Make You Feel My Love (arr. Carol Canning): SSAA Choral Octavo

Carol Canning has crafted an arrangement that honors the song's intimacy while giving each voice line something musical to do. The SSAA voicing works beautifully in a modern choral setting without demanding the range or power struggles that sometimes come with pop arrangements. Your singers will recognize this song immediately, which means you can spend rehearsal time on blend and expression rather than learning the tune.

Tender and confessional. The song creates an intimate moment where the choir sings directly to the listener, offering devotion without drama. Even in four parts, the arrangement maintains the vulnerability that makes the original so affecting.

Directors seeking contemporary material that resonates with students without sacrificing musicality. This arrangement works for choirs at the intermediate to advanced high school level and beyond, including community and college groups who want to program something current.

• Honor the restraint in this arrangement. The beauty lives in the space between notes, not in oversinging. Have sopranos resist the urge to belt the melody and instead focus on sustaining tone quality through longer phrases.
• Balance the alto lines carefully since they provide crucial harmonic support. These aren't background parts; they're essential to the arrangement's texture. Make sure altos hear themselves in relation to the sopranos without blending into anonymity.
• Shape the phrases as if you're speaking the lyrics naturally. Adele's phrasing feels conversational, so work against the instinct to hit every downbeat with equal weight. Let the melody breathe.

This sits comfortably in a spring or winter concert that mixes traditional and contemporary repertoire. The seven pages read quickly in rehearsal, making it ideal for filling out a program when you need something modern that won't derail your preparation for longer works. It also pairs well with other accessible pop arrangements if you're building a thematic set.

• Sustaining pure vowels over longer phrase lines
• Reading four-part SSAA voicing and tracking individual lines
• Controlling dynamics in softer, more intimate music
• Phrase shaping based on textual meaning rather than notation