Written by ChromeEdwardian
Prelude:
I began arranging music when I was part of an a capella group in college. Using early MuseScore, I attempted converting songs like, "Take Me Home" by Phil Collins, "Cry Me A River" by Justin Timberlake, and most importantly, "Always" by Erasure into four-part vocal harmonies that our group could perform. Coming fresh off of a music magnet program in high school, I was thrilled to try my hand. Alas, I got driven out of a cappella for being too weird before I could get a sense for the musical norms, but I assume that arranging is always done in house. There is no Commercially Available A Cappella Sheet Music publisher, or at least there wasn't back then.
Video game music is similar. With a few exceptions, video game soundtrack sheet music isn't commercially available for an amateur community orchestra to purchase and perform. So for the growing number of video game music orchestras in the United States, it's up to the music nerds once again to produce the body of work.
I remain one of those nerds
In this issue of Rumble Pack, I will be sharing an artistic journal tracing how I approach arranging video game music.
How does one decide what to arrange and what can one live with simply enjoying? The pieces I select are usually because I hear something special in them. A particular musical phrase that begs to be performed in a different style, perhaps, or a strong sense of the arrangement feeling already fully-formed in my inner ear. Oftentimes, it comes from a deep love of the video game in which the piece appears. My favorite arrangements incorporate elements of the game's lore or other pieces in the soundtrack in a way that push them from being merely transcriptions to fully transformative works. In other words, instead of the final product sounding exactly like the piece in the game, the arranger puts their own artistic spin on things—not dissimilar to a good DJ remixing a hit song, developing her own style along the way.
When I was learning to arrange, I worked in music notation software Finale, but these days I work solely in the open source MuseScore. The basic rundown of arranging is:
Know the piece inside and out
Pick the instruments you want and begin writing down notes for them to play
Play the notes back and see if they sound good
????
Gorgeous piece of music
For my part, I mostly arrange for choir because I know the voices best. I have tried my hand at arranging for reduced orchestra, but there was so much I didn't know about arranging back then, or the capacity of the instruments I was writing for, that despite its potential, I remain embarassed by it. Other arrangements I've written are practically unplayable, except by electronic instruments. Such is life.
As a parting word, it usually takes several months to be truly happy with an arrangement, so the following journal remains incomplete. I don't foresee being done any time soon. Still, there are notes on the staff and a sense of progress in my self, and we'll keep tinkering away until it's done.
"Divine's Lament" by Borislav Slavov from Divinity: Original Sin 2.
3.17.2026, 8:37pm
Spent maybe twenty minutes rearranging the notes of the first five measures, just setting up the main chord progression. The first measure is the tonic (A) just to get everyone in tune. This first phrase is simple in a way I'm not terribly fond of, I have to remind myself that they will be doing this chord progression several times and I don't have to get fancy yet. The dissonance will come. I'm imagining a gentle oo.
The goal here is not to sound like a college a cappella group, trying to mimic a pop sound, but an actual choral arrangement. For this piece, I have been very inspired by Eric Whitacre's arrangements of Depeche Mode's "Enjoy the Silence" and NIN/Johnny Cash's "Hurt."
I've listened to these four measures I've written ad nauseam and they will haunt my sleep tonight.
The Cat has parked himself in front of the monitor and shows no signs of moving. More later.
3.21.2026, 12:30pm
Sixteen measures. Wrestled with The Cat to get him to stop scratching at the monitor. The tune tumbled in my head yesterday afternoon on the bus, and thankfully I was able to keep track of it until now when I've gotten to the computer.
I've also started playing the game again from where I left off last year so I can experience the piece in the wild and see what it means in the context of the game. For background, I actually heard this song on a Spotify Discover Weekly playlist long before I ever played the game. I liked the storytelling of the lyrics and the range the melody was in, since except for one note, it suits my low register very well. This was also before Baldur's Gate 3 game out, so I had never heard of Larian before. I asked around whether the game was good and was generally told "Yes!" I was maybe 20 hours into it when I got distracted and started playing something else, but now I'm back and having a fun time. It's been a while since I've sank into a RPG fugue state for an entire evening.
The intro is pretty much put down now, in its imperfect form, and I must take the lessons I've learned from writing and apply them to arranging. Just get it down. Editing can come later.
I'm challenged when it comes to arranging music because, unlike writing words, I haven't quite landed on how I like to take notes (ha!) for music. It's a mix of recording, writing down the note names by letter, and if I happen to have blank sheet music on me, maybe I can start marking down slashes the way I used to in high school, transcribing by ear.
My ear is actually quite bad, but I try very hard. It's an interesting dilemma—I've always had an ear for harmonization, but producing the notes I hear in my head comes difficultly. Makes me a good folk singer, I try to assure myself.
I also suffer from impatience trying to get everything down on my notation software. Back in high school, we had MIDI keyboards inputting notes onto the staff—with my left hand, I'd play out the notes I wanted, and all I had to do was change the note duration. These days I'm stuck with mouse and QWERTY keyboard.
I play the sixteen measures. I play them again. And again, until the shape of the first verse forms in my imagination.
Same day, 8:27pm
This is going to sound like Gregorian for a while.
I would love nothing better than to give the basses something better to do during the voices than Baw. Baw. Baw. I'm an alto, I know how it feels.
Same day, 9:51pm
I've opened up Choral Arranging by Hawley Ades for pointers. I think I'm going to have to record myself singing the melody and harmonize along with it to see how it actually sounds. I'm pretty congested this week though and it sounds bad.
"Dark of night and full of snow
Pure and white and deadly"
A minor C major G major
EEDC CCDD
CCBA EEBB
AAAA GGGG
I did all that in my head lying in bed and using 100% of my brain to identify what note I was singing relative to the others. Took maybe 25 minutes. Intervals are hard for me without my pneumonic devices. And octaves too, regardless of the fact that it's as easy as breathing to change octaves while singing, it's quite another matter to think about it.
3.22.2026, 9:47am
Plugging in last night's notes into MuseScore this morning. Trying to figure out which voice part gets which part of the chord without them crossing and without the tenors, who have the melody at the moment, getting drowned out by the other parts singing in a way that would make them louder (cough, sopranos). The original song has a solo tenor voice singing, so I would like to preserve that.
Trying to put some tension in the bass line to keep the tune moving along.
Figured out the rhythm of the melody and converted the quarter notes into that.
Trying to save the fancy chordwork for later in the piece, so we might just have to start with ooo's for the first verse.
And now we get to the copypaste section and it gets messy.
4.2.2026, 7.44 pm
After a week's absence, I'm returning to the arrangement. I think I should halve the note durations. Or maybe I shouldn't. I want these chords to be luscious, which wouldn't be so with all the eighth notes.
I could really go for an actual piano keyboard right about now.
This is sounding fine, but it's going to take forever to get to where I need it to be.
Maybe, just like with writing, I need to skip ahead to the parts I want to write first.
4.11.2026 2.37pm
No progress. Listening to the strains of a girls choir from another wing of a library and it's beautiful. Would that I could arrange something like that.
4.14.2026 12.33pm
If you listen to your draft enough times without changing anything, you risk it being just how the song goes now, and editing becomes all the more difficult. How do you decide which chord sounds better?
I've made great progress on my first playthrough of DOS2. It's really growing on me, but I haven't heard even the instrumental version of the track in the wild. I wish I had retained some of the lore of Rivellon from the early game about Lucien, Damian, and Alexandar. It might better inform the inspiration of the piece.
Same day, 5.26pm
I finally scratched down the melody of the entire piece. I don't know why I didn't do this earlier, but for some reason I thought I had to go four measures at a time, plotting out melody and chords all at once. This made the idea of skipping ahead to the parts I liked much more almost impossible since I didn't know where on the piece that was. This is because music is, of course, time, and notation of time is always up to interpretation.
4.18.2026, 5.57pm
I finally heard the piece in the game. Upon entering Arx we were standing under the portico and while I was talking to the spirit of Sir Lora against a backdrop of dead Magisters, the song began to play. Alexandar was killed back in the Nameless Isle, but I hope I'll get to learn more about Lucian in the Church's seat of power. It's beautiful.
4.24.2026, 12.37pm
I realized while playing last night that I should probably focus more on using the instrumental version of this piece as my "master copy", since its orchestral nature is closer to what I'm looking for than the folksy-ness of the version with the lyrics. Thus, as I ran across Arx, I listened for a few flourishes I could add to the piece to get me started. I decided to make use of the altos and split them into two for the close harmonies I'm going for.
It's starting to sound pretty interesting. I think the challenge I'm going to come up against in the future is maintaining some thread of consistency so it doesn't feel like every phrase of the verses sound completely different from one another. That's not what I'm going for. It's time to get fancy.
Same day, 9.20pm
Things have taken a turn. Apparently when you make a deal with a demon, he comes to collect. I'm at a crossroads in this game where I decide I'm okay with one of two shitty endings, or I backtrack to a save from six days ago to make a different decision. Not finishing the game is not an option. If my experience of this game is too soured by my stupid, STUPID choices, what does that mean for this arrangement, which is already beginning to exhaust me?
…
It is appropriate how "Divine's Lament" plays in the game as I delete my saves. Like so often when playing this game, I will wait for a few months until I forget how much time I've lost to start again.