Archives for posts with tag: The Beatles

The requests for Beatles songs keep coming in, and it makes perfect sense. The Beatles loved using stringed instruments in their music and dabbling in all different genres, including baroque and classical. We recently arranged three string trios of popular Fab Four hits.

First, the strings-heavy classic “Eleanor Rigby.” The original just featured vocals and a string quartet. This arrangement stays close to the original (with some new surprises) while the violin and viola pass the melody back and forth. (Don’t worry, a two-violin trio is also available if you need it.) Then, we have the George Harrison classic “Here Comes the Sun.” This light and airy classic has a lot of beautiful harmonies built into it and translates so well to strings. Finally, we have what is listed as one of the most covered songs of all time, Paul McCartney’s “Yesterday.” The original is so simple and sweet, so we thought the best way to translate the song into string trio form was to add just the right amount of new moving parts and harmonies in the accompaniment parts. Especially in the cello line, some delicate arpeggios complexity without getting in the way of the main melody.

Let us know your requests for Beatles music and other classics! 

There have been so many additions to the catalog, and we’re not slowing down anytime soon! On the string quartet side, we’ve added a pair of recent hits: the quirky, upbeat “Call Me Maybe” by Carly Rae Jepsen and the more serious and broad  “One Day Like This” by Elbow. The original songs have completely different tones, but they both work really well as string quartet arrangements. The original character is maintained while the strings bring a unique quality to each.

While we love arranging brand new music, the classic hits are always fun, too. There have been a lot of requests for Beatles songs lately, so we got the chance to create string quartet and trio arrangements for the bossa nova love song “And I Love Her.” The original song has a lot of nice open space that isn’t always the best for a string group, so we had some fun adding in new harmonies and moving parts to really fill out the sound.

Keep an eye on the News section for more Beatles music in upcoming weeks.

We’ve been so busy arranging the new wedding standards that we forgot to post for a little while! Lots of new arrangements for string quartet: “Just the Way You Are” by Bruno Mars, “Marry Me” by Train, and “All You Need Is Love” by The Beatles. Also, in addition to our string trio arrangement of “Bless the Broken Road” by Rascal Flatts, we added a string quartet version.

Plus, we worked with a singer to create arrangements for “At Last” (Etta James version) and “The Prayer” (Charlotte Church and Josh Groban version) to be sung with a string quartet accompaniment. This presented a new arranging challenge to create music that was balanced and that all the musicians could keep together without needing a conductor. It was also interesting to brainstorm and then revise based on the musical ideas of someone halfway around the world. And we’re getting pretty used to calculating those time zone differences!

We’ve been really busy at Popped String during wedding season, and the catalog is growing. In celebration of Gary Numan’s upcoming move to our city, Los Angeles, we arranged “Cars” for string trio.

We’ve added string trio versions of songs previously arranged for string quartet: “I’m Yours” (Jason Mraz), “In My Life” (The Beatles), and “Beautiful Day” (U2).

In addition, we’ve also arranged for string trio “A Thousand Years” (Christina Perri), “Just Like Heaven” (The Cure), “Can’t Help Falling in Love” (Elvis Presley), and “Raiders March” from Indiana Jones and the Raiders of the Lost Ark. If you’d like to join the mailing list for updates on new arrangements, send an email to poppedstringarrangements@gmail.com.