Arranging and Composing?

[jiarongisme]

Hey guys. I'm always confused between this 2. What does composing and arranging exactly mean?

[Princess Sohee]

arranging is when you arrange it, and etc
composing is actually writing the melody and stuff, isn`t it?

[zoomzoom]

Basically composing is creating the melody, arranging is using instruments to make the melody sound good.

[jiarongisme]

Originally Posted by zoomzoom

Basically composing is creating the melody, arranging is using instruments to make the melody sound good.

Thanks so much!

[*Petit*]

Everyone is right. The composition would in general be what you heard if you made a vocal track of ayu's voice, the arrangements the instrumental.

[Melrose]

Composer makes melodies and basic concept.
Arranger puts instruments together and the chorus/verse order, etc.

E.g. HEAVEN piano version is kind of the composition, and then the arranger goes and turns it into the HEAVEN album version with all the instruments etc.

You can pretty much tell the difference between arrangers. E.g. tasuku has very bland sounding instrumentations with not much going on, like In The Corner and Beautiful Day. But Yuta Nakano has very busy and awesome arrangements, like HEAVEN, Mirrorcle World, rainy day and decision. There are a lot of instrumental things going on in those songs. ^^

[Delirium-Zer0]

The terminology is odd to those used to western pop.... In western music, you "produce" a song, and in jpop, you "arrange" it. "producing" is something entirely different in jpop and it's more to do with marketing the artist as a product than actually producing music.

[emi♡]

^thanks, I was actually, always confused by what a producer actually does...

and theres so many lol

[greggerz189]

I think in the US Market, the "producer" does both the composing and arranging.

[Delirium-Zer0]

Not usually, often the singer does the composing, or a songwriter who does nothing but write; but the producer will often decide what composition to use for a song.

The producer basically figures out who's gonna play everything, who should write the melody (in the case of a singer who doesn't write the melody), who's gonna mix it. and they decide the overall sound of a song. They frequently work an album at a time, but not always. Sometimes artists do the production themselves.