Arranging/Elaborating

Arranging is taking an existing piece of music and adding new material – ie additional instruments – without changing the general form of the piece.  Adding backing strings to a pop song is perhaps the most common style of arranging.   Another common type of arranging is taking a piece of music written for use A and adapting it for use B.  So one who takes a folk song and sets it for big band is an arranger.

Elaborating is taking an existing shorter piece of music and making a proper album length track out of it.  This often involves dressing it up a bit in the process. 

I’ve done quite a bit of both.  Here are some examples.

Rates available upon request:

Arranging

Imagine Dragons wanted a string quartet to accompany their unplugged session.
The client Tencent wanted a full orchestral arrangement in addition to existing tracks.

Elaborating

Original

Original piece to elaborate on.

My Elaboration

For Nami’s theme I adapted the existing music into a longer form album track, including an underwater section and expanded coverages on the themes.  We completely re-recorded the original tracks, I also did the orchestration and conducted the orchestra.

Original

My Elababoration


Similar to Nami’s theme, Quinn and Valor’s music had to be expanded and completely rerecorded for the album arrangement.  The intent here was to make the expansion unnoticeable – the heart of the track had to remain intact.  It had to flow in a way that was familiar to the listeners.

The two pieces above were originally composed by my wonderfully talented friend Christian Linke.