There are many different ways we can arrange an exquisitely slow melody!
One option is to mix and match all sorts of techniques for a colorful and interesting presentation.
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Timothy's Blog
Timothy's blog on dulcimers, music, nature and life!
FEB
09
[New Mexico wilderness, 1971]
I’m a mild claustrophobe.
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When a musician is putting together a typical arrangement it’s good for him to 1) make sure he has a solid rhythmic pattern going, and he needs 2) a good chord structure moving along within that rhythm, and of course he needs 3) a straightforward melody. If they’re handled with taste and skill, this group of factors combine for a fine rendition of the piece.
However, there are often long notes at key points in the melody’s progress, and players like me crave an extra voice “singing along” during those long notes (and perhaps elsewhere as well) to add interest and color. I’ve found that there are a lot of ways to work with that, and I’m always working on these creative “fill parts,” so I thought I’d jot down a collection of ideas to consider if you want to. Here they are!
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The Italian word “tempo” means “time” --- music moving through time at a certain speed, as we generally think of it. But it also involves how we progress through time. Offhand, I can immediately think of three different ways in which the tempo moves. Let’s line them out:
1) Steadily: Like a metronome that ticks away every beat, or, with the human element, moving along pretty nearly like a metronome but with more life to it --- this is the most common tempo motion. In fact, Pop music recordings often utilize a studio “click track” metronome that serves as a reference during the recording process so all the instruments and voices move along together and the song can be set up to be good for dancing. Then in the final mixdown the metronome track is removed. We all need to be able to keep this kind of flow (click track or not) and to keep it consistent, no matter what genre of music we play! Old-Time and Bluegrass music, for example, tend to keep this consistent rhythm. It's the easiest "groove" for an ensemble's members to keep their timing precise.
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[By the way, in the photo I'm playing my tune "Big Meadows Twilight" in the twilight at Big Meadows, Shenandoah National Park in 2000 --- photo by our daughter Karen.]
There are many approaches a musician can take toward a melody and arrangement: Perhaps your choice today is choosing a genre to play it in, for example doing a reel as Old-Time vs. Bluegrass vs. Celtic; or perhaps you need to decide whether you’re playing toward an audience, or playing as if closed into your own little world and the audience just gets to listen in; or perhaps you need to figure out if you just want to play a beautiful tune as beautifully as you can, or if you want to communicate some additional meaning through it. These and many other decisions come into play as we face the performance of a particular piece of music.
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