David Whitaker - Telegraph The recording session was booked for that same evening, but Whitaker managed to add parts for some strings, a rhythm section, a flugelhorn, and for a group of singers. "To be honest," he said, "I wasn't quite sure what a flugelhorn was, although I'd learnt orchestration, harmony, counterpoint and all those other technical things at school, so I more or less guessed that it must be some sort of trumpet. Things turned out fine. And that was what really got me started off as an arranger. One of Whitaker's best-known arrangements was Comme d'habitude for the French singer Claude François, a song which, with new English lyrics, became Frank Sinatra's My Way. Whitaker also worked with Air on the album Moon Safari; was the piano arranger on the Simply Red song Someday In My Life; and arranged eight tracks for The Eurythmics" album Peace. Explaining his craft, Whitaker said: "I always look for the 'cracks" in the arrangement - for example, whenever the singer is not singing. Here you might want a little bit of 'musical embroidery," or you might create something which reflects the main melodies. It's in these gaps that there can often be room for thematic development. However, when the person is singing you'll usually only want a minimum of activity. He also wrote more than 20 film scores, among them Seventies" horror films such as Vampire Circus, Scream and Scream Again, and Dr Jekyll and Sister Hyde. He composed the music for the fantasy movie The Sword and the Sorcerer, and was nominated for the César Award for Best Music Written for a Film in 2001 for his work on the French movie about a friendly psychopath, Harry, He's Here to Help. "When I first started writing music for pictures back in the old three-track days," Whitaker recalled, "I hardly even met the directors or producers. I was given tremendously free range, and I would hurl everything at those scores. And you had to: I went wild doing a Western once for Irving Allen and I had a huge bloody orchestra with eight horns, four trumpets, two bass trombones, three tenor trombones, two tubas, with wind and strings to match, but when the score was finished he said 'Not noisy enough!"" In October 2011 Whitaker recorded three arrangements for Nana Mouskouri, and two for Mick Hucknall. David Whitaker had two sons by his first wife, Rita Pedley. He had another son with his second wife, Sue Fournel, whom he married in 1971. David Whitaker, born January 6 1931, died January 11 2012