Music Production Arrangement Lessons - Spaulding School of Music

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The proof is in the pudding

Learn how to produce and arrange directly from Damian Spaulidng

Since early childhood Damian Spaulding has had major orchestral productions and musical arrangements swimming in his head. So-much-so that the music was almost definingly loud in his mind for many years and he had to work very hard to attempt silence it from being too overwhelming in his mind.
Rarely with the fast pace of Damian’s lifestyle does he get a chance to produce some of what he hears in his mind, but upon occasion he does build some arrangements. Some will be listed here momentarily. As you listen to the upcoming music, please keep in mind that Damian can show you as a student how to produce your own arrangements as well. Weather that be Rock, Pop, Orchestral or Alternative.

You can also stay posted as Damian Spaulding releases new track fro the radio here:
http://www.spaulding.ca/DamianSpauldingArtistry.aspx

The following are some minor scores that Damian made using the legendary Sibelius production environment. He has also taken the time to personally describe each song with his own notes:

Little Ditty - (Sauntering Through The Woods)
This little ditty was created in about 6 hours and was the first production I built in Sibelius. The work was inspired by the music approaches in Tchaikovsky’s Nutcracker Suite (being one of my favourite productions of all time).
While writing my little mini score, I envisioned a solo prima ballerina soon accompanied by a second lead, supported by a small ensemble. I am sure you will hear that plainly in the score.
Soon after as the plotline develops, a burly grandfather or villain figure joins the production and a series of interplays and dance ‘lifts’ occur as all of the characters interact. Unfortunately, Sibelius (as powerful as it is), does not yet have all of the instruments that I desire to score. Triangles for example are missing, as well as other accent sounds that I would have liked to have added. But at least the general concept is presented successfully.
You will notice that the work is quite repetitious. This was done intentionally to allow for enough time to block all of the dance choreography that I had in my mind.
I hope you enjoy the track and look forward to hearing your thoughts about the work.
I almost forgot: There are some midi sequencing issues at the beginning of this track. For some reason some of the string strikes came in out-of-sync no matter what I did in Sibelius to get them timed correctly. Thankfully, the bug worked itself out after the first 30 or so seconds in the song.
http://www.spauldingschoolofmusic.com/LittleDitty.mp3

The Dream
This piece was built in the same manner that Damian I often teach my beginner arrangement students. Start with one note, and build from there.
With this piece I started with one note and waited till I heard the next directions. Once heard, I played the composition live in one-take with no edits. I then built the orchestral arrangements around the piano foundations.
The plot-line:
This single was built with cinema in mind. I have a vivid vision of nearing the end of a movie where a main character lies fatally wounded at night on a city street. It is raining and the water is pooling on the street-lit pavement while it beads and streams from the face of our main actor. another character mourns over the upcoming loss. From there, the vision moves toward open wheat fields with a single person walking through the field; stroking the seeds with their hands as they walk by. Then things turn. This dream sequence then starts to quicken almost unnoticeably (as often dreams do). One layer of a dream overlaps with a second layer of the dream until the dream begins to get crowded. Just when things start getting uncomfortable, the dream keeps building, twisting and turning, layer after layer until all one wants to do is leave the tireless emotional sequence. The dream turns into a nightmare of falling; dark hands grabbing and gnashing as you fight to escape and then… Well you will hear it in the song.
I did the best I can with the tools at hand and look forward to producing this with an orchestra and mass choir if time and opportunity allows.
http://www.spauldingschoolofmusic.com/TheDream.mp3

40 parts
This piece was is far from done but I thought I would share it anyway, complete with my criticisms of it.
I wrote this piece simply as an experiment to see how many layers of music I could trigger before I started to cook my CPU and general hardware in my computer. To my pleasure I learned that my system could easily “take it” and then I ran out of time to properly finish production of the arrangement.
This piece starts with a solo harp line that I must say I like quite a bit. The way the melody reaches for certain notes unexpectedly and tumbles in un-expected directions gives me pleasure every time I listen.
Then I cut straight to the parts that I dislike simply because I was simply building fast. The final structure in my mind is far too predictable, repetitious and even though the arrangement is big, in my mind it falls to be under-whelming in my book.
I now need to re-work the process, reduce some aspects, show some respect in how the song will be built and make a proper run that takes you on an emotional journey. 4 years later and I have yet to find the time to re-visit this. This only took me a couple of hours to build so I just may build 12 other quick works before finishing this one. Who knows that the future will bring? Now you have a piece of my mind though and how I work as a producer.
http://www.spauldingschoolofmusic.com/40Parts.mp3

More Artistry:

By popular request, Damian Spaulding released his sought after take of Suzanne Vega’s “Queen And The Soldier”. Years ago he wrote and produced a play featuring this song. Within hours of release, I received the personal approval of Suzanne Vega. Quite the compliment:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m3GhMS65kks

Many have asked repeatedly for Damian Spaulding to release his rendition of the country standard Tennessee Waltz:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RFTZxnIrzPA

An award winning work written from when Damian Spaulding was a teenager. This song was featured in the play "Say What":
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9qzyP8v9XH0

Long before the awards and the acclaim, Damian was a shy young man. So-much-so that his first written song could only be a farce. He could not tell if you were laughing at him or the song when performed so it acted as a safety mechanism for him:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A7FRuZqVp80

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