Nerd Pride Radio

I cannot go there with Coldplay, I just cannot. No matter how layered or lovely or whatever it is, the utter pretentiousness of that man is too much. Tooooo much.

However, the Beatles arrangements might be another story. This is an aspect of their music I haven't considered or paid much attention to, frankly. But obviously for you this probably is, well, obvious! What would you say is a good example set of songs or album to ponder for this purpose?

I Want You (She's So Heavy). Listen to it with a real good set of headphones, preferably without any visual stimuli to distract you. Most of the lyrics are in the song title. (The remaining words are "I want you so bad" and "it's driving me mad".) I think it's their longest song if you don't count Revolution #9 from the White Album, just short of 8 minutes? And it's amazing what is done with that. The track still blows my mind to this day.

I'm going to say that Love doesn't count, but if it did, that version of Strawberry Fields Forever is truly awe-inspiring. I'm pretty sure it uses several different takes of the song - each of which is drastically different in terms of orchestration, timbre, etc. - and then layers a bunch of other stuff from around that time in the band's chronology.

Also, if you haven't heard the newest remaster of Sgt. Peppers, you should. Or at the very least, listen to this interview with Giles Martin: . He shows some of the depth that goes into the recording of mono vs stereo, and gave me a much greater appreciation for sound engineering.

(I've got more, but I want to capture this thought along a similar line: Many musicians hate John Williams because they find it trite, simple and derivative. Which it is. The thing is, the guy is a master orchestrator and arranger. The melodies are simple to hook you. The arrangement is what gives it the impact to make it last and truly support the film. You need those f---ing annoying fast string parts to make the trumpet fanfare even more powerful.)

Another modern group that I personally think does a good job with orchestration is OneRepublic. They also tend to use a boatload of instruments and their performances are sometimes like performance art. (The first time I saw them was on the Craig Ferguson show doing "All the Right Moves" and it seemed like Tedder and the percussion player both were bouncing around from instrument to instrument for parts of it. And they used a keyboard that looked like a glockenspiel!)