Hello,

Last weekend I was watching "An Evening In London" in which Sonu Nigam was singing Rafi's songs on the TV. Of the many wonderful songs that he sang, one was "Tum Jo Mil Gaye Ho" from Hanste Zakhm. The interesting fact which he stated before the song was its arrangement was done by Kersi Lord. I always had a question: what exactly does a music arranger do:

(1) all the musical pieces composed by the music arranger and the music director only composes the tune of the song or
(2) even the interlude musical pieces in a song are also composed by the music director and the arranger only decides on which instruments to be used or
(3) none of the above, in that case what is the correct answer?

Would appreciate if anyone could clear my doubt.

Very good questions to ask, indeed.

As far as I know, the exact roles of the MD, his Assistant(s), his musicians and his 'Music Arranger', if any, are very grey and hazy and have varied with MD to MD and also form time to time!!!

As you have already broken it into its pieces, what are the things to do in a song composition and its recording?

1. Compose the Mukhda tune (this repeats three or four times)

2.Compose the Antara tune (this too repeats three or four times depending on the number of Antaras. Sometimes, the middle Antara would have a slightly different tune compared to the first and the last Antaras)

3.Compose the tune for the Prelude music (this comes only once at the beginning before the first Mukhda and generally does not repeat)

4. Compose the tune for the Interlude music (this comes before the beginning of each Antara and it too can vary for the middle Antara compared to the first and the last Antaras)

5. Some songs can have even an intra-Antara instrumental score. So, compose its tune too.

6.Split up the Prelude by instruments

7.Split up the Interlude/intra-Antara by instruments

So, out of the above, we expect the MD himself to, at least, do the first two items above, namely compose the entire tune for at least the vocal parts of the song. But, I have reason to believe that sometimes (only sometimes) MDs did not even do that much and rather got it done by the Assistants like Dattaram, Sebastian, Jaidev, R.D.Burman, G.S.Kohli, etc. You can guess the main MDs' names!!

Next, I have information that the composition of the entire Prelude and Interlude tunes was many a time done by one of the MD's chief musicians (a Braganza or a Mascarenhas or a D'Souza, most likely to be form Goa!!)

Finally, when it came to the actual playing of the Prelude and the Interludes, the MD sometimes, especially in very olden days, had his own direct hires/recruits as musicians.

Then probably came later the concept of 'Music Arranger', a kind of Thekedaar who took on contract the playing of the entire instrumental music as stipulated by the MD. He used to keep on his bench a number of musicians, used to bring them to a MD for a song's rehearsal and then actually made them play for the final recording.

Well, having said the above, I must also admit that there are probably a great many songs in which the actual MD had played all the above 7 roles.

However, generally it is difficullt to identify who played what out of the above 7 roles, when and for which song.

Venkat

PS. in recent times (ie. in seventies/eighties), there were three Singhs who all played the role of Music Arrangers--Uttam Singh, Sukhwinder Singh, Bhupinder Singh).