Estimated reading time 3 minutes
Table of Contents
Introduction
Do you want to know what a song accompaniment is? Do you want to know the basics for writing them? An accompaniment is an arrangement for the backing instruments that support your song’s principal melody. Keep reading What’re the Basics of an Accompaniment in a Song? to learn more about what it is and how it works.
This article uses musical terms. For definitions, see the Glossary at the end of the post.
What’re the Basics of an Accompaniment in a Song #1: What Is an Accompaniment?
What’s an accompaniment? An accompanimental arrangement is primarily a combination of harmony, rhythm, and scales that are arranged for some combination of backing instruments.
Usually, in pop music, an accompaniment is provided by at least a chordal instrument such as piano or guitar:
- Typically, they’ll be joined by bass guitar, keyboards, and drums.
- It’s not unusual for these instruments to be further augmented by harmonica, horns, strings, or backing vocals.
- Sometimes they can be even larger ensembles such as jazz bands or even symphony orchestras.
How an accompaniment sounds depends on the musical style:
- Rock bands emphasize driving rhythms laid down by the rhythm section: guitar, bass, keyboards, and kit drums.
- A jazz band can have complex horn arrangements.
- While classical-styled arrangements can have intricate polyphony and multilayered orchestrations.
Keep reading to learn how it works.
What’re the Basics of an Accompaniment in a Song #2: How Does the Harmony Work?
Harmony is the backbone of your arrangement. It supports and enhances your principal melody:
- Notice that the vocal melody in the example below mostly consists of chord tones.
- There are only occasional scale tones to connect the chord tones together.
- Those connecting scale tones help give the line its melodic quality.
The supporting chords in the piano part below have these notes:
- D Major Triad: D F# A
- A Major Triad: A C# E
- A7 Chord: A C# E G
The piano accompaniment below consists of arpeggios:
- An arpeggio is a broken chord. This means that the chord tones are played one at a time instead of all at once like you’d find with block chords.
- Arpeggios are good for lighter, softer music, while block chords are good for driving rhythms with lots of energy.
- Ultimately, your goal is to create a fun arrangement that sounds cool.
For more information on harmony:
- Do You Want Cool Chords for Your Song?
- An Easy How to Guide to Understanding Triads
- Chord Progressions (Including the 12 Bar Blues)
- What Exactly Is a Chord and What Does the Term Harmony Mean?
- Please Explain Roman Numeral Analysis in Layman’s Terms for Me
- Tonic vs. Root in Music Theory
- What Exactly Does I7-vi7-V7 Mean?
- What’s the Deal with These iv-V-VII Chords?
- Changing Keys in Your Songwriting
Mobile users: for best results reading the music, rotate your screen 90o to the right.
Soundtrack Piano Accompaniment Arrangement:
What’re the Basics of an Accompaniment in a Song #3: How Do You Arrange the Instruments?
Once you know what your harmonies are, you’ll need to figure out what instruments are going to play them:
- At the very least, you must know instrument ranges and registers, because you need to know what notes an instrument will be able to play.
- Also, you need to know what it sounds like in each part of its range.
- Plus, it helps to learn something about the instruments. For example, you’ll need to understand that vocalists and wind instrumentalists need to breathe when performing.
The orchestration post (the first link below) does a deep dive into making musical arrangements.
For more information on how to create an arrangement:
Video: The Role of Each Instrument in a Pop Group
Final Thoughts
Takeaway points:
- An accompaniment is primarily a combination of harmony, rhythm, and scales that are arranged for some combination of backing instruments that support the principal melody.
- Harmony is the backbone of your arrangement. It supports and enhances your melody.
- Once you know what your harmonies are, you’ll need to figure out what instruments are going to play them.
Have fun writing!
Related Posts
- Writing Well Crafted Songs
- How Can I Write a Song Without an Instrument?
- A How to Guide for Incredibly Cool Guitar Distortion
© 2025 Geoffrey Keith
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