A cappella arranging

I joined Sheffield Uni's competitive A Cappella group, Steelworks A Cappella. Recently I tryed making a A Cappella arragment including singing and recording all the vioce parts!

(28 June 2026)

The cure

I’ve never arranged or recorded anything before, so I decided to start with a song I already knew. I picked a lovely arrangement of The Cure by our musical director, Rishan Raja. (Go follow him on IG, he’s super talented: @rishan.music!).

To warm up, I played around with the arrangement's MuseScore file and made a few changes to the intro. Then I recorded it using my laptop mic and a few DAW called Waveform. I sang along to the exported MuseScore playback on headphones first, then switched to over to listening to my vocals.

Since I’m definitely a bass/baritone, reaching those higher tenor parts was a challenge. I used a mix of pushing my head voice and pitch-shifting parts up an octave in the software. Isolated the pitch shifting sounds very unnatural, but once all the layers come together, it actually works.

Give it a listen on the right.

Pretty pleased with how my first attempt came out, and it definitely helped me get more comfortable recording and lsitening to my own vioce.

Erase me

This time I wanted to try making my own arrangement as well recording my singing. I decided I didn't really want my arrangement to follow the original song too closely, so I tried not to listen to it much during the arranging process, making my arrangement more like a memory of the song.

Firstly, I started in MuseScore and basically messed around until stuff sounded right. I'm not particularly good at music theory, so to work out the chords and the spacing of the chords, I played them on the piano until it sounded right. At some point, I went back to Waveform and tried out little bits to figure out what soundsto use like "dms" or "ooos", etc. I ended up going back and forth between MuseScore and Waveform a bit until I was happy with it. I tried to give it a totally made-up ending unlike the original song, and I think that part worked well.

Have a listen on the left and check out a screenshot of some of the MuseScore below.

What could be better

After doing this, I have a much greater appreciation for people who arrange music. There are so many details you have to think about, especially with a cappella music where you have to worry about people breathing and making different sounds.

If I did this again, I would definitely tone down the vibrato in the backing parts as well as spend more time transcribing the tune. I realized after I was finished that the rhythms of the tune were kinda messed up, which makes it more jarring and harder to listen to. I probably could have fixed it, but I couldn't be bothered.

This is definitely something I want to try again, and I'm so glad I'm doing A Cappella. Love you guys! :)

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