnshire Posy, he arranged many folk melodies around England for Military Band, some really beautiful music.

[@WromWrom]

One of the most contrasted arrangements done are those that Björk makes to her own work. Compare the original "Human Behavior" and the version she arranged for MTV Unplugged. Or actually any concert tour she does as she often changes the instruments at hand (more or less radically), so in every tour the arrangements are different.

[@meadish]

In a more optimal world, Björk would have AT LEAST as many offspring as Djenghis Khan did.

[@torgenxblazterzoid]

Bjork also utilises a great number of ‘found sounds’ and other sound design treatments which allows her great leeway in assembling very personal and fresh interpretations .

[@fundymentalism]

You put so much effort into your videos, thank you!

[@musamusashi]

Not only your videos are always full of useful information, but they are also getting more and more visually entertaining. Keep them coming, David!

[@SolarMumuns]

Fantastic as always - love the orchestral arrangement of Both Sides as well. Strikes the heart

[@mikecunningham4682]

Love this, I often think about cover songs and I feel like there's a lot of overlap here. A lot of people seem to see covers as lazy or unoriginal, but I honestly love getting to hear a different interpretation of a song. Sometimes you're lucky enough to hear a favourite artist's take on one of your favourite songs. It's utterly transformative. I love Taylor Swift's cover of September for example. The original is loud and bombastic and fun, it's a perfect party. Taylor's cover strips the entire thing back to three chords on a guitar, like she would do when doing one of her own songs acoustically, and it shifts from being *in* the party to almost feeling like looking back on it from the day after? Total opposite end of the spectrum is Bowling for Soup's cover of Stacy's Mom, it's almost indistinguishable from the original, but more so just works as a way to keep a fun song alive. Re-arranging is a big part of a cover and I love seeing how musicians reinterpret other people's work.

[@AllegoryofPatrick]

I love an arrangement of something familiar in a new context, especially condensing a large ensemble to a single piano or guitar. The other arrangements are wonderful too, when you have a melody stuck in your head it's a great time to use it ❤❤❤

[@ericleiter6179]

Another great video David!...while I don't like how long of a gap there is in your KZbin posts compared to before, the production value of your videos and the deeper depths reached in your more recent dives, have made it more than worth the wait!

[@povilasl5383]

I love the french new wave like presentation and filming of you talking! this is literally my favourite video of yours!

[@brianballinger100]

A great challenge. I notice an anti-arranging bias in myself, so I appreciate this video a lot.

[@whizzerbrown1349]

This video is wonderful! Love the editing so much 🙏

[@davinnicode]

Arranging is fun and educational. It makes even more fun if you find artists and bands who are willing/able to play your arrangements because sometimes you have to constrain yourself.

[@alexlewis5365]

I gotta say, I really love this video you've made. I love how you're changing scenes a lot and being really creative with stuff like going up and down an inclined sidewalk and painting a portrait. And of course, this was really informative too. I've always liked arranging. It's like a different kind of puzzle compared to writing something from pure scratch.

[@thorenjohn]

Nicely done video, and fascinating! Thank you.

[@pavjazzy]

Thank you! I love your videos. They’re educational AND entertaining. It’s quite clever how you integrate all the imagery with your information. I have arranged for many years for piano, piano/ vocal for myself and students. I love arranging and really enjoy teaching my students how to do it too😊

[@scottekim]

Wow, I love what you've done with the visual presentation in this video. Like when the billboards appear across the street and you have to yell to overcome traffic noise. It's a refreshingly witty look...it's like someone else with a different agenda has kidnapped the narrator and taken them on an unexpected trip. Reminds me a bit of Terry Gilliam, where you can feel the hand of the animator. I'm going try this on my channel.

[@Bigandrewm]

I don't think there's any anti-arranging bias in jazz. If anything, one of the greatest compliments to a composer is to have an arranger give their tune a great presentation. One of the all-time best, I think, is Bill Holman. Even looking at some of his earlier work, his arrangement of Malaguena that he did for Stan Kenton is a classic "power metal for big band" chart; but his take on "You Go To My Head" is next-level, completely transforming that tune into an impressionistic masterclass.

[@stefan1024]

Lovely video! So much fun! ❤

[@JPSAudioWorks]

Outstanding video David!

[@thomasdrescher8681]

A really wonderful video - thank you!

[@garygimmestad4272]

Your very fun and funny choices of context and acting in this video are also a form of arranging. I shudder to think of the time and effort put into this production but it’s brilliant and the content and meaning are brightly illuminated. There are so many great examples of transcendent arrangements. One of my faves fits perfectly into your collection: Jimi Hendrix’s take on Dylan’s “All Along the Watchtower.” Thank you for all you do!

[@KasranFox]

a lot of these concerns remind me very much of the considerations that go into translating works into and from other languages - the recontextualization, the bringing forward of different perspectives, that always happens in such a process. jacob geller's video essay A Thousand Ways of Seeing a Forest is a fantastic look into that if anyone's interested

[@The8BitPianist]

David makes such great videos. Arranging is a very interesting form of art, I think. It's almost like two composers being in conversation through time and space

[@nebil8694]

very well done, one of your best videos ever!

[@josephm.benoit9202]

This is an almost unbelievable level of excellence in presentation of a subject as has been done in yt essays. David Bruce is a unique communicator of deep erudition in a sincerely available manner, all wrapped in a delightful person. Bravo, maestro.

[@orchestratedpassage9468]

Lovely wash, thank you!🙌

[@marcoixca]

This was an awesome video!!

[@stryjo]

Excellent acting David !

[@SNAFU2012]

thank you for all you do!

[@longhaulblue]

Great video. Great topic. I've always wanted to be an arranger. The music of old TV shows and movies always appealed and impressed. I realized at the early age the difference incidental instrumental music made to a fragment of video. The craft of arranging seemed like something to aspire to.

[@joelaxell2577]

Great video! I was thinking about ”Es ist ein ros entsprungen! There are many versions, one I think about is the swedish composer Jan Sandströms with the swedish text ”Det är en ros utsprungen”. It became a totally different version.

[@renerpho]

2:20 "Vogelgeschrei" ("bird screams") is a beautiful name for an organ stop.

[@kevinlynchcomposer]

excellent video, thank you.

[@wranglerxx]

Brilliant!

[@dr7246]

Gil Evans. An example of an arranger who had tremendous impact

[@Dagrond]

You're a clever bloke. That was fun to watch and I learned something.

[@DallasCrane]

I’m arranging video game music into a jazz, big band context and I have been thinking about all these different considerations that you raise in this video, really enjoyed it

[@joshsouders4175]

Crazy enough I find myself to be a better arranger than composer, and doing arranging as a job would be a dream come true!

[@Jamesthe1]

One of my favorite arrangements was based on "Adagio for Strings," which used a choir instead and was emplaced in the video game "Homeworld." It's possibly my favorite rendition of the piece.

[@barbermot]

What a great video!

[@meadish]

Well, this video was nothing short of absolutely brilliant.

[@goodlookingcorpse]

It sounds like it's somewhat analogous to translating a story, or perhaps adapting a story to a film.

[@alvarostockle]

I love arranging. I have since 2014 a line of video game concerts where I arrange for a small chamber orchestra and I love it so much.

[@NicolaLarosa]

What a marvelous video, and what an ending! Joni Mitchell, Vince Mendoza, and Mark Isham on the trumpet: it doesn't get much better than that (with the possible exception of Shadows and Light: Joni with Pat Metheny, Lyle Mays, Jaco Pastorius and Michael Brecker 😲). No wonder everyone was brought to tears. ❤

[@EddyLoonstijn]

Wow soms much humor and information!

[@Michael-Oh]

Very cool video!

[@km6206]

the Couperin arrangement was nicely creative. Cool example!

[@Mike-rw2nh]

I took your advice (at the end of this upload) and listened to your orchestral ‘Aquamarine’, achingly pretty, good sir. Thank you.

[@ivanv754]

Love the editting

[@calvinmendoza7911]

ELP’s arrangements of “Fanfare for the Common Man” and “Jerusalem” are also worth taking a look at

[@yoverale]

I not only love the meat inside this video but also the cooking you’ve made. A fantastic arrangement Sir. David, great video edition 🎬

[@JHgamer7391]

funny, I'm about to embark on an arrangement, great timing!

[@bryanli3170]

Every David Bruce’s video takes me on a journey to explore a different part of the fascinating world of music. In the journey, I may not know where we are headed, but it doesn’t matter because I know I am watching a David Bruce video which will always take me to a wonderful destination.

[@LisztyLiszt]

I'm glad you brought up the musicians who have arranged or re-arranged their own work. For me, one of the best modern examples of this is Knower's Overtime. The original is a hard, in your face, electronic dance tune with, if I may say so, some unusually interesting compositional features for the style. While the so-called 'live sesh' arrangement is a stunning arrangement of funk with a bit of jazz and a serious helping of virtuosity. I don't know of another band that has produced such fun but different arrangements of the same song.

[@eyvindjr]

Great video as always, I will link it to my students! In a way, electronic music producers and remixers are also arrangers, often working with the music of others. I think it is fair to say that profession is not looked down upon!

[@TheClassicalSauce]

Great!

[@GabrielWilliamsOfficial]

great video

[@anonagain]

Thanks David - great video. Though I'll admit I was disappointed you didn't mention Isao Tomita's arrangement of "Pictures". It was the second arrangement I heard back in 1975 (after Ravel's) and it changed how I thought about (and listened to) music!

[@Steve_K2]

The best example of song arranging I know of was the classic "Spirit in the Sky" by Normal Greenbaum, who wrote it as a simple folk song. We'd never have heard of the song if it had stayed that way.

[@trioofone8911]

What an excellent video, and not just because of that version of Joni singing with the orchestra. Lol. Gets me every time, but I'm just a hopeless sap. 😊

[@drossword]

One of my favorite examples is "The King of Rome": Dave Sudbury's original recording with voice and acoustic guitar, June Tabor's mostly a cappella rendition, and The Unthanks version with a large brass band. Each one could move you to tears.

[@raniagoldmusic]

I like when musicians take examples from cooking to explain a music. Don't know why. Great video as always!

[@oneirdaathnaram1376]

Compiling that video with all its visual tricks must have been a huge amount of work ... Well, it's the message that is important. And that one, I think, I have understood.

[@shelterit]

It's interesting in the sense of the semantic meaning of the words we use to describe the thresholds between different levels of borrowing from the past to make something in the now. Everything is building on the past, but I'd use different words to describe how much I've "borrowed" from it, in terms on style, tonic, melodies, feel, scales, temperament, tempo, instruments, sounds, lyrics ... and so on. I can borrow, steal, appropriate, rearrange, arrange, compose, recompose, or pinch bits, chunks, parts or wholes. But it's all from the past. Even compositions we regard as a composer's own doesn't come from a vacuum. Oh, and the video and editing! Fantastic job, must have take you ages :)

[@tguiot]

a few examples come to mind of great arrangements : the unplugged albums of Nirvana and Eric Clapton, Jeff Buckley's Halleluia, Lara Fabian singing "Je suis malade" by Serge Lama, almost anything by Christina Pluhar and her ensemble, Xavier de Maistre on the harp for The Moldau (by Smetana)...

[@ornim]

Loved the video!!😃 I was already quite interested in musical arrengement and this video got me hyped. I already have some knowlege in harmony and theory but I dont know where to start with arregement in itself. Could you please, please, recommend some bibliography or some book about the subject? Once again, amazing video.

[@gammarays3683]

Im studying organ rn and if Ive learned anything its that transcriptions and arrangements is a super important part of organ literature! As symphonies gained popularity, organ builders incorporated more orchestral sounds in organ stops and composers gave more textures in organ symphonies. Before that, composers and organists arrange chorales and hymn tunes. Making pieces from pre-existing melodies from the church.

[@ChiefFalque]

"The husky timbre of a thousand cigarettes" is a fantastic description

[@MarkWladika]

Joni's performance of Both Sides Now at the Newport Folk Festival in 2022 is the third great arrangement of that song.

[@gsherman9133]

This is a great video David! I can't believe I missed it when it first came out. Ravel was definitely a master of orchestration, but I agree that his arrangements might not be the most "authentic" to how the original composers might have orchestrated

[@keijosandvik6836]

Great video David! Interesting note: For many decades now, it has always been the practice in Finland to credit the arranger right next to the artist and composer. For example, a televised performance always displays the name of the arranger of the musical work being performed. It should be a more global practice.

[@kyle-silver]

Great video! As an appreciator of Bach’s Partita in E Major, I feel like you’d enjoy “Phorion”, Lukas Foss’s deconstruction of the composition arranged for orchestra.

[@brutsalvadi]

In the part about Pictures at an Exhibition I was waiting for a comment on ELP’s version 😅😊

[@magnuswt]

"The husky timbre of a thousand cigarettes" lmao, your videos keep getting funnier, while still making me feel like I'm learning SO much! Great job David!

Great video! I was hoping to see Isao Tomita’s arrangement on Pictures at an exhibition compared with the other 3, could have been cool… By the way, congrats on your editing always getting better!

[@MySheetMusicTranscriptions]

Amazing content. As arrangers, we know the pressure.

[@paulgiese8165]

Finally Someone Who sees us, haha everytime when i tell people what i do they first are like "Oh you are a musician thats so cool, and you must be so creative" and after telling them more they all are like "Oh Ok still cool but basicly you just 'copyrighting' music that doesent seem that creativ" but thats not the case and i love experimenting with musical pieces and mix songs, styles and instrumentation.

[@owenmcgee8496]

the Adis thing made me think of hearing arrangements of early music that fleshes it out well. it can be a simple thing that works. J Williams, guitarist, doing well known medieval tune "tristan's lament" put just a few extra notes in, to give it a harmony when there was none, and suddenly it had an emotion that the original didn't. but then again, i wonderif medieval tunes were harmonised but only the melody line was recorded or survived (on the assumption people would do something with it).

[@JonHarris77]

Close relatives to the arrangement are the medley and mashup. The distinction can be blurry, but typically a medley is a series of pieces one after another with seamless transitions, whereas a mashup implies some sort of interaction between the original pieces, e.g. overlaying them, or combining the accompaniment of one with the melody of the other. When done well, you get a new piece of art that is more than the sum of its parts. (When done poorly, you get a jumbled mess!) These forms provide great opportunities for creativity. Sometimes its fun to see just how different of songs you can mash up well. Like songs written hundreds of years apart, totally different genres, even different keys and time signatures.

[@JazzmoonX]

I just watched this video again. The Joni Mitchell segment reminded me of Neil Sedaka's rework of his 1962 hit, "Breaking Up is Hard to Do." The original was about the end of a teen romance. The 1975 version was a torch song about the ending of a marriage. Same words, adult understanding. Keep up this great series. Thanks.

[@sedefcankocak9523]

Sitkovetsky's arrangement of Bach's Goldberg variatons for string trio : a very different sound from the original but beautiful in its own right.

[@ohrlandolivefromhome5901]

Great video! I do a lot of arrangements of different classical compositions for our House Concerts. For Mussorgskij's "Pictures" it would be very instructive to include the orchestrations by Rimskij-Korsakoff and Leopold Stokowski. Keith Emerson (ELP) made a version for his keyboards, sounds like Rick Wakeman.

[@McMxxCiV]

I would love to see you do some more arrangements of electronic music like you did with Jeremy's track three years ago. It is super fascinating to look over your shoulder while you're making those choices. I'm trying to imagine you taking on something really hectic from The Prodigy or something super sparse from Plastikman.

[@teagancombest6049]

One thing not mentioned really at all in this video is electronic music arrangements in the guise of "remixes" they are actually almost always just rearrangements, though soemtimes the chord progresisons or even the key is shifted, the melody almost always remians. Its an entire world of re-uwing musical ideas from other people and times to make something new.

[@cameroncavender]

In America today, the prominence of marching band has created an industry of arranging that differs quite a bit from the types in this video. If anyone's interested, watch Santa Clara Vanguard 2016. They play an arrangement of Max Richter's Four Seasons, which is of course an arrangement of Vivaldi's. The instrumentation of drum corps as well as the added meduim of visual art completely alters the kinds of decisions made in the arrangement.

[@zuur303]

Great video with some good laughs and insights. I like the Glass version of Aphex Twin track Icct Hedral.

[@RayBohtz]

Some songs just age like fine wine...they get better as time goes by.