September 2024 Guitar Newsletter: Arranging for a Jazz Ensemble

My neighborhood’s annual Longfellow Front Porch Music Festival is the perfect setting for throwing together something fresh.  I am concocting a set of music for a 7-piece group consisting of vocals, violin, flute, saxophone, upright bass and two acoustic guitars for this year’s porch fest.  The aim is for a swinging jazz ensemble in the style of Django Reinhardt and Stephane Grappelli’s Hot Club of France, which ranks as some of my all time favorite music.  Alone from a guitarist’s perspective this genre known as jazz manouche is extremely interesting.  The groundwork left behind by the legendary guitarist Django Reinhardt is very challenging.  However, instead of focusing on Django’s one of a kind playing style, I want to share how I am going about getting arrangements ready for this upcoming gig.   

The first step will be deciding what songs to play.  There are hundreds of jazz standards to choose from requiring a list of possibilities, which the vocalist will narrow down along with adding her own suggestions.  Step two is for her to decide what key signatures the songs should be in.  Every vocalist has a different range, and even though a classic jazz standard might be usually played in a certain key, it is wisest to pick what suites the singer best.  This means rewriting the tune in a new key, and that can be tedious.  The old school method is writing it out by hand and I have just starting using the free version of an app called Dorico, which seems promising!

Once the vocalist and I have decided on the songs and keys, I will be creative and have fun doing some basic arranging, which is not something I do regularly.  Using the proper clef and range of each instrument will be crucial, and the notation needs to make sense to the musician.  Each one of these standards has a notated melody and a chord progression to work off of.  For example the violin, flute and sax could play the melody in unison or in different intervals such as thirds.  Perhaps there could be some counterpoint or add a chromatic line underneath a phrase of the melody.  There could even be a new complementary melody adding texture and an element of surprise.  The sky is the limit, but it will be in my best interest to keep things as simple as possible with tight parameters so all the parts serve the tune and won’t require much rehearsing.

Thanks to improvisation being at the heart of jazz music we will not be relying on written music for the entire duration of the performance.  This works when you have players who have immersed themselves into a genre and developed good instincts for playing stylistically.  Players will be encouraged to pipe in at any time and there will also be sections for the entire group to improvise simultaneously.  A good rule of thumb while improvising is to not stray too far away from the original melody.  This ensures that each member of the band is certain to be on the same page and always knows what part is coming up next. 

Even though the traditional Hot Club Of France jazz genre is dominated by blistering fast melodic guitar solos, in this group the flute, sax and violin players will be center.  Myself and the other guitarist will strum hard in the spirit of Django and his brother Joseph to provide the heartbeat locking in with the upright bass player.  At the core of a swinging Menouche jazz band is the rhythm section keeping the form of the song going.  Listen to the precious recordings of The Hot Club of France, and you’ll sense the cohesiveness of brothers Django and Joseph chugging along like pistons of a steam engine.  Notice how even when they are both strumming chords, they avoid playing the same chord voicings or even rhythms together and yet they lock in.  Jazz music requires constant listening and playing off of each other.  

Being a musician can require much more than just learning and dedicating oneself to your instrument of choice.  Even though I consider myself primarily a guitarist who finds himself more often than not in the role of a side guy, I embrace the challenge of exiting my comfort zone.  Playing in a jazz ensemble takes me back to my studies at the University of Iowa Jazz department, but this time around I am the initiator and need to dig a little deeper to get it off the ground.  An interesting project like this is another opportunity for musical growth and will hopefully also bring joy to the other musicians and the audience. 

I hope your summer is coming to a pleasant end with creative endeavors lying ahead.  Here’s to being brave and trying new things and come check out a wide variety of live music at The Longfellow Front Porch Music Festival, 2-5:30pm on Sunday, September 22nd!
Chris