Advice on my pop song arrangement? ("Butterfly Net" for string quartet)

Hello everyone,

I'm back, at least for the moment. I wanted to share one of my in-progress arranging projects and humbly ask for your criticism. 

I decided to write a string quartet version of a Caroline Polachek song I love (linked at the bottom.) A PDF, Finale file, and audio file are linked below:

https://www.dropbox.com/scl/fo/ljosc9l0xfy0k6fc6r69d/h?rlkey=aml3pst90rdspugzuyiyjllb2&dl=0 

If you use Finale, please open the Finale file. (You should have no issue if you hit download after the "Can't load this file type" prompt.) In my mp3 the violin 1 part is absent; I'm not sure why. This is apparently a glitch with the software. My apologies! I am working on transferring the audio to my DAW, but until then, I hope this audio is still helpful in some way to those who don't have Finale.

Backstory and questions

In my notation and score prep class at music school, we were given an extra credit challenge to post a composition or arrangement online and make it buyable over the next month -- I am aiming for mid-April 2024. At the moment I'm thinking I will sell my score on ArrangeMe. https://www.arrangeme.com/

My works mostly fall under the classical umbrella, but during my past year at college and especially in this current class I've notated very short excerpts and arrangements of pop and rock songs. This "Butterfly Net" arrangement is more extensive, though, and I'm having some doubts about it in terms of texture, rhythm, and narrative pace. I really want to do this beautiful song at least some justice and I would greatly appreciate your advice. (My class focuses on notation itself and not at all on composition, but I would like whatever I publish online to be compositionally solid.)

I know that arrangements fall on a scale of very faithful to more transformative. For example, Josh Cohen's piano arrangement of "Paranoid Android" by Radiohead is closer to the latter, because Cohen created a spacious intro with a completely different mood than the original, and he extends and reworks later sections within the song. I would like to be faithful to Polachek's formal structure and honor her precise harmonies and melodic lines (I simplified some rhythms) -- because I don't have much time. A string quartet obviously has many limits and I have some specific questions:

- I have the pizz. cello emulate the guitar in the beginning, and in the chorus the viola plays pizz. to add rhythmic interest where the percussion was. Is this effective, or distracting?

- Am I changing textures too quickly throughout the piece so far? I would like to slowly build the energy and drama. 

- In bar 19 I considered having the viola continue playing a rhythmic part, but I recognize that it's basic practice not to have all four instruments playing together for the entire piece. Without the viola, bar 19 onwards sounds silly and anemic to me. How could I add some lushness that the original has without exhausting my ensemble? 


Thank you so much for reading and for listening! Please hear the original "Butterfly Net" below, and an audio file of my arrangement:

.

6 hours ago, Gwendolyn Przyjazna said:

Hello everyone,

I'm back, at least for the moment. I wanted to share one of my in-progress arranging projects and humbly ask for your criticism. 

I decided to write a string quartet version of a Caroline Polachek song I love (linked at the bottom.) A PDF, Finale file, and audio file are linked below:

https://www.dropbox.com/scl/fo/ljosc9l0xfy0k6fc6r69d/h?rlkey=aml3pst90rdspugzuyiyjllb2&dl=0 

If you use Finale, please open the Finale file. (You should have no issue if you hit download after the "Can't load this file type" prompt.) In my mp3 the violin 1 part is absent; I'm not sure why. This is apparently a glitch with the software. My apologies! I am working on transferring the audio to my DAW, but until then, I hope this audio is still helpful in some way to those who don't have Finale.

Backstory and questions

In my notation and score prep class at music school, we were given an extra credit challenge to post a composition or arrangement online and make it buyable over the next month -- I am aiming for mid-April 2024. At the moment I'm thinking I will sell my score on ArrangeMe. https://www.arrangeme.com/

My works mostly fall under the classical umbrella, but during my past year at college and especially in this current class I've notated very short excerpts and arrangements of pop and rock songs. This "Butterfly Net" arrangement is more extensive, though, and I'm having some doubts about it in terms of texture, rhythm, and narrative pace. I really want to do this beautiful song at least some justice and I would greatly appreciate your advice.

I know that arrangements fall on a scale of very faithful to more transformative. For example, Josh Cohen's piano arrangement of "Paranoid Android" by Radiohead is closer to the latter, because Cohen created a spacious intro with a completely different mood than the original, and he extends and reworks later sections within the song. I would like to be faithful to Polachek's formal structure and honor her precise harmonies and melodic lines (I simplified some rhythms) -- because I don't have much time. A string quartet obviously has many limits and I have some specific questions:

- I have the pizz. cello emulate the guitar in the beginning, and in the chorus the viola plays pizz. to add rhythmic interest where the percussion was. Is this effective, or distracting?

- Am I changing textures too quickly throughout the piece so far? I would like to slowly build the energy and drama. 

- In bar 19 I considered having the viola continue playing a rhythmic part, but I recognize that it's basic practice not to have all four instruments playing together for the entire piece. Without the viola, bar 19 onwards sounds silly and anemic to me. How could I add some lushness that the original has without exhausting my ensemble? 


Thank you so much for reading and for listening! Please hear the original "Butterfly Net" below, and an audio file of my arrangement:
 

 

 

I love that vibrato on the instrumental.

Hey there

First off, what a cool song 😄 I've never heard it before, but there was a lot of neat percussion stuff going on, like banging on things in the kitchen. She's got a great voice too. Nice mode mixture stuff, EDM effects in the bass, it's all great.

Ever get the melody to work for the mp3? I use Sibelius unfortunately. What if you just copied the notes into a new file or something? I'm sure it's just a weird bug.

What you have seems promising though. Looks like you emulated the guitar rhythm nicely with the string accompaniment. All the transcribing you did looks spot on

On 4/3/2024 at 3:59 PM, Thatguy v2.0 said:

Hey there

First off, what a cool song 😄 I've never heard it before, but there was a lot of neat percussion stuff going on, like banging on things in the kitchen. She's got a great voice too. Nice mode mixture stuff, EDM effects in the bass, it's all great.

Ever get the melody to work for the mp3? I use Sibelius unfortunately. What if you just copied the notes into a new file or something? I'm sure it's just a weird bug.

What you have seems promising though. Looks like you emulated the guitar rhythm nicely with the string accompaniment. All the transcribing you did looks spot on

 

 

I have a silly suggestion, but I guess this may work. You can download the song as an mp3 file using Youtube premium maybe.

On 4/3/2024 at 3:59 PM, Thatguy v2.0 said:

Hey there

First off, what a cool song 😄 I've never heard it before, but there was a lot of neat percussion stuff going on, like banging on things in the kitchen. She's got a great voice too. Nice mode mixture stuff, EDM effects in the bass, it's all great.

Ever get the melody to work for the mp3? I use Sibelius unfortunately. What if you just copied the notes into a new file or something? I'm sure it's just a weird bug.

What you have seems promising though. Looks like you emulated the guitar rhythm nicely with the string accompaniment. All the transcribing you did looks spot on

 

 

Hi -- Thank you so much for listening! I agree, it is a stunning song. I appreciate your helpful comments. The bug resolved on its own, within that file, and I'm not quite sure why still. In the meantime, I was able to complete the score and parts. Maybe the issue resolved when I used Finale's "generate new parts" feature -- my finally hearing the first violin in my audio exports seemed to coincide with that.

On 4/11/2024 at 1:23 AM, murphybridget said:

I have a silly suggestion, but I guess this may work. You can download the song as an mp3 file using Youtube premium maybe.

 

Thank yoy for the suggestion! Fortunately, the audio file creation bug resolved itself, though.

UPDATE: I have finished my score, and all instruments are audible in the audio file! (The missing violin glitch resolved itself) 

I will upload the score/parts to ArrangeMe as soon as I run them past my teacher. I'm not permitted to sell this outside of ArrangeMe, but I hope you all enjoy looking and listening! This was challenging and truly rewarding for me. Please do not hold back any constructive criticism! This will be the first arrangement I publish online, so it's the start of my journey.

Butterfly Net - Caroline Polachek.pdf

7 hours ago, Gwendolyn Przyjazna said:

UPDATE: I have finished my score, and all instruments are audible in the audio file! (The missing violin glitch resolved itself) 

I will upload the score/parts to ArrangeMe as soon as I run them past my teacher. I'm not permitted to sell this outside of ArrangeMe, but I hope you all enjoy looking and listening! This was challenging and truly rewarding for me. Please do not hold back any constructive criticism! This will be the first arrangement I publish online, so it's the start of my journey.

Butterfly Net - Caroline Polachek.pdf

 

 

 

MP3

 

 

Play / pause

• Butterfly Net - Caroline Polachek

1:11

 

 

4:46

volume

 

> next

menu

 

Butterfly Net - Caroline Polachek

 

> next

PDF

• Butterfly Net - Caroline Polachek

That's a very lovely work.

11 hours ago, murphybridget said:

MP3

 

 

Play / pause

• Butterfly Net - Caroline Polachek

1:11

 

 

4:46

volume

 

> next

menu

 

Butterfly Net - Caroline Polachek

 

> next

PDF

• Butterfly Net - Caroline Polachek

 

That's a very lovely work.

 

I appreciate that. 🙂🦋