Muddling About With Geniuses
Published: Fri, 04/19/24
But the majority of my six weeks was taken up with Bill Dobbins' introductory arranging class. I'm pretty sure Dobbins is a bona fide genius. Our textbook was his collated transcriptions of every horn part on Art Blakey's Thermo and Oliver Nelson's The Blues And The Abstract Truth. Most classes started with zero small talk; Dobbins would walk in, pick up a piece of chalk and say something like, "ok, so if we're looking at using three voices on a minor sixth chord..." There were only four kids in the whole class, three of us were dudes, and the last week of the summer he still didn't know the one girl's name. That's focus.
Although it was an arranging class, we were talking about soloing one day, and Dobbins said something that has been central to my entire thought process ever since. It was just two sentences, but I cannot overemphasize the impact those two sentences have had on my musical evolution. "The song has a form," he remarked, demonstrating something at the piano. "Why shouldn't your solo have a form as well?"
Shazam. In addition to his mastery of arranging and composing, Dobbins was a formidable pianist as well, the kind of musician who who makes everything look effortless and relaxed even when they're completely burning. I was light years away from that kind of instrumental accomplishment myself, but this piece of advice spoke directly to my need for a simple, musical and efficient way to say something as a soloist in the absence of unconditional fluency in the bebop idiom.
The arranging class was the prequel to a big band workshop I could have theoretically taken the next year, once I had attained a degree of competence in scoring for three or four horns at a time. By the following summer I had other plans, but in the decades since I have had cause to write out the occasional horn chart, and whenever I do, I'm always grateful I was exposed to the fundamentals early on, even if at the time it felt like I was muddling about in the presence of geniuses.
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When it comes to guitar, arranging may not involved transcribing baritone saxophone parts off of sixty year old albums, but it's no less important. One of the biggest challenges in playing any kind of solo instrumental fingerstyle music is figuring out how to create a version of a tune that lasts for more than ten seconds. In today's Youtube lesson, part one of a two-part series, I explain how to come up with a simple yet bulletproof arrangement for any tune in just three steps. You can find it at the link below:
The Three Step Secret To Arranging Blues Songs (Part 1)
Today's lesson is based on material we're covering this month in the Fingerstyle Five membership. Join now to get access to detailed, in-depth lessons on playing and arranging "Nobody's Dirty Business," including live streams, notation and tab and much more:
The Fingerstyle Five
More soon,
David