As someone who doesn’t know much about music, what do the terms arrange and compose mean? Specifically I ask this because I recently recreated a public domain song using a piece of software for creating music, and I wonder what I can say I did with the song since I didn’t write it.
I always thought that “composing” meant original music writing and that “arranging” meant music re-writing… but I’ll wait for a muscian to weigh in.
Composing means that you thought up the song in its entirety; you invented the way the music and/or lyrics go. Arranging is when you’ve created what each instrument will be playing or voices will be singing.
Entering the notes for a public domain song into a piece of software for playback is pretty much just that.
I’d like to recommend the Finale family of music notation software
Depends.
If you just put the melody (or someone else’s arrangement) into a program, I’d say you didn’t really do a whole lot. A lot of WORK, sure, but not a lot of creative input
If, however, you mean “recreated” as in rewrote parts of the melody, wrote a new harmony part, switched up some notes between the melody and other voices or instruments and/or substantially changed the rhythmic feel of the piece, you wrote a new arrangement.
That’s arranging. Composing is making it up from scratch.
Thanks for the information. I’m using the song in a short film and I’m trying to figure out how to properly credit it.
Composition is a term to describe what happens when a person thinks of a melody and comes up with the way song will be organized; this often includes things like words (but doesn’t have to; a setting of a Goethe poem by Wolf is considered Wolf’s composition; Mozart’s setting of someone else’s libretto is considered Mozart’s composition), melody, harmony, orchestration/instrumentation (again, does not have to; many composers left orchestration to their students or in earlier cases, to chance), and so on.
Arrangement occurs when a person takes an existing song and reorganizes it in some way. Therefore, they might take an existing melody and/or lyric and reset it in a somehow new way, yet not change the fundamental identity of the song. And different arrangers may morph the song by various degrees. It could end up quite familiar-sounding, or have a totally new identity. For instance, the song “Amazing Grace” has been arranged many, many times; I might take it and write a version for soprano, alto, tenor, bass with oboe; you might rearrange it for full orchestra with soprano soloist. You could put it into a blues or swing style, or set the same melody to a rock beat with guitars etc. It is still recognized as the same song, yet many liberties might have been taken with harmony or organization by the arranger.
This is the basic answer to your question; it raises many philosophical questions about the nature of the work (ie. what constitutes a work? When does a new-sounding version of a piece become an arrangement, and at what point is it an entirely new piece which merely quotes another piece? Where does transcription or simple reinstrumentation of an existing work fit in?), but to debate them would be outside the scope of this question.
As a slight hijack, the amount to which “borrowing” and “rearranging” is allowed and must be attributed is a recent phenomenon. Music copyrights did not exist in the past, and composers freely borrowed melodies from others without crediting the source. (Other times, they did credit the source, as in sets of variations on a familiar aria or theme by another composer.)
I’m no musical expert, so this is pretty much a regurgitation of what I have read.
A Composer is the originator of the melody and, if applicable, lyrics, to a piece of music. The composer may also provide chord structure at least as far as chord symbols. He may provide fully defined harmonic structure that gets copyrighted along with the melody (and lyrics). These functions may be shared in a songwriting team with “music by” and “lyrics by” credits. More than one person may contribute to either or both of these areas. An example that springs to mind is “Arthur’s Theme” which had several “composers” involved.
An Arranger provides the harmonic distribution of parts for a band or orchestra. If the original music had its own fully defined harmonic structure, he may “arrange” the music with different chords.
How software assists in putting chords to a given melody would, in my way of thinking, be an arranging task and not a composing one.
I yield to experts on these issues.
Oh, well then you would be perfectly fine to have the credit read: “Lyrics / music - Public domain; arr. Baine.”