Suggest me some songs to arrange

[kabbes]

I play in a band. Violin, guitar, 3 voice harmony. I tend to arrange the music. I'm looking for ideas of what to do next.

I've had as many failures as successes in trying to put pieces together. Basically, it works if it has a strong tune to work with and doesn't rely too much on rhythm, because we have no drums. You can replace that to some extent, but not if it is inherent to the essence of the piece. It's also tricky if bass is really important, because the instruments are quite treble-oriented. One notable failure was an attempt to arrange Smells Like Teen Spirit. No matter what I did with it, it just felt too empty. I also utterly failed with my first attempt at a Bowie arrangement -- Rock & Roll Suicide -- before I made it work with Space Oddity.

The stuff that works best either has interesting chord sequences and features (Space Oddity), good opportunity for voice harmony (Kiss from a Rose) or is just inherently folky in structure (Sit Down, believe it or not).

So far, I've ended up doing a lot of things (to greater and lesser success) from the 90s, but I'd like to expand the repertoire, really. There's a lot of ideas on this board, so I'm tapping into it. Let me know what you think might work. A link to a YouTube video would be ideal, and if you have any ideas as to what I might to with it to convert it into an odd folk-rock/close harmony arrangement then that would be even better.

Stuff we do that works well, to give you an idea

Folky arrangements:

* Whiskey in the Jar (Thin Lizzy version) -- pretty much identical to TL, but with violin playing the guitar solo
* Sit Down (James) -- completely rewritten so that the violin plays a series of jigs and hornpipes in the background, voices either harmonised or call-and-response
* Dirty Old Town (Ewan MacColl) -- violin takes the middle-eight solo and also has a folky countermelody to the voice parts

More unusual or "classical" style arrangements:

* Space Oddity (Bowie) -- rewritten as a voice duet, with violin all FX
* Wonderwall (Oasis) -- violin takes a kind of classical arpeggio thing
* Hit Me Baby One More Time (Brittney) -- a baroque arrangement with Albertini guitar

Other things that are simply close to the original versions and work quite well

* Kiss from a Rose (Seal) (gives our main singer a chance to stretch her vocal chords, with plenty of opportunity for harmonisation)
* Runaway (Corrs) (a bit of an obvious group to copy in terms of instruments, although annoyingly I'm not really a fan)

 

[Silas Loom]

There's a fortune awaiting the inventor of a programmable electronic drumkit to support bands like this.

 

[mod]

This?

 

[Lambert Simnel]

How folky do you want to go? O No John!

 

[kabbes]

There's a fortune awaiting the inventor of an electronic drumkit to support bands like this.

Have you seen how complicated it is to deal with all that stuff? It's already difficult enough arranging for two instruments and three (to four) voices, without throwing extra percussion into the mix.

No, I'm happy with the restricted palette I already have to play with!

 

[killer b]

Windmills of your mind.

 

[kabbes]

This?

Wtf

Windmills of your mind.

I could see that working, although I do have to be a bit careful of overdoing the slower moving songs, as pubs of drunken idiots get bored of them.

 

[Fez909]

 

[kabbes]

How folky do you want to go? O No John!

Happy to go as folky as it takes.

 

[killer b]

I could see that working, although I do have to be a bit careful of overdoing the slower moving songs, as pubs of drunken idiots get bored of them.

Debaser then.

 

[kabbes]

That's genius. That could be a real winner.

 

[Fez909]

That's genius. That could be a real winner.

I think the vocals sound like they'd translate quite well to violin as well?

 

[killer b]

Blister in the Sun

 

[kabbes]

I think the vocals sound like they'd translate quite well to violin as well?

I can see the violin taking on quite a bit of the underlying rhythm section of that song. Whether I can compensate for the loss of the thumping bass line, though, I'm not sure. It'd have to be done in quite a different way.

Also, the band doesn't consist of six versions of the same person, which is a limitation.

 

[Fez909]

 

[killer b]

No one knows

 

[Fez909]

 

[killer b]

do 'seven nation army' and see how many sing along to the Jeremy Corbyn bit.

 

[kabbes]

No one knows

Imagine taking the drums and hard guitar riffs out of that and picture the pure tune.
So far, it has been beyond my capabilities to turn that kind of very simple tune into music gold for my line up. Which is a real shame, because it's exactly my favourite type of music.

 

[kabbes]

The other band in the village already do this! But they have saxes, a keyboard and drums, so it's more up their alley.

 

[killer b]

Imagine taking the drums and hard guitar riffs out of that and picture the pure tune.

I was mainly just imagining how awesome a violin doing that riff would be tbh

 

[mrs quoad]

Have you explored the potential for ripping off the ukelele orchestra's back catalogue, or are they already the daddy in your field?

I am thinking particularly of Wuthering Heights, Life on Mars, and something else. Oh! Teenage Diethag. Erm. Dirtbag.

I know nothing about music, but am guessing here that violins and ukuleles are broadly similar.

 

[kabbes]

Have you explored the potential for ripping off the ukelele orchestra's back catalogue, or are they already the daddy in your field?

I am thinking particularly of Wuthering Heights, Life on Mars, and something else. Oh! Teenage Diethag. Erm. Dirtbag.

I know nothing about music, but am guessing here that violins and ukuleles are broadly similar.

There is something in the idea of looking for inspiration to how others have already transformed popular tunes. If I can be original, though, it's better. Saying that, all those three songs definitely have possibilities.

Ukeleles are more like the guitar than the violin, to be honest, although they don't massively sound like either. But the general notion of looking at acoustic versions of things is the right one.

 

[kabbes]

Sweet Child O' Mine is one I am working on, by the way. But it turns out that if Slash's solo is hard on a guitar, it is really hard on the violin...

 

[killer b]

Imagine taking the drums and hard guitar riffs out of that and picture the pure tune.
So far, it has been beyond my capabilities to turn that kind of very simple tune into music gold for my line up. Which is a real shame, because it's exactly my favourite type of music.

John Smith does a folk version already which you could copy for the guitar part (no audio here, so I dunno how good this recording is, but when I saw him a few years ago it sounded good)

 

[Fez909]

 

[kabbes]

John Smith does a folk version already which you could copy for the guitar part (no audio here, so I dunno how good this recording is, but when I saw him a few years ago it sounded good)

The recording is a good one.

He performs it brilliantly, and his voice is amazing. It's a good example to me, though, of how hard it is to translate this kind of song. It suffers a bit from what I have come to think of as "bloke with guitar" syndrome, which you see a lot of in open mic nights. Namely, it's all a bit monotone and the instrument doesn't really do much (at least until he launches into an excellent bridge just before the end, but like I say, he does perform it brilliantly). So you have something that just relies on the soul of the singer, which is fine for a song or two (for mere mortals, at least) but becomes a bit samey when there are lots of such things in a row.

 

[colacubes]

Could be quite effective using the violin in place of the keyboard at the beginning

 

[kabbes]

That seems to not want to play, even in YouTube itself

 

[Fez909]

That seems to not want to play, even in YouTube itself

Try this one:



But surely you know this?!