I’ve arranged a lot of beautiful melodies. In most cases, the harmonies, the counterlines, the entire arrangements can seem to write themselves. If the melody is strong and you have a clear sense of what you want to say, it can work very smoothly.
But what do you do when you have a bad melody?
I never dealt with this particular problem until recently, when I needed to set a melody I would describe as quite poor. And what struck me as I wrote the arrangement is that the entire process was more difficult. Logical counterlines didn’t seem to be readily available, harmonies were forced, and in the end I would say the arrangement was good but not great.
A few solutions I found:
- Stick to unison when counterlines were hard to come by. Everyone singing a poor melody is better than a poor melody poorly harmonized.
- Work hard to find contrary motion with the bassline and melody. Even when it’s forced or rough, it adds to the stability of the piece.
- Add an introduction or ending (or both!) that allow you to craft something not dependent on the melody of the piece.
- Remember that all music is to serve its purpose; if this isn’t the best arrangement I’ve ever written, it will still do its job.
Alice was right. She often said that we arrangers must learn to discriminate between indelible melodies and poor ones, and choose to set only the indelible. (Though I would love to ask her what she’d do when the choice wasn’t yours.)
And Alice was rightly insistent that we don’t spend enough time learning what makes melodies tick. We spend so much time learning species counterpoint and choral style part-writing, but how much time do we spend learning how to craft a strong melody? Because the truth is that if you can do that, all the other skills get easier.