A few years ago, I was looking for material on Musescore to use with a Rock For Strings class. I stumbled on a string quartet version of “Killer Queen” and saved it to my hard drive. And it sat dormant for many years as it simply wasn’t used that much.

Fast forward a few years later; now the group is doing a semester-long study of Queen that ends with a Queen tribute show. No surprise that this was inspired by the movie Bohemian Rhapsody. However, this was an opportunity…finally, the youngsters saw the light; Queen was cool AF. I mean, it was still dad rock, but this dad rock was now actually cool to play. Game on…time to do 5 months of nothing but Queen on Wednesday nights. \m/

Enter the string quartet cover of “Killer Queen” originally posted (but left incomplete) by another arranger on Musescore. I searched Musescore to find that person to give them credit. I’ve had no luck, and they did not give their name in the music. (If you are that person, please let me know so I can credit you for your work). The original arrangement ended after 60 bars when I first looked at it. This isn’t unusual to find on Musescore; many people post incomplete scores so people can offer feedback.

I finished up the arrangement in a way that it would land closer to the original recording. This arrangement is in 4/4, and the original Killer Queen is in 12/8, which admittedly takes some of the fear out of playing it for younger players. It should be swung for it to feel right, and that will help it land closer to the original song.

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