Bringing It All Back Home
In the 1980s, when home music recording consisted largely of four- and eight-track recorders, arranging was typically pretty simple: drum machine on track one, bass on track two, keys and rhythm guitar bounced down to track three and track four alternated between the vocal and lead guitar solo. Fade in, three minutes later, fade out.
As you can see by the above list of products--which merely scratch the surface of what's available--the amount of sounds available to the home recordist is near infinite. So it helps to have some basic arranging skills at your disposal.
That's where Rikky Rooksby's new book Arranging Songs can help. Rooksby, who has a near encyclopedic knowledge of American and British rock and pop music from the Beatles onward, explores a variety of arrangements on hit records, and diagrams what makes them work. He provides specific examples to experiment with, in terms of rhythm, song structure and instrumentation. (And Rooksby's earlier How To Write Songs On Guitar is still highly recommended to any guitarist looking to break his customary songwriting habits by exploring all sorts of chord changes. But then, so are all of the books on this list from a year and a half ago, to be honest.)
Any of these gifts would be more than welcome under the Christmas tree of most serious amateur or professional musicians--and unlike fruitcake or new socks, will get loads of use throughout the year.
Article comments