# Arrangers



## nibor (Dec 16, 2020)

I've been listening to some of my favorite Soundtracks... "To Kill a Mockingbird" and "Chinatown" specifically. 

I would like to know more about the role of the arranger. Arthur Morton apparently arranged pretty much everything Jerry Goldsmith did. https://www.imdb.com/name/nm0607925/ (Arthur Morton - IMDb) Listening to Chinatown so much of it is about the choices in instrumentation and technique. 

Thoughts?


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## mikeh-375 (Dec 16, 2020)

I met Morton at the recording session of Goldsmith's 'Medicine Man' score. He sat between me and a friend with the full score. I was so impressed by his manner and kindness.
Arranging can be anything from mere copying (allegedly in the case of Williams' 12 stave short score, full of annotation), to actual composing.
When I got pressed for time on a project, I worked with Dave Cullen. He co-orchestrated Webber's' 'Phantom of the Opera' and he told me that a lot of it was in short score, but occasionally he'd get a page or two fully orchestrated by Webber and in a brilliant way too.
An arranger will typically distribute chords, compose extra lines, clean up voice-leading and anything else required to deliver a score, all in collaboration with the composer.


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## nibor (Dec 16, 2020)

This is such an amazing and valuable forum and site! Thanks @Gene Pool and @mikeh-375 for responding. Very, very insightful!


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## bryla (Dec 16, 2020)

For insight in to the work I can recommend the book Scoring The Score or something to that effect. It really precisely describes the work of an orchestrator and how it differentiates from an arranger. I stopped reading it because it read like if I'd written a very thorough diary and I'm not that interested in reading about what I've just spent the day doing.

Basically the interviewees agree that if you have to invent stuff (chord progressions, melodies, countermelodies) you are arranging. If you have to distribute stuff (deciding what players in the brass section plays what note etc.) you are orchestrating. I don't think they go on to talk about the next step but essentially if you have to distribute from short score you are a copyist – as Gene Pool pointed out some orchestrators might have it.


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## GingerMaestro (Dec 16, 2020)

Alan Menken has a great team of Arrangers and Orchestrators that have worked with him on both film/tv and theater projects for many years. Alan obviously writes the songs, often just a recording or sketch, they are then transcribed, then brilliantly arranged by Michael Kosarin (he’s a genius arranger). The equally amazing Glen Kelley often does dance music arrangements, all before going to the orchestrators, all top Hollywood and Broadway A listers..Danny Troob, Michael Starobin, Doug Besterman, Jonathan Tunick etc...

if you haven’t listened to for the ABC Galavant TV show, in my humble opinion it’s a treatise on arranging and orchestrating pastiche contemporary popular music...









Season 2 Soundtrack


"Galavant Season 2 (Original Television Soundtrack)" is an album which was digitally released by Hollywood Records on January 29, 2016. Due to harsh criticism of the incomplete Season 1 Soundtrack, this album includes the previously-released digital singles and virtually all of the additional...




galavant.fandom.com





Most Broadway and Musical Films, have a similar team that support the composer.. Also someone often writes the songs and then a Hollywood composer scores the rest of the movie...Lion King : Elton John/Hans Zimmer, Frozen : Mr & Mrs Lopez/Christophe Beck, Mary Poppins : Sherman Brothers/Irwin Kostal..

it’s a fascinating area of the business..


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## nibor (Dec 16, 2020)

bryla said:


> For insight in to the work I can recommend the book Scoring The Score or something to that effect. It really precisely describes the work of an orchestrator and how it differentiates from an arranger. I stopped reading it because it read like if I'd written a very thorough diary and I'm not that interested in reading about what I've just spent the day doing.
> 
> Basically the interviewees agree that if you have to invent stuff (chord progressions, melodies, countermelodies) you are arranging. If you have to distribute stuff (deciding what players in the brass section plays what note etc.) you are orchestrating. I don't think they go on to talk about the next step but essentially if you have to distribute from short score you are a copyist – as Gene Pool pointed out some orchestrators might have it.



Thanks, I'll check it out.


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## nibor (Dec 16, 2020)

GingerMaestro said:


> Alan Menken has a great team of Arrangers and Orchestrators that have worked with him on both film/tv and theater projects for many years. Alan obviously writes the songs, often just a recording or sketch, they are then transcribed, then brilliantly arranged by Michael Kosarin (he’s a genius arranger). The equally amazing Glen Kelley often does dance music arrangements, all before going to the orchestrators, all top Hollywood and Broadway A listers..Danny Troob, Michael Starobin, Doug Besterman, Jonathan Tunick etc...
> 
> if you haven’t listened to for the ABC Galavant TV show, in my humble opinion it’s a treatise on arranging and orchestrating pastiche contemporary popular music...
> 
> ...


All this information is just terrific. I'll make the time to listen to this!


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## Richard Wilkinson (Dec 16, 2020)

Yes - the writing and arranging on Galavant is (was 😢) sublime!


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## mikeh-375 (Dec 16, 2020)

Gene Pool said:


> @mikeh-375,
> 
> That's interesting to hear about Cullen. Early on when I was studying arranging, I used some of the terrific work he did on Cats for study. I found theater arranging to be a great resource for economy of effect, since you're lucky to get a pit with more than 20. Broadway Cats had in the mid-20's, if I recall, but road show Cats suffers on less than 20.



Yes, he had an easy professionalism about him and what he did for me was spot on. There was a song to be sung in the film, but at the last moment the singer decided the key was wrong. I'd already scored it, but with revisions on other cues and the session looming, I farmed it out to Dave to transpose and adjust parts accordingly. I then got him to do a few other cues from just a few staves as I again got seriously pressed for time.
I never did theatre and am less familiar with modern era musicals, (I prefer the pre-60's ones), but I know what you mean @Gene Pool. The musical work I know well that serves as a salutary lesson in limited scoring resource efficacy for the theatre is Britten's opera, 'The Turn of the Screw'.
In an old musty second-hand bookshop years ago in London I picked up a gem of a book on scoring for the theatre pit called 'Orchestration for the Theatre' (oddly enough), by Francis M Collinson. It turns out that I didn't need it, but it is a great and rare well before synth and sampler resource published in 1941.


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