Interview with Alison Gillies
Alison Gillies is a UK-based cellist and a member of the orchestra of Welsh National Opera. Before joining WNO full time in 2018, she had a busy and varied freelance career, performing with symphony orchestras, opera companies, West End shows, and pop artists, including Kanye West. She has also recorded several soundtracks for TV and has composed and performed music for BBC radio.
Alison has been publishing her arrangements with ArrangeMe since February 2017.
ArrangeMe: How did you get started arranging?
Alison Gillies: I got into a gigging string quartet straight after music college and started out arranging song requests for the weddings we played at. There wasn’t the wealth of resources available online that there is now, so I was doing a lot of arranging out of necessity. Also, a lot of string quartet pop arrangements were pretty unimaginative back then! The cello parts were always really boring and I just thought, “I think I can do better!” so I began arranging more tunes for the quartet to try out live. I found I enjoyed doing it, everyone seemed to like playing them, and it just grew from there!
AM: What does your arranging process look like?
AG: I always start by listening to the track and getting a feeling for whatever song I’ve decided to arrange. I transcribe the melody and bass line first, and then I add a simple harmonic structure for the inner parts. Audiences generally want the song to sound just like the original, but on strings, so next it’s just a question of manipulating who’s got the melody and deciding on what textures to use to support it. I might also change the key to make it a bit more string player-friendly, but I generally try to stick to the original key in case people want to play with backing tracks. I try to make my arrangements as sight-readable as possible, whilst still being fun to play, and always keep the sheet music to two pages so there aren’t any awkward page turns.
AM: When and why did you start your website, quartetpad.com?
AG: Once I had several arrangements written, I began quartetpad.com to make those charts available to other quartets. I had maybe 15 titles on there at the beginning which felt quite exciting, but the whole process of self-publishing was very labor-intensive, especially from a copyright point of view.
AM: How do you let people know they can buy your sheet music? Do you have any kind of marketing plan to get the word out about your charts and are you able to track the results from that marketing effort?
AG: Early on I did a bit of Facebook and smaller scale word-of-mouth marketing, but once ArrangeMe came along, it was a game-changer, not only from the licensing and copyright perspective, but also the selling/retail side. I started linking all my arrangements from my website directly to where people could buy them at SheetMusicPlus.com and all of a sudden I began selling music all over the world!
Social media has been a valuable tool for promotion and Instagram is my primary account now. I try to keep posts as light as possible, use appropriate hashtags for visibility, and always tag ArrangeMe, Sheet Music Plus and Sheet Music Direct. The string music community is quite a small world, so I also try to repost any time a quartet posts a video of one of my arrangements, in the hope that others will see it.
”I’ve learned that it’s a numbers game more than anything else. The more titles I add, the more I’ve seen my sales increase.
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– Alison Gillies
AM: Looking back, is there anything you would change in how you started out selling your arrangements? Anything you wished you’d learned sooner or any assumptions you had to correct?
AG: From a sales standpoint, I’ve learned that it’s a numbers game more than anything else. The more titles I’ve added, the more I’ve seen my sales increase. At first, my sales figures were really quite small, but they’ve grown steadily year on year and that’s been great to see. Also, over lockdown when I had a bit more time to arrange, if did a string quartet arrangement of a song, I also did a trio version, then all the different combinations of duos for strings, and then maybe a cello quartet, a viola quartet, and a violin quartet, using the same title and milking it for as much as I could.
AM: Will you go back and adjust or fix arrangements you have already completed and published?
AG: Oh, definitely. I’ve done that with several tunes, especially with my older arrangements that I’m now going back and putting on YouTube for the first time. I’m always trying to improve as an arranger and I want every chart to be as good as it can be, so I’ll listen back through and make any adjustments I think are necessary. That’s another nice thing about ArrangeMe: you can update the PDF and re-publish very quickly.
AM: What do you find most rewarding about arranging music? Most challenging?
AG: Hearing my arrangements played live is definitely the most rewarding thing! This last Christmas, I was sent a video of some young musicians playing my cello quartet arrangement of “White Christmas” in a concert, which was really special. I also love the fact that people on different continents are playing my arrangements – that’s very cool.
The most challenging thing for me is having to arrange stuff for commissions that don’t interest me. I have gotten better at saying ‘no’, but if I think it's a title that other people might want as well, then I will do it.
Alison’s best-selling arrangement:
“Wildest Dreams” (from Bridgerton) by Taylor Swift for String Quartet.
Performed by Quattro String Quartet.
Sheet music available here
Alison’s favorite arrangement:
“Livin’ On A Prayer” by Bon Jovi for Cello Quartet.
Sheet music available here
AM: You are able to keep up with the current pop tunes and get arrangements out relatively quickly. Do you have a process for choosing which songs you arrange and which ones you don’t?
AG: I do keep an eye on Billboard and the UK Top 40. Sometimes I just have a hunch about some songs like with “Wildest Dreams” from Bridgerton, which ended up being very popular. And sometimes I just have to go for it and take a punt that a certain song is going to be a hit, only to find out that no one actually wants to play it with a string quartet and it doesn’t sell. I keep a huge wish list of songs I want to arrange, which includes everything from classics to more current titles, and I keep a lookout for titles that don’t have many arrangements available already. I feel a bit left out if I don’t have my own arrangement of a new massive hit like Adele’s “Easy On Me,” so I try to keep up with those too, even though everyone else has one. It’s a mixed approach.
Alison’s arrangement of “Butter” by BTS.
Performed by Tribeca Ensemble.
Sheet music available here
AM: How much time, if any, do you spend writing public domain arrangements and/or original material?
AG: Every now and then I’ll do a standard classical arrangement. It’s nice to have some public domain stuff since it earns a bit more on the commission side, but arranging that material doesn’t really excite me as much. I have way more fun with the pop stuff, which is why I got into this whole thing in the first place! Having said that, “The Wellerman” blowing up on TikTok recently did inspire me to create a few arrangements of that!
AM: You are a former SMP Press contest winner. Tell us about that!
AG: Yes, that was very exciting and unexpected! The contest I won was sales-based, so again, it was very much a numbers thing. I prioritized arranging a little bit more during the submissions time frame and intentionally uploaded a load of stuff that I thought might sell well. I had no idea I would be anywhere close, but I ended up winning it, which was fantastic! I went on to win three more after that, and having that competition winner’s badge on my (Sheet Music Plus) profile did seem to help boost sales.
“The fact that I don’t have to do any copyright administration is the absolute winner for me. I upload a chart and it’s available to customers in just a few hours. That’s a game-changer.
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– Alison Gillies
AM: What is your favorite thing about the ArrangeMe platform, what do you find most valuable?
AG: Hands down, it’s the ease of licensing. The fact that I don’t have to do any of the copyright administration is the absolute winner for me. Also, the global reach. I would have no chance to get my stuff out to the millions of customers that access Sheet Music Plus and Sheet Music Direct on my own. The upload speed of ArrangeMe compared to the former SMP Press platform is incredible. I can upload a chart and it’s available to customers in just a few hours. That’s a game-changer.
AM: At this point in your career, what is your ‘100-foot wave’? What, if anything, are you chasing?
AG: Arranging has always been a bit of a side-line for me, so it’s been exciting just to watch my little business grow. I suppose the next thing for me is just increasing the number of titles and maybe the variety of ensembles that I write for. The world’s my oyster, really!
AM: Where do you find inspiration most often?
AG: I definitely get excited thinking about what I’m going to write whenever new music comes out from bigger artists, and Bridgerton 2 is coming soon, so I’m anticipating a lot of work coming my way from that. I love being the first one to get a new chart out for big new songs. I never wait to be inspired, I just do the work. The more I work, the better I get.
“I never wait to be inspired. I just do the work. The more I work, the better I get.”
To find out more about Alison and her music, follow @quartetpad_sheetmusic on Instagram, and @QuartetPad on on Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, and be sure to visit QuartetPad.com.
