Originally Posted By: Mac
I should hope that the length consideration should be part of the arranging...



Well, I guess it depends on the order of songwriting operations for the particular writer. I tend to write and edit lyrics first. Then the # of verses, # of chorus sections, pre-chorus length, intro length etc. becomes much more elementary. At least, this is what works for me - I realize that there are writers who write the music first, and then add words after the fact. However, in an incredibly informal and unscientific manner, I would say that most of the folks that I have talked to in the past that are prolific (intentional) songwriters that involve lyrics tend to have lyrics ideas and their story to tell, ahead of melody or chord patterns, etc. This discussion comes up always in the February Album Writing Month discussion boards every year. Here's the one that riffed on this theme this past year.

http://fawm.org/forums/topic/550/

For this part of songwriting, the Pat Pattison class which I mentioned above and a few others on this forum highly endorse, is a nicely compact and helpful course and it's the best price - Free. The first post of this thread doesn't mention how many instrument parts in any fashion. It's about verses, choruses, etc.

In my brain, arrangement decisions are more of a task in 'the vertical', not so much the time axis of the song. What are the dynamics like, how do I build them, does the song beg for brass parts, does a walking bass-line seem appropriate for the end of the chorus, should the piano part run only in the first 2 verses and then after the chorus disappear until the outro, does a train-beat drum pattern fit the feel, etc. This has been what I've understood arrangement to be but I'm not saying that it's 100% correct or that there's a correct definition of arranging.

Then there are production decisions - what and how much reverb belongs, if any, on the vocals, the various parts, etc. Would there be a useful effect to take a part from mono in the verses and expand it to stereo in the chorus sections, etc. Sometimes, when I get to this, I'll hear a verse that's really not adding to the meaning of the song - it sits outside 'the boxes' and can be trimmed, or maybe there's some lyrics I already edited which just seem like they make more sense than some that I've got in there already.

So, again, I would highly recommend taking the Freebie Berklee College of Music / Pat Pattison course to answer the kinds of questions asked in the original post of this thread. For easy one-click access: https://www.coursera.org/course/songwriting

Since it starts in less than a week, it might not allow new attendees, but you can add yourself to be watchlisted for the course.

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