Considering the possible rewards facing a successful Pop star, the job of arranger might seem like something of a thankless task. In the sixties and early seventies the creative contributions of the arranger were often as great if not greater than those of the actual recording artist, and yet they were only rarely credited on the records. Things have changed a bit since those days — in case you hadn't noticed — and so has the art of the arranger. How, then, have the rewards changed, and perhaps more importantly what is the nature of the arranger's job in the 1980s?

For a start, the way in has changed quite considerably. Although Nick Ingham's most recent work has been doing string arrangements for albums by Sade and Working Week, his career goes back to the days when arranging meant not just adding strings to an otherwise completed track, but creating the whole backing track from scratch. His early work with EMI producer Norrie Paramor for Cliff Richard and others was preceded by three years study of music at Berklee College in Boston.

"But being an arranger now is almost an extension of being a keyboard player. You put all the other tracks down, then you want to add some strings and someone says, 'Hey, you're the keyboard player, write out some string parts.' And if he's interested in doing that, he becomes an arranger."

Arranger and composer John Altman has worked with Hot Chocolate and Van Morrison. His most recent coup was the arrangement he did for Alison Moyet's smash hit rendition of That Ole Devil Called Love. Unlike Nick Ingham, John had virtually no formalised training. Instead he was involved on a mainly amateur level playing tenor with bands like Fleetwood Mac and Kevin Ayers. In between term times spent studying for an English Literature degree at Sussex University, he played in Hot Chocolate's horn section, during which time he began to write a few horn parts. Then a chance meeting with a producer acquaintance led to John being asked to do a string arrangement for The Sandpipers' cover of Hang On Sloopy. It was the first string arrangement he'd ever done!

"It was a hit, and hey presto, I was an arranger. And since then it's never stopped."

Yes

This story is far from unique, and it is very likely that a large number of arrangers get there by being yes men (or women).

John Altman: "I've never said no to anything, which has meant that I've stood in front of a symphony orchestra wondering what the hell I'm doing there!"

Obviously you need to have a reasonably good knowledge of harmony etc, but beyond that it basically comes down to creativity and ingenuity; there are no set ways of doing an arrangement. Simon Jeffes has done arrangements for Caravan, Rupert Hine, Yvonne Elliman and most notoriously, did the string arrangement on the late Sid Vicious' version of My Way.

"The way I've learnt arrangement is very much by trial and error. Obviously you've got to know about the ranges of each instrument, but you could really do an arrangement without reference to any book except to find out what each instrument can do."

You might say that you don't actually become an arranger until you actually become an arranger! So, bearing in mind that it's nearly always a learning thing, what are the pitfalls that a budding arranger should steer clear of?

John Altman: "A big trap is overwriting — I'm still guilty of it. You don't like to see blank bits on your page; you think you're not really doing your job because you've left a rest there."

Or as Nick Ingham puts it, "Leaving things out is what you've got to learn."

John Altman: "Another big problem for arrangers is to get a balance between having an obvious style of one's own, and being too clever and interfering with the scheme of what the song is about. It helps if arrangers write songs themselves, and it certainly helps if they listen to them and hear the way that good songs are made by good arrangements, how you can spoil good songs by bad arrangements, and how you can help bad songs by good arranging."

If you want to make a good living from arranging alone you are going to have to learn to be versatile. John Altman cut his arranging teeth working for Neil Innes, and it proved a good training.

"When we did The Rutles I had the opportunity to pull all the George Martin things completely to pieces, and you learn an awful lot, like you suddenly realise there's a flute on Penny Lane. I defy anybody to notice that there's a flute on Penny Lane." In fact, the flute has been brought in and had played throughout the track, but only a small bit in the middle had been used. This kind of study was an excellent school of learning how to write, and by the time John had finished working with Neil Innes he'd worked right across the board and could take on any style of work.

However, arranging doesn't have to be all about sitting up to beg. Simon Jeffes makes no bones about the fact that he only likes to work in a small area.

"In fact my abilities aren't such that I can actually do everything. As soon as there's a constraint on it my technique would just fall apart, because I'm not very well versed in all the different styles. I just do my own style."

Similarly, once you begin to establish yourself there is a reasonable opportunity to be creative. A lot of work comes from people seeing your name on record sleeves, and for this reason an arranger should always try, without being too pushy, to get his name on the credits. A producer, therefore, who contacts an arranger is likely to have already heard and liked his work and will very likely want more of the same.

Simon Jeffes: "I've always been given a completely free hand, because all the producers I've worked with have heard something I've done that they liked, so they have given me carte blanche."

The old Ronnie Hazlehurst/Eurovision image of the arranger conducting an orchestra with a pair of headphones on is also becoming a thing of the past. In studios the monitoring of rhythm tracks makes the role of conductor redundant, and an arranger need not be a budding Von Karajan. However, the arranger needs to be there at the recording studio to act as MD, give advice, and to make any musical changes necessary.

Nick Ingham: "Part of the creative process is being there at the recording. I can't remember a session where what I've gone in with is what's actually gone down on the tape."

Leisure

But if you're looking for a leisurely lifestyle then forget it.

Nick Ingham: "Time is the arranger's nightmare, because you never have enough time. Because other session men need very little preparation, people think arrangements can be produced on the spot. Four o'clock on a Saturday they might ask for the strings the following morning and wonder what the problem is. But there's a lot in it; writing out the score and then sending it to the copyist."

John Altman: "Arranging is extremely high pressure. The pressure is highest when doing commercials, because almost inevitably it's the sort of situation where you might see a film on Monday, write on Tuesday and record on Tuesday night."

Most arrangers take on a certain amount of film work. It's obviously a good source of income even if the creative constraints involved make it somewhat unappealing. All too often one is attempting to satisfy a client who has not the musical skills to express his ideas, and whose ideas in any case often amount to little more than whim or fancy. Stories abound of arrangers being asked to remove the saxophones simply because the client doesn't like saxophones, and thus the arranger has to go to a session with "literally eight alternatives for each note." And that's not all. Decisions affecting the work of the arranger sometimes come from totally removed sources.

John Altman: "I did a commercial for whisky, and had Chris Hunter playing tenor on it. It was a great track and a great bit of film, but the client's wife caught the client watching the outakes of Suzanne Danielle in the shower and said, "That advert's not going to run.' So that was the end of that."

So what of the state of the arranger's art in the '80s? The most radical change has been — yes, you've guessed it — electronics. But whereas electronics are seen to pose a threat to a lot of session work, the arranger's skills remain in demand since any instrument from the ocarina to the Fairlight has to be arranged by someone.

Nick Ingham: "The guys who have kept aware of the new techniques have kept in work. Fairlights don't make arrangers redundant, they've still got to be arranged. You've just got to get know the new tools of the trade."

John Altman, too, does a lot of work on purely electronic arrangements even though, as he admits, his knowledge of electronics is somewhat rudimentary.

"Nobody's ever demanded that I play the violin adequately in order to write for them. I apply that same idea to writing for synths. But believe me, every synth player is not going to be backward in showing you some trick that he's developed that nobody else has, so you get to know about things straightaway. I think people come to me for electronic arrangements because I can humanise them a bit more. I like synth as a colour in an arrangement. On the Alison Moyet single we've got Pete Wingfield playing some very discreet synth, which nobody's really noticed. I think it's taken it's place in the scheme of things."

This seems to be Nick Ingham's attitude as well. Working on Sade's second album he integrates strings and synth into the same sound.

"It works really well, especially for 'blanket strings'. You put your big fat string chords down on synth then just add a few strings above so that you can actually hear the bow going across the strings. With brass it's generally the other way around, you add the synth above."

Simon Jeffes has a few reservations about the effect electronics are having on the quality of arrangements.

"There don't seem to be many arrangements done in the last three years which are really hot, passionate or interesting. There don't seem to be too many arrangers around who actually say something extra. The trouble is that people using a string sound on synth tend to just play it like a piano, whereas with actual strings you've got five lines and all sorts of possibilities for internal movements of the parts."

Literate

It's quite likely that an arranger will have a fair degree of musical literacy, and working in the Pop field can often produce interesting juxtapositions of working methods; it's not a line of work suitable for musical snobs. In actual fact, of all Simon Jeffes' recorded arrangements he relishes most his string arrangement for Sid Vicious' My Way.

"It was very sweet actually, 'cause when I met them (Malcolm McLaren and The Sex Pistols) they thought I might do a string quartet, and that what we'd just do is hire four string players, go into the studio and put it down without writing anything down. They thought the string players would just make it up!"

The financial rewards for arranging are certainly not inconsiderable, but you'll never be on Rock star wages. Successful arrangers in the States can negotiate to receive royalties, and royalties can also be received for arrangements of pieces which are out of copyright. But by and large the arranger receives a flat fee and that's it, and whilst it's true that he would get paid just as well for a hit as for a miss, it still seems a little unfair bearing in mind the fact that many a royalty cheque is fattened up by a skilful arrangement.

John Altman: "There's a very fine line between where the song stops and where the arrangement begins. If you've ever heard the original demo version of Bette Davis Eyes by Jackie de Shannon, it's a pleasant, up-tempo Country and Western song. But Kim Carnes' version turned it around completely so that if someone says Bette Davis Eyes you're actually thinking of the Kim Carnes version. So when an advertising company bought the licence on the song for a fabulous sum of money none of it went to the arranger of the Kim Carnes version, it all went to Jackie de Shannon. But never in a million years would anyone have listened to the original track and said that it would be a worldwide smash hit."

...except perhaps Kim Carnes. And her arranger?