For Orchestra #21: The Beatles ‘Day in a Life’
Ever since orchestrating, I’ve always wanted to do a Beatles songs. This seemed like a good fit because it already had a 41-piece orchestra in the original recording – which is both good and bad. I try to stay away from any songs with strings in them (mainly because I feel like its difficult to arrange a song for strings that already has strings in it.)
Buy It!Long before ‘For Orchestra’ was launched I met Jason Howell of The 404 (whose music I’m actually listening to right now as I write this). I met him at Blogworld 2008 in an old dive bar while hanging with Martin Sargent. We had a blast that night, and after hanging out I mentioned about my idea of ‘For Orchestra’ and he told me to do any Beatles Song.
I’m really not too familiar with the Beatles catalog – although I do have their albums, I just don’t rotate them as much as I’d like to. This arrangement was good, because it brought me back to their lyrics, and their song structure. There’s something about the lyrics “I heard the news today, oh boy” that really strike me. It makes me think about the anticipation of learning new things, and the reaction they give you because life is full of surprises, heart breaks, struggles, adventures, and more.
Life if filled with “I heard the news today, oh boy” moments. And to think that “About a lucky man who made the grade” was going to steer into a positive story, you quickly learn its not. It broke your expectation, and that always struck me as darkening and beautiful, yet realistic.
As I mentioned before, I aim to grow every day in life, as I’m sure most do. In music abilities, knowledge, adventures, and as a person – growth is the end goal. I tackled this arrangement as 2 separate sections being separated by the middle crescendo, which also appears at the ending of the composition. So I gave the basses the staccato line to fill in the lower end of the first verse.
I always like to have the lyrics dictate my orchestration as much as the melody or chords – there’s something haunting about the lyrics, but beautiful about a violin section. And the contrast fit perfectly for this, as they created a reassuring feeling of hope as the timpani crushed accents to the basses. Then for the second half of the arrangement I made the flutes play alone, which acted as a calming effect before the brass, basses, drums, and violins slowly whispered “oh boy”
I listen to this today and wonder how I would have arranged it differently. Maybe I should have compressed the violins differently, or mic’d the drums closer. Perhaps, the flutes and oboes shouldn’t have taken the second verse. Perhaps the trumpets and horns were meant to sing the lyrics more. But the end goal would have been the same – to grow and learn for another day. And to me as a composer – that’s my day in the life of.
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Wow! absolutely beautiful. Thanks walt so much for doing this song.