“Jazz Arranging Power” – Keyboard Magazine, March 2014

“Jazz Arranging Power” from the March, 2014 issue of Keyboard Magazine.

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In my last lesson back in the January 2014 issue, I demonstrated how adding just one note can change a chord’s color and character. This month, I’ll offer up ways to give your arrangements added punch, power, and clarity. I used many of these techniques on my new album Hudson City Suite.

1. Call and Response

Ex. 1 illustrates the time-honored technique known as “call and response,” which creates excitement by way of a musical “dialogue.” Here’s a traditional big band example: The saxes riff with a close-voiced, harmonized line, and the first brass chord is voiced with a wider spread between notes at the bottom but more closely at the top. Then the brass play a unison riff doubled in three octaves. The sax riff will sound tight and swinging, the brass will be powerful and full and the octave unison passages will be clear and loud.

2. Sweet and Light

Doubling across instrument choirs (i.e., woodwinds and brass playing the same notes or lines) is often my secret weapon of choice. Pairing tenor saxes with trombones, trumpets, with alto saxes—or even bass with bass clarinet—helps enrich and widen the music at hand. Just about any combination will work. Ex. 2a comes from the “less is more” school and features three-part harmony with unison doubling, here with a six-piece horn section. The voicing comes from melodic moving lines.

3. Richen Up 

You can fatten up your chord voicings with inner unisons. I call this “cross-doubling,” where the doubled notes spread and richen the sound. Here you can use more instruments on fewer notes. In Ex. 3a, middle C and the D below it are doubled. Eight instruments play six notes. Both the trombone and sax voicings are solid, and cross-doubling makes the section resonate.

4. Make It Scream

Even with a small ensemble at your disposal, you can still roar. Your assignment: In a moving “shout” passage, harmonize the notes under a riff. My band has seven horns, so I always have to weave the brass and reeds together, and keep most of them relatively high in their range. This passage is a harmonized Bb blues riff. In Ex. 4a, both the brass and sax voicings each have a nice spread, and everything moves together.

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