Interview with Sarah “Cellobat” Chaffee

Sarah “Cellobat” Chaffee is a Las Vegas-based cellist and the string arranger behind Cellobat Charts. As an acoustic and electric cellist, Sarah is the principal cellist for the Raiders NFL House Band, played Aerosmith’s Las Vegas residency, and regularly performs with Vegas’s most in-demand ensembles. She is the exclusive arranger for a number of award-winning wedding and event companies all across the United States, including Premiere Wedding Music, Las Vegas Music Oasis, and Impulse Strings. Sarah has been publishing her work through ArrangeMe since 2017.

Photo by Todd Waetzig.

ArrangeMe: How did you get started arranging?

Sarah Chaffee: I wrote my first-ever arrangement when I was a senior in high school. I was very fortunate to go to a high school that had an amazing orchestra and chamber music program, where my dad was director. I had a string quartet in high school, thanks to the chamber music program, and there was a song that had recently gone viral that all my friends and I loved. Of course, at that point we didn't have the resources like Sheet Music Plus or Sheet Music Direct where we could just go and find a chart of that song to play. It was pretty limited to what the big publishing houses were putting out at the time. So one day after rehearsal, I thought to myself, “You know, I could do this. I could write an arrangement of this song for us.” I went to the orchestra department computers and opened up Sibelius and sat down and wrote out the chart. And everyone in my group loved it!

Sarah “Cellobat” Chaffee grew up in Illinois, attended the Cleveland Institute of Music in Ohio, and is now based in Las Vegas, Nevada.
Photo by Todd Waetzig.

My dad was great about supporting students’ compositions and arrangements, so he ended up putting my arrangement on one of the school orchestra concerts at the end of the year. Hearing my chart played by a massive group in front of a large and enthusiastic audience was very fulfilling for me. Once I graduated high school, I still had that high of hearing people perform my arrangement. And as a conservatory student, I was mainly in the classical world and there weren't many opportunities to play music in other genres. So as an outlet, I ended up writing a lot of charts for cello ensembles and recording all the parts myself and putting them up on YouTube to share with my friends and family back home. What I didn't anticipate was the traction that that would get: some of my early videos have 40-50,000 views! Even within this last year, someone sent me an Instagram reel where the audio in the background was the first video I ever put up on YouTube.

So towards the end of my college career, I was contacted by someone who ran an electric string quartet in Las Vegas. They had seen my videos and were interested in having me come out to Vegas to perform for the group, but also to write some arrangements. So I came out here and started playing with that group and more and more people started seeing and hearing what I was doing and it transformed into what it has become today!

AM: Where do you find musical inspiration?

SC: Honestly, I am a metalhead and I have been a big fan of melodic death metal since I was very young, so I’ve been influenced a lot by that type of production and song writing. But it's also inspirational to me when I hear my friends playing my charts! And it's been so fun for me to see videos sent to me of people playing my charts all over the country and actually in different countries as well, and to just see the individual personalities and stylistic elements that other musicians bring to my charts. It's one of the most fulfilling things for me.

AM: Tell us about your arranging process.

SC: When I arrange music, there are always two main factors that I take into consideration: the experience of the audience, and the experience of the players. I think that one of the main reasons people choose my charts is because my main goal is to make sure that they are easily sight-readable for the people who are going to be playing them, without sacrificing the quality or the elements that make them sound full and complex and fun to listen to.

I've played many, many weddings and events over the last 10 years in the professional world, and I am very aware of the fact that a lot of the time, you don't get to have a rehearsal before the gig. I've ended up playing a lot of other people's charts over the years, too, so I'm conscious of some of the potential pitfalls that may occur when you're reading charts on a gig because I've seen them all happen. So it's really important to me to write charts that are going to sound amazing with little or no rehearsal time.

The Player Experience:

Beat: I always make sure that someone has a beat to latch on to and make sure that everybody's together. I've seen a lot of charts where you can't tell where the downbeat is, or everyone will have crazy syncopations at the same time. That's great when you're in the studio and everyone's on a click track, but in the real world that kind of stuff does not fly.
Melody: I also make sure that the melody line of the song is in the highest register, because that is what is going to cut through the most. It's important for us to be heard when you're playing for a cocktail hour and you're set up in the middle of 200 drunk people screaming at each other—you need to make sure your melodies are heard even in a situation like that!
Roadmap: I am a big proponent of normal roadmaps in charts. You will not find any DCs, CODAs, anything like that in my charts because putting those in is a great way for everybody to get lost. Especially in today's gigging world, pretty much everyone is using iPads so there isn't really a reason anymore to keep everything on two pages. And with page-turner pedals, it's much easier to just keep hitting the forward button than to try to go back and find a different place. When I use repeats, I try my best to make sure that the whole repeat is within the same page so players don’t have to turn pages in the middle of a repeat.
Details: This seems obvious to me, but I put the bowings and dynamics into my charts. I also make sure that all of the melodies, harmonies, and rhythm parts are distributed as much as possible among all the different players, not just because it makes it a more interesting experience for the players, but also because I have suffered from repetitive stress injuries as a musician, so I'm very conscious of making sure that one person is not doing the same thing for the entire chart, since that is something that will exacerbate that.

The Audience Experience:

The Wall of Sound: I really want everything to sound very full and rich and big. A creative inspiration of mine is Phil Spector’s “Wall of Sound“ approach. I had a trio gig recently where we were playing my charts and when we were done, a guy came over to us and said, "Hey I heard you guys from across the room and when I saw you, I couldn't believe that it was only three people making that sound." That's the ultimate compliment for me, that's what I want to hear for all of my charts.
Rhythm: I think a lot of people have this mentality where they listen to a song and it's like, “Well, this song has a drummer but the ensemble I'm writing for does not have a drummer in it. Therefore, I cannot put any of that in the finished chart.” But that is not true at all! The drum fills and different beats contribute to the overall character of the song, it's really important to capture that in the string arrangement as well. So I'll often take the rhythmic elements from the song and combine them with the harmonic elements to create parts that do incorporate those drum rhythms.
Mixing: There's such a wide range between the low end of a cello and the high end of a violin, and if you're putting everybody in the same space, not only does it fail to make use of that wide range, but it also becomes very confusing. I arrange so each instrument can be easily heard because of the separate registers, but they also support the melody in a way where the arrangement mixes itself.

“When I arrange music, there are always two main factors that I take into consideration: the experience of the audience, and the experience of the players.”

— Sarah "Cellobat" Chaffee

AM: What is your favorite arrangement and what is your most successful or most popular arrangement?

SC: I had to go into my dashboard and look to see what my top selling arrangement has been, and it was what I suspected, which is my quartet arrangement of "Can't Help Falling In Love," which I've sold more than 300 times!

Sarah’s most popular arrangement is Elvis’s “Can’t Help Falling In Love.”
Sheet music available here.

As far as my favorites, it's like picking my favorite of my 500 children, it's so hard! But some of my top ones are:

Sarah’s arrangement of the “Theme From The Mandalorian,” performed in a music video by the Tempus Quartet.
Sheet music available here.

“All Of The Lights” by Kanye West: It’s one of my all time favorites because it's such an interesting and complex song and there are so many different parts to it. Not all of them are parts that you would think would translate easily to a string quartet so that was a really fun challenge to put that all together.
“Best Part” by Daniel Caesar: It’s definitely my new favorite for weddings. The harmonies are just so beautiful and it translates really well for string quartet.
“Sunflower” by Post Malone: A lot of my friends love this one, especially my friends who have kids that are able to come to our gigs. We love to play “Sunflower” because the kids love Spider Man.
“Theme From The Mandalorian” by Ludwig Göransson: I wrote this shortly after the show came out, and it blew up a lot more than I expected! In fact, it not only became a popular request for gigs, but I started getting videos from people all over the world, like there's a group in Mexico that actually did a music video with my arrangement, a high school orchestra performing it, and I even got a video of it being performed by a marimba quartet.
“Married Life” by Michael Giacchino from the movie Up: It’s one of the most popular songs for weddings, but if you're familiar with the scene under which that song is playing, you know what happens at the end… So I ended up writing an “all-happy” version of “Married Life” that doesn't have the sad part at the end. It's just a joyful wedding song that does not remind anybody that one day they will die!

AM: How did you get started in self-publishing?

SC: At the time that I first started writing arrangements, resources like ArrangeMe did not yet exist. Back in college, I had written a message to somebody, I think at Hal Leonard, asking how I would be able to legally sell my charts. And basically, the answer was that it was going to be a very complicated and convoluted process that involved paying an amount of money for royalties up front that was prohibitively high for a broke college student. So I was like, “Well, I guess I'll just keep not selling these.”

But a few years later, when I was on a break at my gig, I just Googled how to sell sheet music and ArrangeMe was the first thing that came up. That was in 2017 or 2018, and I think I only had 10 or 15 arrangements at that time. And I had no way of anticipating that this would turn into what it has become today!

One of the things that I love about the ArrangeMe platform is the fact that it makes it so easy for me to sell copyrighted music. I don't have to do any of the work of finding out who owns the copyright, finding out what royalties are due. Literally you just log in, you search the song in the database, choose the right entry, and you upload your chart and you're done. You don't have to think about any of that other stuff, there's no payment up front, there's no secret catch. It's really amazing to have everything set up in a way that I can focus all my time on writing the charts and not have to spend time figuring out how to distribute them.

Over time, I got really solidified in terms of how I format my charts: I have my logo on everything in a specific place, I have everything in the same fonts and the same font sizes. Having everything set up in a way that is not visually confusing is important to me. My goal is to be the Starbucks of string charts: when you walk in, you know exactly what you're going to get and you're going to like it.

I think my biggest regret from my early days was the fact that some of my formatting was absolutely frightening. Like I look back on some of those and I'm like, “People spent money on this? Really?” I had been writing them in the context of just my friends and I going to play these. They don't look perfect. And so I have recently been going back and reformatting a lot of my older charts and it's been taking a lot of time, but it's very worth it to me.

And this is a PSA that if anyone is out there that has those crazy-looking old versions of my charts: Feel free to message me on Instagram, tell me which ones you have, and I will send you the updated chart because I can't even believe some of what I sent out into the world in that first year or two!

“My goal is to be the Starbucks of string charts: when you walk in, you know exactly what you’re going to get and you’re going to like it.”

— Sarah "Cellobat" Chaffee

AM: What advice would you give to a new self-publisher?

SC: First of all, everyone has to start somewhere. So even if you don't have that many products, it's still worth putting up because you never know what's going to be an item that people are looking for. And the algorithms on Sheet Music Plus and Sheet Music Direct are great at getting the right person to the right sheet music. Just adding things over time, it can really add up to a lucrative amount of money if you just keep adding to it and building on your catalog.

And making sure that what you publish is as user-friendly as possible is key. Sure, sometimes there will be an ensemble who wants to professionally record one of your arrangements in a studio and do a bunch of takes, make it perfect, do a video, all of that. But the vast majority of the people you sell to are people who are out gigging and need it to be functional.

I think having your own branding, having a logo or a certain “look” to your sheet music is also really important. That was a lesson I learned from a masterclass I went to with the violinist (and ArrangeMe member) Mark O'Connor. He really impressed upon us the value of having a recognizable brand: logo, fonts, etc. I know some people do cover pages—I'm not a cover page person, but that's something that you can utilize. And just making sure that things are very readable on the page. A lot of people use those jazzy fonts, but to me, that makes it hard to visually interpret what's going on. So those are all some of the most important things for me.

*Sarah (left), pictured here with members of the Raiders House Band, recommends arrangers find friends to play new music and give feedback.*

If you're just starting out with writing arrangements, get some people together and play them! Hearing other people's input about what you're handing them is really valuable. For example, I've recently begun putting more rehearsal letters in my charts because I overheard my friend Christina say, “I really love when the charts have rehearsal letters because then it helps me understand what the form is.” I had never thought about it like that before, because as the arranger, you're very aware of what the form is. But for someone who has maybe never heard the original song, it's really important to have that kind of information. So just that feedback from another person's perspective is really useful.

AM: What is your marketing strategy when you wrap up a piece and the parts are all formatted and you're ready to go?

SC: From the beginning, I've been recording videos of my arrangements as much as humanly possible and putting them up on YouTube, because I honestly feel like the best strategy for getting people to buy my arrangements is just to let people hear them. I try to get full videos for YouTube as much as I can, or just grab a short video while I'm on a gig to post on Facebook or on Instagram. When I complete a chart, I'll post a story about it on Instagram because I know I have a lot of people who are looking for new things from me.

My website has a whole page for my sheet music, where I have a complete list of everything that I currently have published. I have links to all of my titles, as well links to the recording.

I honestly feel like personal recommendations and word-of-mouth between fellow musicians is kind of the best marketing strategy that you can have. And I'm so thankful to have so many amazing friends who use my charts and tell other people about them and helps us spread the word because it's been really amazing for turning this from a little hobby into a full-on second career for me.

AM: From playing for the Las Vegas Raiders, to Femmes of Rock and Aerosmith, your performing schedule is so unique! What is your gigging life like out there and how did you get into that?

SC: Gig life here in Vegas is crazy. I think it's one of the best places to be a musician in the country right now. It's not only a thriving city in itself, but there's also a massive tourism industry and the cost of living is not crazy compared to a lot of other places, so all those factors contribute to it being a great environment for independent musicians. I'm very glad I moved out here and very thankful to that original group for bringing me out onto this scene.

Sarah (on cello) performs a feature with Aerosmith’s Steven Tyler (center).
Photo by Ross Halfin.

One of the questions that people ask me is what gigs I aspire to, or what I'm trying to get to in the future, but I feel like everything that I do now is something that I never anticipated would even be possible. So I feel like it's hard to set goals for the future because the future is always surprising me, especially here in this town where, you know, sometimes you get asked to play a corporate event where they strap you into a harness and lift you up in the air!

The Aerosmith gig has definitely been crazy in that we play a lot of songs off-stage, where we are heard but not seen. But then we have a few feature songs on-stage, and music school does not prepare you for the challenge of playing the intro to a song while being lifted up on a rising platform and trying not to stab Steven Tyler in the leg with your bow!

The story of the Raiders gig starts with our amazing band leader, David Perrico. He is the only human I know who spends even more time writing arrangements than I do. He's always working. He's like the Energizer Bunny. He put together Pop Strings, which is a group with a rhythm section, three-piece horn section, several singers, and a six-piece string section. At first, we were just playing every once in a while at some of the off-strip casinos, like the Palms and Red Rock. But then word got around about our show and how cool it was, and we were hired to play a residency at Caesar’s Palace. That was really instrumental in terms of getting the show in front of a lot of audiences, and David figuring out what works and what doesn't, what songs people dance to and which ones they don't, things like that. But of course, once we hit March 2020, things took a nosedive and all gigs were shut down. After a few months, David received an email from the people at Caesar’s telling him that our services were no longer needed.

Obviously that was a blow, but like I said, David's the Energizer Bunny. He's always looking for new opportunities. So when the Raiders came to town, the team actually has a history of having a live band, and we were one of a few groups that auditioned. It was a long and intensive process of making sure that they liked us, making sure our products would work, making sure they would be able to mix us—not only is that a challenge because we're a massive band, but of course with a football team you always want more horns! So the Raiders House Band actually has twice as many horns as the normal Pop Strings, as well as additional singers. And the stadium is massive, it's like 60,000 people at capacity, so even the delay between when we play and when it hits the back wall of the stadium is insane. So it can be very weird to mix.

*Sarah is the principal cellist of the Raider’s House Band, the resident performers at the NFL’s Allegiant Stadium.*

It's been really well-received and really fun to do. We get to play before the game and we have a post game victory set if we win, but we're also sometimes playing with the halftime performers: recently Rachel Platten, Dionne Warwick, Sammy Hagar, and other fun artists. But we're also playing during timeouts and commercial breaks, so we have all of these very short and specific versions of our songs to fit into those spaces, which is why I don't envy David having to write all the charts! We'll have, you know, “Smoke On The Water,” 33 second version, 45 second version; “Back In Black,” 40 second version, one minute and seven second version. It's crazy. It's an environment that's very unusual, not something they prepare you for in music school.

On top of that, we’re playing a lot of things in response to what's happening in the game. And of course, we don't know ahead of time what's going to happen, so David will hear in his earpiece that they're calling for a song and we start in five seconds. It's a lot of on-the-fly calls. Definitely a unique gig environment, but keeps us on our toes. It's a lot of fun and it's really cool to see ourselves on the jumbotron!

AM: You really are so much more than a musician out there, you're a performer like Cirque du Soleil and everyone else! Does your experience doing these totally crazy gigs inform your arranging at all?

SC: It does actually, to some degree. You never know in what context you'll find your arrangement, from videos to people playing my charts with unusual instrumentations, or a lot of people will record themselves doing everything in multitrack. Finding my arrangements in the background of people's videos online has been crazy. I feel like there's really no end to to the context that someone might use your song.

*Sarah (on cello) plays with members of Premiere Wedding Music.*

At one point I actually had a cameo with two of my friends in an episode of Love Island. They had us record a classical piece, but they also had us record one of my arrangements for the couple to dance to. And unfortunately they didn't end up airing that, probably due to copyright concerns, but I was so hoping that one of my charts would end up in an episode of Love Island. Seriously.

I have a really good friend, Crystal, who has a company called Premiere Wedding Music, and I think her catalog is about 60 to 70% my arrangements at this point. And I have a lot of friends, both who I know in-person and who are virtual friends, who use a lot of my charts for all of their gigs all over the place. So it really means a lot to me to have that kind of support from the musical community and that kind of validation that I'm doing something that's helping people out.

To find out more about Sarah and her music follow her on Instagram, Facebook, and YouTube, and be sure to visit cellobat.com.