We had a fun job this week, to provide the brass arrangement for top producer Michael Gray. “You Got Me Twisted” is a great crossover Dance track, with -as you woud expect-superb production values. He needed a riff from a Michael Jackson track transcribed, transposed and arranged for trumpet. We altered the original to fit the rhythmic style and it was a pretty simple job musically, but when you arrange for studio sessions there’s always different things to consider than arranging for live music. One thing that I always like to do is to notate the “drop in” times on the part. This is the time from the start in minutes and seconds at each prominant section of the arrangement. This makes it easier for the arranger and producer to know exactly where each section is-  musically and from a recording point of view. Ok, we didn’t actually need it this time but it’s always best to cover every base rather than waste time/money on a session. When you arrange for recording musicians you can also add more parts than you could live so we had 3 trumpet parts which we then recorded using different mikes. Essentially the part only need a single trumpet but we used 2 on the top octave and doubled the part an octave below to thicken the sound. The producer now has a minimum of 6 tracks to mix as he likes.