Orchestration

This is a preview of the educational program A Jazz Improvisation Almanac which is under development for the Outside Shore Music Online School. Feel free to browse this preview and learn what you can from it. For a more completed product, though, check out the original freely browsable jazz textbook, A Jazz Improvisation Primer.

Chordal instruments, by definition, are capable of playing more than one note at a time. There are many different ways these notes can be combined. When improvising an accompaniment to a solo, the chord progression specified by the arrangement is only part of what determines the notes you play. This section deals with some of the factors you should consider that are independent of the particular chords in the progression.

There are several different general styles of accompaniment. The most basic is to play voicings of the chords specified by the progression in block chord fashion some sort of rhythmic manner:

[EXAMPLE]

A variation on this idea is to play an arpeggio pattern rather than block chords:

[EXAMPLE]

This approach tends to be popular with guitar players as a regular picking pattern can be established. This particular style of accompaniment is not used as often in jazz as in other genres, however.

There are other options as well. One alternative is to play melodically rather than harmonically, creating a line in improvised counterpoint to the line played by the soloist. Often, a simple melodic line played in octaves is most effective:

[EXAMPLE]

Another possibility is to set up an ostinato - a repeating figure that sets up a groove for the soloist to improvise over:

[EXAMPLE]

In the above example, the chord was unchanging, so the ostinato remained constant. When playing an ostinato over a chord progression, you may wish to alter the specific notes to fit the chord:

[EXAMPLE]

Or, you can keep the ostinato contant, thereby creating tension for the soloist to exploit:

[EXAMPLE]

Even if the chord stays constant, or if there are no chords, you may wish to vary the ostinato anyhow to provide a sense of motion despite the repetition:

[EXAMPLE]

When playing chords, you can get many different colors from a piano, guitar, vibraphone, or other chordal instrument by paying attention to how thick your voicings are and where on your instrument you play them.

For example, notice how different the following examples sound, despite the similarity in voicing and rhythm. The fact that one accompaniment is at the upper end of the range and the other is toward the lower changes the sound dramatically:

[EXAMPLE]

Or, compare the following two examples, which differ only in how closely spaced the notes are vertically:

[EXAMPLE]

An accompaniment need not be purely harmonic or purely melodic, but can combine these elements, plus the element of rhythm, at will:

[EXAMPLE]

You can also vary the density of your playing. Here is an example of very dense accompaniment:

[EXAMPLE]

While here is an example of sparse accompaniment:

[EXAMPLE]

You can even go a chorus or two without playing at all. This is called laying out. The soloist may not need or want to hear chords played all the time, and the change in texture created by your entrances and exits can add a sense of drama:

[EXAMPLE]

It can be useful to think of your instrument as an orchestra. A good way to get ideas for comping is to listen to an orchestra to hear how arrangers write. Consider the following excerpt:

[EXAMPLE]

Note how the different sections of the orchestra are used to create different textures. You might emulate this as follows:

[EXAMPLE]

The different ranges of your instrument have different sounds just as the different sections in an orchestra have different sounds. There is a rule of thumb that says that when you are playing low in the range of your instrument, widely spaced intervals sound best, and when you get higher in range, you can use closer intervals. Here is an example that uses wide intervals low and closer intervals high:

[EXAMPLE]

Deliberately going against this philosophy can create unexpected effects that are not necessarily unpleasant:

[EXAMPLE]

The ability to change textures at will is especially important in freebop or other styles in which there are no chords. Variation in orchestration takes the place of variation in harmony:

[EXAMPLE]

Attention to orchestration is also particularly important in impressionistic music, where your part is not so much accompaniment that is subordinate to a soloist, but rather an equal partner in the proceedings. In these cases, well-defined roles do not always exist for the various instruments, and the direction of the music can change at any time, so you need to be prepared to help create many different textures:

[EXAMPLE]

All these orceshtration techniques can be used in ordinary tonal music as well:

[EXAMPLE]

The important thing to realize is that you are accompanying a soloist. Your role is to provide background for the solo. So in deciding on textures to create, remember that the texture should be one that supports what the soloist is doing. For instance, if the soloist is playing lines like this:

[EXAMPLE]

Then the following would be an appropriate accompaniment:

[EXAMPLE]

The following might be less appropriate:

[EXAMPLE]

On the other hand, you can also suggest ideas to the soloist through the textures you provide. For example, notice how the accompanist leads the soloist in this example:

[EXAMPLE]

You must balance the need to provide appropriate background for what is happening now with the desire to contribute to the direction the music is taking. Some soloists are not accustomed to such variety in accompaniment, however, and they may accuse you of playing too busily or trying to steal the spotlight from them. You will have to decide for yourself how strongly stated your accompaniment should be for a given situation.

Your orchestration is also affected by the other accompanists. If there is a bassist in the group, you can emphasize the midrange of your instrument to balance the bass:

[EXAMPLE]

If there is no bassist, you should probably emphasize the lower range of your instrument to compensate:

[EXAMPLE]

If there is more than one chordal instrument in a group, orchestration becomes most crucial. Having a guitarist and pianist both comping chord voicings in the same range is pointless, and usually results in the instruments stepping all over each other:

[EXAMPLE]

Having two instruments to use in orchestration can greatly increase the range of possible textures, however. Let us say that the sound of a piano is red, and the sound of a guitar is green. If both play all the time, the resulting mixture is always brown. However, you can trade off responsibilities from chorus to chorus, so that the background is alternately red and green rather than consistently any one color:

[EXAMPLE]

By varying the colors produced by each instrument, you can provide even more variation in the overall texture. In general, if both instruments are playing at once, they should probably play less than if they were the only chordal instruments comping. One tactic is to let one instrument lead the accompaniment, while the other might provide punctuation to fill in the spaces:

[EXAMPLE]

Another strategy is to have one instrument play basic chords and rhythms, while the other plays more melodically:

[EXAMPLE]

Or, the instruments might both be playing melodically, but in different registers, and in counterpoint with each other:

[EXAMPLE]

These approaches tend to create an especially complex background for a soloist, which some may find distracting. In order for this to have any chance of working, you must be listening both to the soloist and the other comping instruments. Agreeing on strategies beforehand is not necessary if all players are listening to each other and are capable of playing different textures.

Copyright 2000 Outside Shore Music
Authored by Marc Sabatella

Orchestration