George Chen: On Music Arrangement

Acclaimed producer-composer George Chen is a master of using string arrangements to tug at our heartstrings. Chen won Best Music Arrangement at the 23rd Golden Melody Awards for mega-band Mayday’s track “Noah’s Ark” on their eighth studio album Second Round. In 2016, he took home Producer of the Year, Single for his work on title track of legendary vocalist Julia Peng’s album Darling. Chen takes listeners behind the scenes to explore how arrangements tap into the soul of a song. Chen explains that while he starts with conforming to the singer’s vocals, interpreting the lyrics, imagery and melody is the most important: “Take Mayday’s ‘Noah’s Ark’ for example. I used instrumentation to create the visual image of darkness giving way to light. So first, I start the strings low and then slowly bring them to the higher registers. Second, I make them oscillate between harmony and dissonance.” Chen says he also is partial to adding a secondary melody to the song: “I think that in this way, arrangers can also join in the music and become one of its voices.” To date, Chen is most proud of his work on Lala Hsu’s ‘The Prayer’ from her 2017 album Psychology. “What seems to be a prayer for others is actually an expression of hope for herself. So I set the scene in the limitless void of outer space, where this miniscule being sends out a weak distress signal in a prayer for well-being,” Chen says. “Electronic sounds, piano and strings weave between the lyrics, gently cradling the vocals.” Chen said he finds Chang Shilei’s arrangement choices mesmerising, particularly his artful combinations of electronic and classical music. “Classical training can extend the harmonic colour of songs that broaden the imagination. Take his production on ‘Persimmon’, for example. The woodwinds in the first part bring out the mysterious and treacherous scenes, and the synthesised beats of the middle and end parts take the listener to the present and even the future.” Pop music is evolving so quickly that genres are blurring together, Chen points out, encouraging today’s musicians to keep up and challenge their own ideas about fusion. “As long as you're able to create music that expresses your emotions and feelings, that is creation,” he says. Now that you have Chen’s thoughts on musical arrangements, have fun picking out the interesting compositional details that lie within his curated playlist. You may not have consciously picked up on them in the past, but these are the musical elements that never fail to hit us right in the feels.