Here’s a pdf of the choral arrangement I wrote for the new song “Some Nights” by Fun. You can have it for free. I didn’t choose the song for the lyrics, I chose it because of the harmony. I hope someone’s choir out there will perform it. Here’s an mp3 of the arrangement using midi sounds. Please note that in part of the song there is spoken word, and obviously the computer can’t emulate that. Secondly, the drumming is just a suggestion. I’m a singer, so I kept the drumming simple.
Here’s one with me singing
(By the way, I heard this song for the first time on Friday night, and it took me 12 hours to arrange this weekend, mostly because I was being finicky about the rhythm)
Here’s the original song. There is one swear word in the song, and I changed it in my arrangement.
Alison's Music Blog 
Heya Alison! You seem like a really talented and fun teacher, I bet your kids love you! Keep up the great work 🙂
Thanks! I think they do 🙂 I’m going to miss them when I leave for Auckland in a couple of weeks!
Oh nice! So is school already finished for the year?
Almost finished. My school follows the northern hemisphere school year.
Thank you for this cool arrangement. I heard it and fell in love with the choral sound. I am going to try it with my choir tomorrow! You sound like you are an incredible teacher and I know that you must inspire your students all the time.
Thanks Mark! When they’ve learnt it I’d love to hear your choir perform it! I can only hope that I inspire my students, it’s up to them to make the decision to use what I teach.
Hi Alison – Great arrangement. Would you be willing to share the Sibelius/Finale file? I’m a middle school choral teacher and I would love fit this arrangement for MS voices.
And thanks again for your passion!! ~dk
Hi Alison, this is a great arrangement!! As Dan asked, would you be willing to share the Finale file? I’m a Secondary School teacher in Canada and would love to fit this arrangement for my 200 voice choir!
Sorry Brooke, it’s PDF only.
This is fabulous! I hope you don’t mind if I do, but I’m starting a student-run (I’m in eleventh grade) a cappella group and I’d love to be able to use the arrangement for performance. Would that be alright by you?
No problem. That’s why I shared it 🙂 Stay tuned to my blog I’ll probably post some more arrangements over June and July while I’m on holiday.
Hey Alison, loved the arrangement and also hoped to use it. I have wanted to arrange this for awhile but sadly don’t have your skill, so thanks a lot! My acapella group will cite you!
Any chance you could post a link to the MIDI file? I’m working on an arrangement for the all-male group I’m in and would love to see what you did.
Sorry Ethan, my computer’s being reimaged and I don’t have a copy of the midi file at the moment. It may be a while before I’ll be able to put one up.
Thank you so much for this. You sound like a fantastic teacher and this will be really helpful as I’m going to have this as a suggestion for my school’s Chamber Choir to sing (we’re planning next year’s concert already!). I’ll be suer to leave a link to the video if we do end up singing it.
Thanks again!
I look forward to hearing it!
I’m currently working on an a cappella arrangement of this song, and just found yours! I’ll be using it as a reference to help me with mine.
No problem. It seems to be the song of the moment! I can’t believe how many people come to my blog just to get their hands on my arrangement 🙂
I am 55 and have sung in choirs all my life. In many years, I sang with choirs with lofty names like Huntsville Master Chorale. I have been listening to Fun for a few weeks. I was having my second listen of the day, for Some Nights(album). Just as I was listening to the song, I thought how great it would be to find an arrangement and hopefully sing this, someday. A quick google brought me to your generous offering. I look forward to having at it, tonight.
Thank you!! I am hoping to use parts of this with my Blues Brothers – a 7th and 8th grade boys group!! Happy arranging 🙂
This song is about the civil war not the war in iraq.But i love the song though.Espically at the end when he says the word Lies.
I’m curious to know where you read that Anthony. I was guessing about the Iraq/ Afghanistan connection based on the lyrics. I suppose the lyrics could be applied to any soldier feeling doubt about their commitment to a cause.
Alison, I have a question for you.
Shoot.
Thank you! You just saved me a TON of time. Your arrangement sounds so true. I’ll be back to hear what else you’ve done. Thank you! My singers thank you.
Hey Sheila, You’re welcome. Thanks for taking the time to leave a comment! My process involved listening to the track a couple of times to work out how many bars/ measures there were in total and then going through and dividing my score up into distinct sections. I then had to figure out the rhythm of the words, followed by the pitch and then used my best guess to work out the chords that cemented the harmony. It’s not perfect, but it was as close as I could get over a weekend. It was a really good exercise for me as a singer/musician. Want to do another one soon, once I get settled in my new job.
This is so perfect! I’m working on an a capella version of this for my a capella group Saving Sympathy, and your arrangement is a great reference. I was lost trying to find the harmonies, and this is going to help a lot. Thanks for sharing (:
Alison! You now have a fan! Thank you so much for this free arrangement! I am a choir teacher in Idaho who is going to use your music! You just made my day. 🙂
Cool. Glad I could make your day! 295 people have now downloaded my pdf, but you’re one of the few who took the time to say thank you 🙂 If you do end up recording your choir and putting it on youtube I’d love to be sent the video!
Just thought I’d say THANKYOU so much for your amazing arrangement! A group of four girls from our school are singing your arrangement for our school music festival- it sounds absolutely fantastic!
I was listening to this song the other day, it’s one of my favourite songs at the moment, and I thought it would be great if we could do it in my choir. We’re a kind of youth choir with only 13 members and we do all kinds of different things. I found your arrangement and just want to thank you for sharing your talent so generously. So just a huge thanks! 🙂
You’re welcome! Thanks for stopping by!
Really great arrangement! I’ve been thinking about trying this song with my choir and thought I’d see if any existing choral versions exist before spending days arranging it myself. I’m so glad I stumbled upon your blog! Thank you so much for posting this!
Awww, shucks. No problem. Stop by any time!
Oh this is such an amaze-balls arrangement! This song tears me up for some reason, cause the melody and rhythm is mindblowing. Planning to do a cover with my cousin for my youtube channel, and I just wanted to say thank you for putting this up! I’m just quickly putting this into Sibelius myself so I can hear each individual part haha. If you’ve sorted your computer out already (as I read before) could you please put up a midi file here?
Hey Alison! When I first found your blog and saw that you had an arrangement for Some Nights by Fun, and that it was even free, I couldn’t believe it! I’ve been looking for a good choral arrangement for my small choral group. I have really high expectations! Thank you so much!!! We’ll be sure to videotape/record it if we do it.
Very excited to have found this just now. Thanks so much for the free arrangement! I knew I wanted to try this with one of my choral groups the moment I heard it on the radio! Nice work 🙂
Thank you for sharing this great resource! It’s most appreciated 🙂 I’m sure my school acappella choir will love performing this.
So, I would first like to thank you for this arrangement, I have been looking for one since the beginning of my school year for the two select ensembles in my school, men’s ensemble and women’s ensemble, to do, and this one looks great. Second, I really would like to know if you would like a copy of the recording when we are done learning and performing it, kinda as recompense.
Yes please!
Hey, thanks for this great arrangement! My group would really love to perform this rendition, but we’d be interested in doing it with a soloist. Did you ever keep a version of it with a male soloist staying consistent throughout the piece? As it is now, I’d have to try bringing one of the soprano parts down and having the tenors sing that instead.
If you have time to shoot me an email, I would really appreciate it!
Thanks so much!
Jonathan
Hi Jonathon,
You may rearrange the piece however you see fit. Looking back on the arrangement now, there’ a whole bunch of things I’d change just to contrast it more to the original.
Have fun with it!
Alison.
Alison, I am truly blown away with such a great version you’ve made! This coming May, my high school varsity choir is performing a pops concert and I’m looking for a piece to arrange (or find) for them. There are a few parts that I would like to edit to best fit my choir, so I was wondering if you could email me/upload the .midi (or .xml preferably) file to this if it is still in existence, please! It would save me time rather than me arranging it from scratch with my cluttered school schedule. I hope to hear from you soon, thank you!
Sorry Brian, I haven’t been able to find it… the joy of moving country… All the best with your own arrangement!
Thanks for trying, I shall make it work regardless!
Hey Alison! This is great! I’d love to use this as the basis of my TTBB+soloist arrangement with my group if that’s fine with you (:
Would definitely shoot you a recording when we have recording done!
No problem!
Omg. I LOVE this song and wanted to do it with some friends. I found your arangement, and like almost died of amazement.
could i use your arrangment? could i get a copy of it to use for my acapella group? wed really like to use an arrangment and make it our own!
woops just saw the link! thanks so much for letting this be free!!
Awesome arrangement, I am in an all-male ACapella group and was wondering if it would be alright to modify some to meet the male voice?
Go for it. I’d love to see how you change it, I’ve never actually tried teaching it to a group so it’s possible that I’d modify it myself once I see how singers handle it.
i wanted to say thank you so much!!! My Encore Show choir will be performing it for our Teacher Talent show, because its run by choir. Our director is going to sing melody why we sing the other parts! She was so happy when i handed her this arrangement! Ill try and post a video of us performing it!!!
Glad I could make someone’s day!
Love this so much! My kids have been begging for this piece, but the budget does not have much wiggle room for pop tunes that the higher ups see as obsolete after a couple of years. Do you think you could possibly shoot me a reduction for piano? My accompanist would sleep a little better these next few weeks. Ha.
Sorry Trevor I don’t have a piano reduction. You could always use the melody line and write the chords above that so that it would work as a lead sheet.
Sounds great. That won’t take long. Thanks again!
hi alison, ive been trying all night to find a version of this with no vocals so my daughter and her friend can sing it as a pair for a music exam. your backing version is brilliant and allows both girls to add various pieces throughout the song. the only problem i have is can i copy your choir version to cd and let them use it as a backing track? ive tried lots of ways but cant copy/paste the link etc.
the other option is to take the pc to school and run it but the sound quality wouldnt do your version any justice. however a great big thanks for this x.
I’ll see what I can do…
hi alison thanks for the reply. my friend suggested one way could be for you to attach it to an email to me, as its not to big a file. i hope this helps x.
This arrangement is so fantastic! I am a senior in High School and my choir teacher has given me and a few friends the chance to sing together at our next concert. This is the song we chose and this is the only arrangement I have found that isn’t unison.
This arrangement is really well done! Can you please tell me which voice is not really important? because i needed an arrangement for 4 voices! Thanks
Hi Alison – Great arrangement. Would you be willing to share the midi file? I’m a middle school choral teacher in Rio de Janeiro Brasil and I would love fit this arrangement for kids. Thanks
Please see my previous comments about providing midi.
Great Arrangement! I have a question. Could you possibly send me the MIDI file so i could change the key in sibelius? Thanks!
Please see my previous comments about providing midi.
Reblogged this on ironicsarcasm.
I’m sorry but I’m a bit confused. The original song is written in C major. You arranged it in E major, but the first chord is G major?
The first chord is B major, you can tell by the notes B D# and F#. THe key is actually B major and I mistakenly wrote it in E major (you’ll notice the A#’s throughout). If the original is in C major my ear must be out by a semitone, that or my version of Sibelius, no harm in changing it to that key. Not that I have the time to do that sort of thing.
Okay, thanks that makes a lot more sense! I saw the B and D and just assumed it was a G. So now I see it’s a B chord, and written in B. Everything makes sense now. Thanks! Haha.
Wow, thank you, this is really great! I have been looking around to find some music for this song (with harmonies) and here it finally is! I want to use this with a group of friends for a talent show. By the way, I really love your voice! 🙂 I was really surprised when you said I could have it for free after working on it for 12 hours, wow! Thank you SOOO much! 😀
Let’s just say it was a labour of love. I suppose it’s like when you get to the final level of a computer game that you’ve een playing forever, you want someone to witness you beating the big boss!
HI!!!!!!!!!!! I’m 13 and the honors choir group at my school has been BEGGING our choir director, Mr.Worthington, to let us sing Some Nights, but he kept telling us he couldn’t find an arrangement. I found this, printed it out, and brought it to him. He loved it, and was surprised you weren’t selling it!! So long story short, he’s working on this with us for our winter concert!!!!! thank you sooo much!!!!!!!!!!!
I hope you have a great time performing it! If one of your teachers or parents films the concert and posts it to youtube I’d love to see you all perform it — I still haven’t got my own choir to learn it!
Its children’s day today and i just got my gift……..this is amazing!!!
Thank you for your generosity in posting this arrangement for free. Don’t find that too often. I’m going to try it with some 10 to 12 year olds – will see how they do. Thanks again!
Bobbi
Thanks so much for this! My students (and I) love this song and they will try your arrangement for their vocal ensemble next year. Your version came up when I googled the song and it was a crazy fluke because we went to QUT together 🙂 Thanks again.
Awesome! Another big thank you from another music teacher here. I teach at an all girls school. Any chance you have an SSA or SSAA etc arrangement of this song, or other all girl arrangements?
Regardless, much obliged,
Phil
Sorry don’t have SSA or SSAA, that’s a good thought though.
This was amazing!!
You’re too kind. A little bit of piano practice, theory skills, and being able to sing in harmony developed over several years is all it took.
Hello Alison,
I see you don’t have a MIDI file; I assume that means you don’t have the Sib file either?
Laurence
Thank you so much for the arrangment! This will work perfectly for my drama club’s spring cabaret. The kids are going to be so excited to get this piece in their scripts! 🙂
Is there anyway I could see your arrangements score, it would be amazing to use with my schools choir.
Click on the hyperlink labelled ‘pdf’- that’s it.
Hey, is there anyway of getting hold of your arrangement, its amazing I’d love to use it?
Click on the hyperlink labelled ‘pdf’- that’s it.
Hi! I’m Mattia of Note Innate (gospel choir) from Italy. Thank you for uploading you work for free!! It is really precious! Could you send me some sort of midi file of the single voices, please? it would be really useful! Thanks!
can I use this for my new start up choir in dublin ireland??
do you have other arrangements of other music I could use? We’ll send you recordings! We have our first rehearsal on Wed night and we’re very excited!!!
That’s pretty much it other than Fix You. More to come, probably.
OOHh can we use Fix You??
You’re a genius!
HI Alison, I’m not surprised at the response you’ve received. It is a great song and a terrific arrangement. One of my choir members brought it to my attention and we will definitely be adding this to our repertoire. Do you mind if I do some re-voicing and put it back in the original key? My Tenor section is all womens voices so kicking it back up the semi will help us. When Voice Weavers has a recording of this I will send it through to you.
Go for it.
Hi Alison and all readers! I mentioned this a couple months ago, but I’m hoping someone has a simple arrangement for SSA that 7th grade girls could tackle! Anyone?
Do you have sheet music of this song?
Click on the link labelled ‘pdf’. There’s your sheet music.
THank you so much. I just propose to my University chorus to sing this awesome song and the director ask me to try to find the sheets and then you popped up in my research and its great. If we sing it, I’ll try to show u with a recording voice or something how it turned out. Thanks so much, honestly.
Hey Alison, I just wanted to let you know that I credited you for my use of your arrangement in one of my YouTube videos. You can check it out here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NG-4mjTMAlk&feature=youtu.be. I actually changed a few chords for one part and cut out a large part of the song. Thank you!
Nice job! First person to do it!
Hi Alison,
I heard this song on the radio last year and its under my skin. I direct a 35 piece womens barbershop chorus and would love to try your arrangement with them to give them a go at a great nonbarbershop piece. Your arrangement would suit us perfectly. Most of the women dont read music so I would have to provide vocal learning tracks. Are you interested in us doing your arrangement? It would not be for a couple of months.
Cathy
Anyone who wants to do the arrangement, may. Just click on the hyperlink in the article marked ‘pdf’ and it should automatically download. Alison.
Hi Alison, I’d be absolutely glad if you could send me the score of your arrangement. I conduct a schoolchoir here in Germany and the guys would like to sing this song. It would be awesome, if you could send me the score!
Cheers,
Elisabeth
Hi Elisabeth, Please click on the hyperlink in the article labelled ‘pdf’. The music will automatically download. Freundliche gruesse, Alison.
Alison, you just get a fan in Brazil, great arrangement! I’ll show this to my maestro as a suggestion to our choir! Nice work, congratulations!
Hello Alison,
I really love your arrangement and I hope I’ll get the chance to sing it with my choir.. lets see what they think 😉
but I do have question – I just realized you left a few lines out and I was wondering why. I mean the lines “The other night you wouldn’t believe the dream I just had about you and me
I called you up but we’d both agree”.
But even though the lines are left – it’s still amazing and I just wanted to thank you for sharing!
Greets.
Those lines weren’t in the mp3 I based the arrangement on. Oftentimes multiple versions of a song are released and the lyrics sometimes change.
Hi Alison. I like your arrangement of Some Nights and have downloaded the PDF to try it with my high school choir. I usually make recordings of individual parts for the students to learn. I can do this from your score, but in case you have separate parts (SSATB) avail to lend, that would be amazing and kind of you to send them. All the best, Murray Smith (smith.murray@sympatico.ca)
OMG!! Alison I think I just fell in love with you!!! I’m in a choir and I have a chamber music group with some friends and we just loved to sung this song, but we couldn’t find a score and thanks to you now we have it!! Thank you very much for this arrangement (I’m sorry if my english is terrible, I’m spanish and I’m not very used to write in english)
Hey Alison, this arrangement is amazing! I’m a senior in high school and Vice President of my small choral ensemble, and would love to perform this with them at my school’s variety show! Would that be alright? I could find someone to film our audition and/or performance for you as well so you can hear it! It’s an amazing peace!
Go for it!
I’ve had a look at your pdf, and it looks great. Would I be able to get a Sibelius type version so I could work with my small choral group at school? The tenor line is just a bit high for my group, and it would require a very little tweak to make my group sound amazing with your piece. An email copy will be fine. kelvincummings@xtra.co.nz. Cheers.
From France to the other side of the world. Thanks a lot fo this! I’m a biology teacher, but I’ve a students’ choir too and they just ask me for this song! I’m going to try it next week, but with less voices. they are only 10, and only 3 boys. Whatever, such a good experience!
Alison,
Thanks for charing this. I am going to try to convince my choir-members to try the song. We are just a bunch of friends who like to sing, but from time to time we have a big concert, and I would like this song to be among out song-list next time.
this truly is amazing and just what i have been looking for, i have been been trying to arrange this song for an all girls choir for quite some time and just dont have the talent to do a song like this, thank you so much, i will be telling everyone about you, xx
Did it work for an all girls choir? I am trying to do the same this fall?
Thank you so much for sharing this! Some people from our school choir want to sing this song for our music teacher. She lost her son some weeks ago and since then, we had to lead the rehearsals. And now we want to show her that she doesn’t have to worry about the choir.
(Hopefully we can manage this because we are only 6 people^^’)
Greetings from Germany
Thank you so much for providing this arrangement! I have a small hs choir. With a few modifications, and your permission we are planning to do it at our spring concert. Happy music making!
Thank you for arranging in this fantastic way and providing it that way! My class (26 pupils) already performed it on our schools concert in vienna, now we´re planning to perform the song as a sort of “flashmob” at viennas “Stephansplatz” and perhaps in the viennas “Westbahnhof” hall, too. Counting more than 70 singers, it could be a great experience for everyone, singers and audiencers.. 🙂 Perhaps i can send you some video-impressions from the performance, when it´s done! …and if it has worked then.. 😉 Thanx! 🙂
WOW !!! You have so much skill. I think this would be absolutely useful for a student music thing that we’re doing at school. Is there any chance you could make a file where all the different voices are on an individual score? I understand if that’s too much to do, you’ve already put so much effort into this. If you could, that would be so so very much appreciated. You really do have incredible talent though, all other things aside 🙂 🙂 🙂
Hi Allison – I’ve been trying for a long time to find a good arrangement of this that adheres to the original chord structure, and this is the first I’ve found. One suggestion – it would make a little more sense to change the key to B Major (that would put the A-sharps in the key signature, rather than leaving them as accidentals, since you’ve transposed it to B Maj anyway and they’re not really accidentals).
Sounds awesome! I have started up a choir during the summer for my cadets aged 12-18, and this is the 2nd summer for them. This would be right down their alley! fun, upbeat, and uplifting! I just might use this 🙂 Thanks again, keep up the arrangements!! I have one that I did up of Good Life by One Republic that is very similar to this.
Thanks alison for this great start on my journey for a choral arrangement of this piece. Hope your move was successful. Did anyone ever send you a copy of their choir singing it? Would love to hear it with harmonies. Thanks. Deb
And now from Denmark across the globe: Thank you Alison for this great arrangement! I am a choir leader in my country, and my 35 funky boys and girls of all ages have expressed a great desire to sing this song – however, I would probably never find the time or the talent to make an arrangement like this myself. But now we have yours – that´s almost too good to be true. I ´ll be looking forward to a great season singing “Some nights I stay up cashin´ in my bad luck” … Thank you so much. – By the way: How about exchanging arrangements?
This is AMAZING! I can’t believe you spent so much time on this just for other people to enjoy it you wonderful person 😀
As said before, a wonderful arrangement! Thank you for this! Here are youtube links, as we performed the song as Flashmob in Viennas Westbahnhof and Viennas mainsquare, the Stephansplatz in
It was great fun to perform this song for all of us! 🙂
Could you post the lyrics, I am trying out for show choir with this song and I would like to have them in choral arrangement.
Any chance of an SSA version. I am desperate for one.
Sorry Arron, with a new baby in the house, things are pretty crazy!
Alison I am part of an Army Spouses Choir and we have been looking to do this song! I hope that our director will approve of this arrangement. What I do like about it is that it has all parts, we only have me and one other guy in our choir and don’t really find music that has all parts only mainly SSA. You did an great job with the arrangement and thank you for making it
Hi Alison. Would you be so kind to foward the arrangement for me. My email address is denvers@namakwa-dm.gov.za. Thanks in advance!
click on the underlined word pdf in the article and it will download.