Poor musical arrangements

Poor musical arrangements
I am always struck by how frequently mechanical musical instruments live down to expectations rather than live up to them. Half the problem I am convinced is poor music arranging. By adopting a few simple rules and a better understanding of musical orchestration surely matters could be much improved. Here's a few organ heresies for thought: 1. Does a glockenspiel really get played in real life the way that some organ arrangers use it these days? Old arrangers, Bruder etc understood what was needed - these days what gives? 2. Have you ever heard any live band recording ever featuring the truly bizarre way in which temple blocks are played in a run of four tones on dance organs by some arrangers? There is a musical place and time for these but running up four clonks and back down four clonks is strange is it not? Don't people know what to do with them but still feel compelled to make them clonk compulsorily? 3. Why do some arrangers on dance organs feel contractually obligated to select and deselect every single register and percussion effect methodically during the duration of every song? For variety why not play only certain combinations per song just like any real band? Does everything need accordions somewhere in each song if accordions are fitted or can some songs cope without it for variety? 4. Why do people love the White's and Thursford Gaviolis playing from 98-key books so much? It must be clear to anyone's ears that there are too many pipes and registers crudged together in order to play the whole thing from the 98-key scale. Surely converting these monsters back over to 110/112-keys with properly programmed music would improve them tenfold? I do know why this was not done however is it not at present as over-bearing as linking up every pipe in the Royal Albert Hall organ to play in unision from a 30 note roll? 5. Despite the excellence of much modern organ construction and modern music arranging why does much of it still just sound like "The Majorettes play Hits from Supermarket Muzak - Volume XIII"? Any constructive thoughts about these points and what might be done? regards Adam ;)

Hi Adam. bit of a hornets nest methinks! 1, Glockenspiels, arrangers use them on some smaller organs to give a 'forte'. On larger organs they usually play in unison with piccolos. On a fair organ the glock would make the gallopers stand out more to the passing crowds. 2&3 Temple blocks & registers, like a lot of instruments on a dance organ get played because they are there. Arrangers have their favourite combinations, which is what gives character. Doing a straight band arrangement on a dance organ would probably sound quite dull, however there are some quite stunning 'straight' pieces out there. I quite like accordeons on Decap organs, particularly on 121 keys. A particular favourite piece is 'Letkiss' which is superb. 4, Thursford's 98key Gavioli, was converted down from 110key in 1926, & has in my opinion some superb original music from Chiappa, J.Verbeeck, & Varetto, ....and plays it superbly! Whites Gavioli while being a later conversion, still has a presence & although not everything piece suites it, can belt it out like no other! Lets face it, most organs have at least one piece that doesn't suit the instrument! 110/112key/less Gavioli scales are cromatic & really for the size of scale, arn't that huge on the register count anyway!!! 5, 'Modern' music arranging, I guess its easy to fall into the trap of using midi files off the net, but novice arrangers have to start somewhere. Music arranging isn't learned overnight & beginners should be nurtured & encouraged to keep this artform alive.

Hi Robert, Many thanks for the response. It's interesting to see how these days certain things we hear on organs seem to be done now by virtue of the fact that they've become a convention for the genre : glockenspiel to enhance forte and temple blocks because they are there etc. I was wondering the other week what would happen if, say, a professional orchestral arranger were sent the technical and musical capabilities of i.e. a 92-key Decap and then see what they came up with. It might lead to some surprising new innovations and development in the field. Until someone attempts something like this all (most) noteurs do is, by definition, shoe-horn the work of orchestral arrangers into mechanical organ constraints with various ingenious workarounds until most of it fits passably. Professional day-job band / orchestra arrangers simply don't work in this field anymore. What got me thinking was looking at the historical record. Amongst many other examples; Wurlitzer engaged Broadway composer and arranger Herman Avery Wade to produce arrangements for their instruments and he was on Aeolian's piano roll labels prior to that. Ampico piano rolls had Ferde Grofe who was Paul Whiteman's arranger and various other organ builders engaged various other trained orchestrators giving us the sounds of the golden age we look back to. Temple blocks still bother me though! Clearly they were first fitted when they featured in early jazz band music in the 20s since when they appear to have been fitted latterly to please enthusiasts who expect them more than listeners who possibly don't. Wikipedia (that vacuous non-authority on everything) says of temple blocks : In western music, their use can be traced back to early jazz drummers, and they are not uncommon in modern orchestral music. Its sound is similar to that of the wood block, although temple blocks have a darker, more "hollow" timbre. It can be clearly heard in Leroy Anderson's The Syncopated Clock and is also used in Olivier Messiaen's only symphony, Turangalila, and his only opera, Saint-François d'Assise. Harrison Birtwistle calls for 4 temple blocks in his 2008 opera The Minotaur and Magnus Lindberg calls for 5 in Seht die Sonne. Leonard Bernstein, George Benjamin and David Horne also used it in their compositions. So they're good for "Syncopated Clock" and a Messiaen symphony on a Decap by my reckoning. Forget the Lindberg : that needs 5 of darn things and I've only ever seen four! regards Adam

Adam, I think you might have opened a can or worms up here... I do agree with certain points... there is no reason to use registers just because they are there and that includes temple blocks. Re: glockenspiels.... alot of glocks were situated on the front of the organs and gave something to watch, also to add sparkle to an arrangement on a forte passages. Maybe embellish a slow passage in a waltz for example Re: white's and other organs... converting them back to 110/112 would not help as the 98 key scale has more registers than the 110 and also the majority of the modern arrangements don't use the chromatic bass enough to warrant it - Chromatic organs are a bit of a waste. 98 key organs split the registers up where on a 110 you have registers that add weight to sections of the organ ie: forte, mezzo forte, chant forte etc... more orchestral you could argue. Gavioli certainly intended his 110 key organs to be an imitation orchestra. if we're going to critise organs for having lots of unnecessary pipes/register surely we should also look at the new breed of Verbeeck organs.. violin piano and forte - never used to full effect... melody unda maris - again very rarely used on its own... i think alot of the problems comes with todays methods of arranging music on computers in midi files.... songs are arranged for one scale and then transposed up or down depending on the size of the organ but still retaining the 'standard combinations' an utter waste.. why have a 110 key organ when you can get exactly the same arrangement for a hand turned 36 key organ... also i am not saying everyone arranges the same way.. we have seemed to have lost the idea that you arrange a piece of music for the scale of the organ... taking into account its registers... percussion etc etc...

Well said Scott. I’m surprised Adam has raised this question again. The topic of converting 112/110 organs to 98-key and the advisability of converting them back to their “original scale” has been extensively debated. Setting aside the problem that there is insufficient information surviving to reconstruct White’s Gavioli and the Thursford Gavioli as they were in scale and pipe work disposition when brand new from Paris, where would you obtain an original library of 112-keyless and 110-key books to complete this act of authenticity/tonal purity? In the margins of making sympathetic old style books of music for the Jonas/Sanphillipo Gavioli I have given a lot of thought over the last 15 years to how organs like White’s and the Aspland’s Gaviolis may have sounded originally, and it remains a fairly harmless armchair pipe-dream activity, but to suggest actually trying to unpick the 80-year old changes in one of these instruments would be tantamount to declaring war on a good friend, a war that would result in their almost complete destruction. Fortunately, such plans are not very likely. At best an "original replica" might be attempted one day but it would be somewhat speculative, in my view. We should appreciate these major British heritage instruments as they have been for donkey's years and be thankful to the likes of George Parmley and Percy Cole that they have survived at all. As for your ideas on organ registration I’m a bit lost. As far as system Gavioli/Marenghi organ are concerned, you would not want to hear arrangements that only used “certain combinations per song” without utilising the full resources of the organ, including all the available percussions. Such instruments imitate an orchestra or military band in their rich combinations of sound, rapid changes in tonal colour, and use of percussions. These enrich the performance greatly. Variety is the spice of life! You would not want to buy a book that say imitated classical church organ registration where you set the stops at the beginning of a piece and make no changes to the registration for the duration, however long. That would be a recipe for incredible dullness on the fairground and would likely lead to someone else putting more registration into the book on your behalf or the owner returning it to you saying he doesn’t much care for “the tune”. Perhaps your remarks were more aimed at arranging for post-1914 dance organs which are something I have not taken such an interest in but I think Scott is write to point out that arrangers who just churn out the same arrangement for every type of organ (street/fair/dance) off their computer are doing mechanical organs a grave dis-service and laughing all the way to the bank. As a music graduate trained in couterpoint and harmony with experience of arranging for dance bands and theatre orchestras, I could also go on to make some observations about the "human" arranging art as opposed to mechanical "impression", but I think I'll save that for a properly thought out article sometime suffice to say that an organ arrangement has to be every bit as daring and adventurous as its orchestral equivalent to make the organ sound good. Bad music on a good organ can make it sound terrible. Good music on a poor organ can still make it sound reasonable. The arranger (or "marker", the term I prefer to use as it was the traditional one used in UK) wields great control over the instrument, more than the organ owner but perhaps not as much as the organ tuner. Jory (founder member of the "Keep perforated cardboard music be-spoke" campaign)

Just out of curiosity, Adam: can you name one arrangement that is really (but really!) good in your opinion? I really find this an interesting discussion. I like the old-style arrangements myself (esp. on dance organs), and I find it horrible to hear all the same arrangements these days over and over again. German fair organs seem to be an exception (although converted dance organ books are being played on them too - have mercy!).

Hi bisbaer : one arrangement I personally think is really the best thing done would be the Force of Destiny Overture on the A&R Marenghi. After that, Ballet Egyptienne on the Jonas Gavioli. It just struck me listening to some YouTube clip of some organ the other week just how many times I'd heard the same exact arrangement on different instruments. Jory, my views on registration were indeed primarily aimed towards more modern dance organs. Many thanks also Scott for your views. If various facilities on modern Verbeeck organs are made little use of then is this just down to unimaginative arranging or is the facility overkill?

Well, that's a nice coincidence ... The Ballet Egyptien on the Jonas Gavioli is for me also one of the very best arrangements ever made for an organ! :P

Thank you Adam and bisebaer. I will rest my case about the value of be-spoke music-marking. The Force of Destiny (98) was marked by Kevin Meayers; the Ballet Egyptian Suite (110) was marked by me. I asked on here the other day about what had happened to Marinarella an overture that Kevin and I made as a joint project for the Jonas/Sanphillipo Gavioli in 2003? It has not been mentioned since the organ arrived in the Sanphillipo Collection. I wonder if Mr Sanphillipo has even heard it? I hope the organ has not been deprived of the book: its impressed me more than Ballet Egyptian that I had made previously. A lot of midnight oil went into its arranging.

Professional day-job band/orchestra arrangers simply don't work in this field anymore. I'm glad you say "anymore" in that sentence. Most of the French and Belgian music markers we know of were professional orchestra/dance band musicians arrangers who "moonlighted" as organ arrangers e.g. Louis Blache, Schollaert, Peersman, van Wichelen snr. Arthur Prinsen is the last representative of this tradition. Not that I'd want to listen to "Silbury Hill" on a Mortier dance organ, but I suspect the only way Sir Harrison Birtwhistle would consider arranging something for organ would be if the Arts Council paid him a few million. In Germany and Holland, however, there have been concerts of contemporary music involving mechanical organs. I think of Piet Kee's "Confrontations" in St Bavo's, Haarlem (for which I think Tom Meijer) produced the arrangements and also contemporary works (not sure who by) Henning Balmann marked for German fairground organ. These are of course one off occasions. Whether you are a professional orchestral arranger or not, you still need an almost equivalent musical knowledge as them to get the most out of a mechanical instrument, even though the orchestral pallete of say even the most sophisticated mechanical instrument, like a Weber Measto (52 musical notes!) bears no comparison with the infinite variety of the real orchestral palette where the ranges of all the instruments in the orchestra are chromatic over many octaves.

there is a YouTube clip of some Mortier playing Piazzolla which I thought was done in a very interesting manner. Any thoughts on these? http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Mk8JresHiJs http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=leHM3irdcTs ..and talking of modern classics I think I recall Kevin Meayers having said he did the waltz from Shostakovich Jazz Suite as a bespoke arrangement for a (gavioli?) once... regards Adam

Hi Adam, Those two pieces were a bit hard going on the ears! It would have been nice if the arranger (marker -sorry Jory!) had used a bit of accompaniment & bass to get the rythm going, which is difficult enough on a tango! Ten out of ten though for using a dance organ for dancing :) Regards Robert :org:

Please get using the term "marker" in UK and keep it current: "noteurs" are people who do a similar job abroad!

Re: white's and other organs... converting them back to 110/112 would not help as the 98 key scale has more registers than the 110 and also the majority of the modern arrangements don't use the chromatic bass enough to warrant it - Chromatic organs are a bit of a waste. 98 key organs split the registers up where on a 110 you have registers that add weight to sections of the organ ie: forte, mezzo forte, chant forte etc... more orchestral you could argue. Gavioli certainly intended his 110 key organs to be an imitation orchestra. Firstly, I take offense at your statement of the modern arrangers not using the chromatic bass "enough". If not, that either means they're doing yet another polka (AGAIN!) or that they're doing it wrong! Even most rags I've seen use a goodly number of bass notes, and some good ones, like "Jungle Time" (which I admit, would sound very odd on an organ) NEED a chromatic bass! And for modern-day rock and pop music the chromatic bass is an unquestionable necessity. It should also be fast-acting too, prompt in speech and have certain stops (such as maybe a bass cello and a trombone) on their own separate register to give added clarity and definition, in addition to the subtle and unobtrusive stopped flute, of course. An octave (4') bass rank helps too. When this is present, together with the ground (8') bass rank on register, this can give the effect of two octaves of bass with judicious use of the registers! (since a real bass guitarist tends to play in about a 2-octave range, this can be useful) If you've ever seriously listened to a rock bass guitarist (who, let's face it, gives the song it's groove and forward motion as much as the drummer), you will note that they tend to play single note patterns, either strumming on the same note several times before moving to the next, or a kind of single-note roaming pattern. This can often "roam" over an octave! So, perhaps that octave bass on register can be really handy??? Too many modern-day arrangers don't "get" rock music and try to convert the sophisticated bass lines into oom-pahs, either to make up for a slow bass section in a particular organ, or lack of bass notes, or something. Naturally, the song suffers. Now, I love oom-pahs, and I love "ragging" (and sometimes, "polkaing" a'la Weird Al Yankovic) tunes that don't normally have that going on. However, when this is done all the time, especially in otherwise "serious" commercially-issued books, one gets the sense that the arranger is somewhat out of touch. In order to put the tune across convincingly (and especially to a less tolerant modern audience), it becomes necessary to approach it on its own musical terms. I can actually see how the Gavioli "orchestral" format with the registers which are not so much solo voices as "walls of sound" can be an advantage. If you listen to many pop things today, they frequently have a kind of orchestral wash behind the melody and bass line. This is often either a real string section, or some interesting electronic sounds. Some bands even use a brass section which is of course easy to imitate on the fairground organ. With the "wall of sound" registers, one doesn't have to worry about setting a bunch of stops when it comes time for the chorus again and all the big chords are appearing in the background to support the melody. Just one register, and off you go! The multiple registers like this allow for multiple backgrounds. Judicious use of any and all registers, no matter what they are, and of course of the different musical note sections of the organ, is what makes or breaks a good arranger. Even with this register format, it is still possible to delineate the different musical parts of the song (melody, accompaniment, bass, countermelody/chords, etc.). However, it's true, I do like the individual register format of dance organs (and I guess 98-key Marenghis?) since it makes it easier to tone down the background and bring out single solo voices in each section; it also allows for more variety and possible register combinations, and so a wider variety of voices. Still, I'm not one to sling mud at a historic organ just because it was originally built a certain way; I think it should be preserved and/or restored that way and not messed around with. All the funny register things and modern voices should be put to use in newly-built organs rather than debating changing a historic organ to play like this. if we're going to critise organs for having lots of unnecessary pipes/register surely we should also look at the new breed of Verbeeck organs.. violin piano and forte - never used to full effect... melody unda maris - again very rarely used on its own... These are arranger problems, not organ problems. If I did a Verbeeck arrangement I would CERTAINLY use the Unda Maris on its own... that sounds like an interesting sound... why go with boring generic register combinations? i think alot of the problems comes with todays methods of arranging music on computers in midi files.... songs are arranged for one scale and then transposed up or down depending on the size of the organ but still retaining the 'standard combinations' an utter waste.. why have a 110 key organ when you can get exactly the same arrangement for a hand turned 36 key organ... also i am not saying everyone arranges the same way.. we have seemed to have lost the idea that you arrange a piece of music for the scale of the organ... taking into account its registers... percussion etc etc... CORRECT! With anything less than a chromatic scale, one should NEVER download generic MIDI files off the internet to edit for the organ; they will sound bad! At best, you will spend so much time deleting and changing notes in order to make the tune fit the scale (AND SOUND GOOD), that it would have been easier to start from scratch with the sheet music, or a transcription of a recording. The best arrangements are done by musicians who know the organ's limitations, are familiar with the musical styles and know how to put them across convincingly on that particular instrument. Generally, these are done from scratch, and in many cases, the arranger will cleverly make up new parts to the melody, or re-harmonize part of it so that it fits the scale, but still sounds acceptable (as opposed to moving notes in the tune not present on the organ to the next nearest note in the scale, which usually SOUNDS BAD). The finished product, though not quite like hearing the tune on a large chromatic organ which can play all the right notes and in the right octaves, can still be quite satisfying and interesting to hear.

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