Ep. 15: Secrets of the String Quartet: Interview with ArrangeMe Power User Alison Gillies

Alison Gillis, welcome to the podcast. How are you doing? Hi, thanks for having me. Really well, thanks.

So, your background is as a string player, of course, but why don’t you just quickly give me your life story, if you will, and how you ended up self-publishing your own arrangements. Okay, so, yeah, I’m a string player. I play cello in Welsh National Opera Orchestra, so that’s my day, well, I suppose my night job, and after I finished music college, I started out doing a lot of string quartet gig weddings, and at that time, there wasn’t really a whole lot of pop music, and there wasn’t the demand for it that there is now, but a couple of brides would ask for things, and there wasn’t really anything available to buy, so I started doing the odd arrangement here and there.

I’d studied composition at university, so I had a sort of basic grounding in harmony and counterpoint and that sort of thing, and I just really enjoyed it. So, then I decided to set up my own website selling arrangements, and getting the copyright for that was a nightmare, and really annoyingly difficult, and quite often, one song would be covered rights-wise by four different publishers or something, and so somebody would agree and say, yes, you can do it, and other people would say, no, you can’t, and then the Sheet Music Plus programme developed, which is now called Arrange Me, and they did all of that legwork for me, and so then, yeah, it just took off, really. It’s so much easier to get copyright, so I started just arranging, and the more people that have seen my music, the more people buy it, and it’s grown and grown.

It’s been great. So, what do your opera friends think of this side hustle with the pop music? Do they give you dirty looks in rehearsal? I’m not sure how many of them know about it, to be honest. Well, they will now.

They’ll hear this. Yeah, that’s true. My secret’s out.

Yeah, occasionally, the odd string player will come up to me and say, oh, actually, I played one of your arrangements the other day in a quartet gig, and they’re sort of surprised. It’s not something I really talk about doing so much, I suppose, but yeah, it’s nice. I think everybody has a little side hustle going on.

It just happens that mine’s pop rather than something a bit more, I don’t know, classical. Well, all kidding aside, there is certainly kind of a divide, if you will, between pop and classical music, and I wonder if there’s something, perhaps, in the way that you arrange them that makes them feel more, I don’t want to say legitimate, but is there something that makes it feel, or is there something that you do that makes it more of a natural fit for string instruments? I think just the fact that it’s the medium of string instruments in the first place means that people already have that sort of classical association, and I think that a lot of people are sort of surprised, maybe less so now that Bridgerton’s been a really popular thing, and the soundtrack for that is all string quartets, and Vitamin String Quartet, who are a big noise in this kind of world, have done huge things for making pop music played by string quartet more popular. So I think it’s just the sound world does all that kind of classical stuff for you and makes it feel like something a little bit more refined, but it’s a really versatile medium and it works really well for pop songs, I think.

So would you say that the main market for string music outside of orchestras and operas, would you say that it’s the smaller ensembles, the weddings and those sorts of things, or are there other markets that one might look at if they were interested in writing for strings? I mean, the market that I predominantly write for is the wedding gig circuit, if you like, but education is a huge area if you’re into doing that kind of thing. Yeah, ensembles, especially of popular tunes that kids want to play, to get them really into playing strings, because there’s not always that fun music out there or things that will really engage them, maybe. And so if you can present them with, I don’t know, we don’t talk about Bruno or something like that, suddenly they’re hooked.

So education market’s huge for string players, I think. And you primarily write for quartet, yes? Yes. Yeah, that’s my favorite medium to write for.

Yeah, I’ve done the odd other thing, but most of my work is quartet. And if you write it as a quartet, does it sort of automatically transfer to a larger string orchestra? Like if you wanted something to work for a school market and a wedding gig? It definitely helps to build from the quartet. The stuff I write tends to be aimed at professional or semi-professional players, just because I don’t like to have to limit myself too much in terms of what the players can do with rhythms and the range as well of the instruments.

But I mean, just sometimes simple things like changing the key can really help. Obviously, you have to add in maybe string bass. It’s a good idea with strings for school kids to add like viola three, sorry, violin three, because there isn’t often a viola.

Yeah, you’re unlikely to have three in a group. Quite often there are none. So yeah, a lot of people want violin three or viola parts.

Could you just give us sort of the basic, like, here’s what works well for strings. Here’s what doesn’t. OK, well, I think the basic rule is if you can sing it, you can probably play it.

So if you’ve got a line that’s very sort of hummable and makes an obvious melody, you can probably play it on a stringed instrument if it jumps around all over the place with awkward intervals. The same with pitching. I mean, we do a lot of pitching in our heads as string players, especially when you’re sight reading something.

So that’s an important thing to think about. And just following actually for quartet, really basic harmony rules like try not to double the third. Don’t have too many consecutive fifths and octaves that might make your harmony sound a little weak.

Just basic things like that can be good. And then really looking at the inner voices and what they’re doing. So quite often it is always the viola player because that’s quite often the part that gets written last in a quartet, I think.

And the viola player can end up with all the notes that are sort of missing from the chord. So they can end up with having a really disjointed line to play with big groups, big leaps all over the place. And that’s, yeah, if you can avoid that, I think think about the voice leading in each case.

That’s really a good rule of thumb, really. Stay away from double stops if you don’t know what you’re doing because they can be awkward. They can be impossible in some cases.

And think about the ease of sight reading, whatever it is. Well, particularly in the market I write for, a lot of these tunes are things that people have requested for a particular occasion. So a quartet will buy the piece for that occasion and just put it together on the day.

So it needs to be something that’s not too complicated to look at on the page. Sometimes rhythms you can tweak a little bit. So they may not be entirely accurate as the song would be, but they make much more sense to read.

I think you can experiment a little bit with different textures and stuff on strings. We’ve got pizzicato. It sounds quite nice.

You’ve got tremolo. You can think about putting your melody somewhere else in the texture. It doesn’t always have to be in the first violin line.

As long as it’s appropriate to do that, some songs that won’t work for. But yeah, there’s a whole lot you can do with the sound world that you can create. And just by listening to a lot of what’s out there already, I think you can get a good idea for how strings might work in a quartet.

What’s some recommended listening? So I mentioned Vitamin String Quartet earlier. They’re the kind of stuff that I write. They’re the biggest quartet name out there, I think, doing that kind of pop music thing at the moment.

I really like old school stuff like the Hollywood String Quartet. If you listen to them, there’s a great album with Frank Sinatra called Close to You. That’s got some really beautiful string writing on it.

And just any pop music that’s got strings in the background. I think another real classic one for string arrangements is Nick Drake. I don’t know if you know the song River Man, but that’s got some beautiful string arrangements on it.

And yeah, just as much disco music is huge for strings. A bit of Barry White, loads of string playing on there. So any of that kind of stuff will give you a lot of good ideas how to use the different instruments.

I’m curious if you were just writing for fun, just stuff that you wanted to do, not necessarily for a specific gig or event, would it still be pop music or would it lean in a different direction? No, I think it would be pop music because I don’t really get to play it very much. It’s not my natural habitat, if you like. So it’s fun.

I really enjoy doing it. I wouldn’t do it if I didn’t because it’s quite a lot of work, really, I suppose. Although I’ll tell colleagues, you know, they’ll say, oh, what are you doing with your day off? And so I’m going to do a load of arranging.

And they say, oh, that’s not really a day off. But actually, I really enjoy it. So I don’t see it most of the time.

I don’t see it as a chore. Occasionally I have the odd commission, which wouldn’t be my preferred choice. I don’t think any musician has a day off.

That’s very true. Yeah. OK, going back to some of the string techniques, you mentioned tremolo, pizzicato.

Those are sort of, I mean, I guess, arco. Those are sort of the basic ones you have to know. But are there other string techniques do you think people should be paying attention to or aware of? Or is it one of those things where if you don’t know what you’re doing, don’t bother going into any of that sort of stuff? I think you probably want to have a good idea of what you’re doing before you start writing it.

I mean, simple things, glissandos are fairly simple technique. But then again, you know, if you put a slide from one note to another, it might involve going across two strings or it might just not really fit very well on the instrument. Things like slap pits are quite fun, the bar top pits as it’s called, where you kind of slap the string against the fingerboard and it makes a snap sound.

But all these things are slightly more extended technique, I guess. The best way really to learn about all that stuff is to speak to a player if you can. And just really get a sense of how the instrument works and the best way to get the sort of sound that you’re after.

So you’re a cello player. I assume that you will give yourself the melody more often than most, right? Absolutely, maybe. Well, OK, well, maybe I’m wrong, but I feel like the way most of us are taught to arrange or to compose, it’s very sort of top bottom, you know, the melody goes up here and then you have like your inner voices and then the bass lines at the bottom.

Right. That’s sort of just the basic, like, here’s how you do it. But, you know, when you give the bottom voice the melody, then you have to approach everything sort of lit.

Right. And so do you have any thoughts on how to make that work, how to keep the quartet functioning without that sort of bass note constantly there on the bottom? Yeah, I mean, there are definitely occasions where that doesn’t work and or certainly I haven’t been able to make it work. I think there are a couple of ways of getting around it.

You can either if your melody is reasonably high on the A string or sort of mid range on the A string, the viola can take the bass line. And it’s got a, you know, it’s got a reasonable amount of bass notes on it, so you can do a lot with that. Another way of getting around it is to really just put this the other strings up a lot higher.

So they’re all playing a much higher line and the cello stands out as a distinctly different voice and you’re not trying to ground it. I think it’s difficult to have the cello playing the melody for an entire song, but it’s quite often a nice way to start because then it gives you a kind of bass drop as you come into the to the song later on, which can really help with the build and the sort of architecture of the song, if you like. For what you do, is it better to have shorter arrangements or are you doing essentially a transcription of the song or are you making cuts, you know, cutting out a verse here or a chorus there? Generally, I try and do a transcription and if possible, I’ll try and keep it in the same key because I know a lot of people that buy my arrangements like to play with backing tracks.

And so, obviously, if it’s in the same keys, the original follows the same structure, that’s useful for them. It doesn’t always work. And sometimes, particularly if it’s a song, let’s think of an example like Hallelujah, Leonard Cohen’s got I don’t know how many verses.

You can probably just get away with three or four verses of that and that’s enough. If it’s a song that’s mainly lyric based, but it doesn’t do much musically, then yeah, I might put in some cuts or a sneaky repeat so you can just opt not to play all the verses if you want. Yeah, I suppose you don’t get asked this a ton for weddings, but I run into this fairly often in, you know, show choir land where there’ll be a song that doesn’t really have a melody, you know, especially a lot of the contemporary stuff.

It’s sort of that half spoken, half sung, you know, not quite rap, but there’s not really much of a line to it. Any thoughts on how to tackle those situations? Or like when the melody just has nothing at all to do with the chord that goes underneath and you’re like, well, okay. Yeah, that’s where you may have to start getting a little bit creative or using a word that I don’t like to use very often, which is no.

I have been asked to do some rap songs in the past, and that can be a little bit tricky. I mean, you can, some of them when they’re half sung, half spoken, you can sort of put in a kind of a melody. It’s a lot of single note rhythm.

Is that where your composition degree comes in? You just add a line to it? Exactly. Yeah. You might need to get a little bit creative with the counter melodies and your harmonies underneath and that sort of thing.

You mentioned most of your arrangements are sort of more on the transcription side. Have you ever experimented with doing something drastically different than the original? And have you noticed that impacting your sales one way or another? Like, do people think it’s cool or they’re really just looking for something that sounds like the original? I haven’t really deviated too much, just because in my experience of doing this stuff, people are asking, normally brides are asking for a song they want to hear at their wedding. So if you bring out something that’s got a completely different harmonic structure or just doesn’t sound recognizably like the song, that’s not really fulfilling the brief.

So, yeah, most of my stuff, I try and keep it as close to the original as I can whilst trying to make it as interesting for everyone to play as I can and fun to listen to. But, yeah, I haven’t really experimented with anything too crazy yet. One more thing we probably should talk about, and that’s just bowings, which I should say it was extra hard for me to learn as a trombone player because slurs don’t really mean anything for us at all.

And then, you know, it’s a totally different thing for string players. The basic idea, right, is that anything under one slur will be played with one bow, right? Yeah, exactly. So slurs do mean something to us.

And, yeah, it’s quite a tricky thing, I suppose, if you don’t play a stringed instrument. I mean, slurs in twos, slurs in fours are normally okay, maybe a whole bar under a slur is okay. More than that, depending on your tempo, could be tricky.

But it’s one thing I do find with sort of beginner arrangers and composers is that they tend to stay away from slurs altogether. And that’s almost as bad because then you get a really sort of chopped up, kind of broken up sounding effect. So I think don’t be afraid to put slurs in.

If they really don’t work, players will just change them. But the main thing, get as much feedback from an actual string player as you can. But I would say, yeah, if you’re going to use slurs, no more than one bar at a time or one measure.

I think you guys say over there. So you would say basically treat them like phrase marks if you don’t know what you’re doing. You know, like this is, you know, these notes, I want them to be connected.

So I’m going to do a slur and then the player will bow it however they want to. Or is that not? Not quite phrase marks. Yeah, I think I mean more just don’t put too many notes under a slur.

But if there are slurs in the music, it just visually gives the player a bit more information that, OK, this stuff should be legato, rather than something that sounds like it should be legato. But if there are no slurs, there are always going to be questions about, oh, I don’t know whether I’m playing this quite right, how it’s intended. So if it’s a legato piece, don’t be afraid of slurs, but just be aware that we do have to change bow.

And that, you know, if you’re doing more than four beats to a to a bow, that could be problematic depending on your tempo. Well, it’s like arrangers that write for brass quartet and don’t leave any space to breathe. Yeah, exactly.

That’s your equivalent. It’s your equivalent of breathing, I suppose. Yeah, in a way.

Yeah. Let’s shift and talk a little bit about the business side of things. Is there a particular way that you have found to be the most successful in marketing your arrangements? I think, although I’m not sure because I’m not a big kind of tech person, so I’m not all over the stats and metrics of my website or anything like that.

But for me, I think Instagram and Facebook have been quite good, certainly at connecting with string quartets all over the world. And lots of people, you know, if they take a little video of them playing one of my arrangements, it’s a very easy way to share it. And it’s a nice way to be able to communicate with people as well and ask other quartets what they want, what kind of music’s being played.

I can keep an eye on what sort of things are being asked for at weddings and what kind of things are being played so I can sort of keep up with what I want to arrange. I’ve also found having a YouTube channel really useful, and that’s relatively new for me. I probably started that only a few years ago.

And just putting a scrolling video of my arrangement so that people can see and hear the whole thing with a link to the sheet music in the description, that seems to have worked quite well. So, yeah, but I’m not, I mean, I haven’t got a handle on exactly what sales are coming from where. But I think just having a fairly blanket approach has, well, so far has worked for me.

What about the name Quartetpad? Was that a conscious decision to not use your own name for some particular reason? Yeah, I think it was a conscious decision not to use my own name. Just when I started out, I thought, just in case this tanks, maybe I don’t want to be associated with it. And also it just, yeah, it kept it a little bit separate.

I’m not sure if I was doing it again now, if I’d bother, because I think, especially through word of mouth, if people say, you know, oh, have you met Ali? Have you played any of her arrangements? And then people might search for me rather than Quartetpad. It just means there are two separate things for people to look for. So I think if I was doing it again, I probably would just go out using my name.

But at the time, well, I wanted to have the website gigpads.com or something like that, but I think it had gone. So I just went for Quartetpad. Well, I do think it’s smart to have a quartet in the name.

And I think you’re lucky to have found one, you know, because when people search quartet, obviously that will probably rank highly. How do you decide what to arrange and what to publish and how much do you publish? Like, are you one of those people that’s on a strict schedule and they put out a new song every week or every month? Or is it just sort of all like, how does that work? I’m definitely not on a strict schedule. I generally arrange what I want to arrange as much as possible.

So if I’ve got a huge list of tunes that whenever I think, oh, that would be cool, I just add it to the list. So I’m constantly working my way through that. I keep an eye on the charts.

So I’m always checking out Billboard’s Hot 100 and the UK Top 40 to see what’s going on there. And at the moment, I have quite a few commissions, so I get asked for various songs from different quartets. So I’ve got a rolling kind of roster of those that I’m working my way through as well.

So it’s a real mix of stuff I want to do, stuff I’m asked to do and stuff I sort of feel that I should do. But it’s nice. And then I’ll go through periods where I’m arranging all the time and uploading loads of songs, you know, a few songs in a week and I’ll be really on a roll.

And then other times where I might take a whole month where I don’t really do any arranging. And it’s quite nice to have the flexibility to do that. And obviously, because of the way the platform works, my arrangements are just all online.

So it doesn’t matter if I’m not necessarily publishing something every week. It’s just a rolling shop. It’s open all the time.

So my sales are still coming in. Yeah, well, and I assume certain times of the year are more busy than others, you know, wedding season in particular. Wedding season, definitely.

So we’re hitting that now. Although it’s probably sort of year round if you’re, you know, selling to anyone in the world, right? That’s true. Yeah, it is.

Although definitely USA and UK are my biggest markets. So, yeah, that’s wedding season’s about to hit. Whenever Bridgerton 3 comes out, that’ll be another big one.

I’ll have to jump on that soundtrack, presuming it’s still string quartet stuff because that’s been huge. Yeah. And Christmas, actually, I wasn’t convinced that the Christmas market would be a big one.

But surprisingly, as far as I’m concerned, because I never did really Christmas string quartet gigs. But Christmas is a is a pretty big market, too. Do you have any thoughts on how to communicate with the people performing your music or find the people performing your music? You know, you mentioned people sharing those videos with you.

What’s sort of your, I guess, advice on managing that side of the business? Well, people do tag me in videos now and again, which is great. And I’m always encouraging more people to do that. And if people tag me, then I always try and share the video somewhere else on my social media as well.

So hopefully they get a little bit more of an audience that way. I do do the odd search on YouTube now and again, and that’s turned up some lovely things that I had no idea. So, you know, kids playing different arrangements in concerts and big cello mast kind of cello choirs playing cello quartet arrangements and all that kind of thing.

So that can be really nice. I’ve. Yeah.

So a bit of both, really. But I’m yeah, I’m always trying to encourage people to credit the arranger. And because quite often that that’s the part that gets left out and they’ll say, here’s our cover of whatever song.

And you think that’s my cover. So I’ll always. Yeah, sometimes I’ll put a little sneaky comment on it saying, you know, oh, thanks for playing such a lovely version of my arrangement or something.

And I hope that that might filter through. What advice would you have for arrangers that are getting started? I think the best advice is choose something you’d like and want to arrange so that you’re interested in it. Yeah.

And then think about who you’re arranging it for. So you’re pitching your the ability level correctly and then get as much feedback as you can from players. Or if you are a player, try stuff out.

I mean, that’s really how I developed, I think, as an arranger is by taking my arrangements. When I was doing a lot of gigging quartet stuff, I would just take new arrangements along and we’d try them out. And some things would work really well and other things not so much.

And I’d have a listen and think, OK, I can probably make some tweaks here or there. And that’s the most invaluable experience, really. So the more you can have feedback from people who are actually playing the stuff, the better.

All right. Now let’s talk about the part everyone hates money. Oh, how do you decide what to price things and how do you decide what to charge? When someone comes to you and they say, you know, we want X, Y, Z. Yeah, it’s difficult.

It’s a really awkward one. And I started out because Sheet Music Plus just had a minimum pricing structure. Right.

So I would just use that initially because I didn’t really know how things would sell. And then I realized that I was becoming one of the bigger sellers on there in the market I’m in. So I thought, well, I can probably up the price a little bit.

And also because when I first signed up to the program, it was a 20 percent commission rate, which now has dropped to a 10 percent commission. So that also made me think, well, OK, I think I can put the price up a little bit more just to take into account this this drop. And I think actually psychologically, there is a little bit of an advantage to being not a huge amount more expensive.

But if you price yourself slightly at the top end, it does give people a sort of a feeling of, oh, well, this is just, you know, a couple of dollars more expensive. I wonder why that is. Maybe it’s better.

There’s that sort of human thing where we we’re always looking for the best version. So actually, I I would advise people not to be too afraid if you really value you believe in the value of your product, then price it at a price that feels fair, but also representative of the quality that you’ve got, because people do. It doesn’t seem well, in my case, certainly it hasn’t put people off buying them.

Have you experimented at all with taking the same arrangement and reworking it for different options? I mainly focus on quartet, and that’s generally how I start out with new arrangements, because that’s definitely my biggest market. But there’s a lot of demand for particularly violin and cello duos. And I do see sales in other in other groups as well.

So I do as much as possible, especially if it’s a really big tune. I’ll try and do a quartet and then a trio and then all the various combinations of duo. So two violins, violin, viola, violin, cello, viola, cello, all that sort of thing.

And occasionally I’ve even put out a couple of kind of lead sheets just of violin, viola and cello playing the melody. And that’s it. And put that at a sort of a low price.

But there is a small market of people who want to play a pop song on their own at home or along to the song. So, yeah, I will try and go for other combinations. I’ve stayed away so far from other instrument groups just because I’m not as confident.

I like to feel that I know what I’m doing with strings and I don’t feel so confident with brass and woodwinds. So that I mean, there are if you look very carefully, there are a couple of sneaky clarinet quartets that have that I was asked to do that have snuck in. But, yeah, on the whole, it’s just strings.

So when you do the different duos in particular, like what’s your advice for just file management, you know, using Finale or I don’t know if you’re Sibelius. I’m Sibelius. OK, yeah.

But I mean, when you have eight different versions of the same piece, any tips on how to do that in the least frustrating way? I’m not sure I’m the most organized with my filing system to ask. I’ll just have the name of the song and then well, if it’s just the name of the song, it’s my quartet arrangement. And then anything else is just the name of the song, string trio, string duo.

And you just do a save as and start deleting things. Exactly. Yeah.

Just save as and delete. Yeah. A lot of copy pasting.

And then with duos, especially quite a lot of rewriting quartet to trio is fine and works fairly straightforwardly. But sometimes duos take a bit of working around because you miss a lot of the rhythmic interest. And suddenly there’s yeah, they’re hard to work, but they can be quite rewarding to do.

So if you don’t mind me asking, how long did it take from when you started publishing to when you felt like, OK, this is something that’s become meaningful? I mean, was there sort of a light bulb moment where you realized like, aha, people like this? Or did it just sort of sneak up on you? What was that like? Because I think for a lot of people starting out, there’s so much competition and you do one or two pieces and then they don’t sell. And then, you know, it’s like it’s hard to find that motivation to keep going. So setting sort of a realistic time frame for people in their minds as they’re starting out.

Like, what would you say? That’s an interesting one. If I think back, I definitely remember where I was when I got the email saying you’ve sold your first your first piece. You know, I really remember that feeling and feeling like, oh, you know, it’s quite exciting.

And then it just sort of trickled in and I was adding more more things. I mean, it took off quite quickly, I think, for me. The big sort of like, oh, maybe this is going places moment was I won one of those.

They used to run competitions on Sheet Music Plus and it was, you know, upload as many things as you can and the top seller will win. It was cash prize. Actually, it was great.

And I won a couple of those. And so I knew that people must be buying my stuff because, well, you know, I didn’t know I got the commission slips, but it. I knew that I was obviously doing well compared to other people out there because I was winning these prizes for most sales or whatever.

And that just encouraged me to write more. I think, yeah, it would have taken at least a year for me to really feel like I was getting established on the platform. But during that time, I wasn’t just sitting there with my 10 pieces or whatever uploaded, I was continually adding to my repertoire.

And I think the more you have on on those platforms, particularly for, you know, if you’re using Arrange Me and the more music you have on the platforms, the more likely you are to make sales. So, yeah, it’s about quality and quantity. I think you’ve got to have both.

And people respond to that and they want new music all the time. So the more you produce, the more you’ll sell. Well, I really appreciate you taking the time to come on the podcast.

Any final words of wisdom that you want to drop on us before we go? I’m not sure I’ve got any wisdom. Just enjoy it. Get out there and try different things and get as much feedback on your arrangements as you can, because that’s how you really learn and grow, I guess.

And go and have a look at Quartetpad.com. Check out my stuff. Have a look at my YouTube channel if you’re interested in the different string arrangements. That’s YouTube slash Quartetpad.

Well, have a great rest of the day. Thanks for talking to me. Thanks so much, Garrett.

Bye. Take care.