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The worlds of marching bands and pop music collided when Taylor Swift saw—and liked—an of the Marching 110 performing a tribute to one of her newest songs.

The song was “The Fate of Ophelia” from Swift’s album “The Life of a Showgirl.” The band performed the piece at the November 4 OHIO v. Miami football game and the video quickly gained traction. Swift's thumbs-up generated a wave of enthusiasm on the post itself and across the OHIO community.

All this excitement had us wondering about the process behind arranging, rehearsing and performing a newly-released song.

We spoke to Jackson Crook, a graduate student studying conducting who arranged the song for the 110, and Greta Grass, a junior 110 mellophone player majoring in chemistry pre-medicine. They took us through the experience of bringing "The Fate of Ophelia" from the album to Peden Stadium.

The turnaround time between the album’s release and the band’s performance was only about four weeks. Crook says the process for arranging is complicated and explains that each instrument has a specific range it’s capable of playing. He starts by matching those ranges to the melody and harmony of the song. 

“The high instruments, like the clarinet, flute, and trumpet, play the melody," Crook says. "The low instruments, like trombone, euphonium, tenor saxophone and tuba, play the bass and harmony.”

An arranger must consider many factors when converting a pop song into a piece that can be played by a marching band. 

“The most important thing to consider is keeping the musical integrity of the original song,” Crook says. “Although the marching band doesn’t sing lyrics, they can still play the melody and harmony. I use the range of notes each instrument can play to fill in all the notes that are in the original song.”

Through careful consideration of each instrument’s abilities, he arranges the song accordingly for each section.

Crook also explains other factors that affect how a piece is arranged, like the duration of the arrangement, how many performers are in each section, and the keys in the song. The song’s key is an important factor, encompassing its central note and scale (major or minor). 

“The key of the arrangement must be considered because there is a limited selection of keys that are preferred by marching band instruments to ease in memorizing music, and a lot of the time songs are in keys that don’t work well and need to be transposed to fit the keys that are good for marching band," Crook explains. 

While this can potentially be a headache for arrangers when working with music for radio, Crook explains that “‘The Fate of Ophelia’ is in a fantastic key for marching band, so nothing needed to be adjusted in that regard.”

While each section has different strengths and there are many aspects to consider in this work, Crook emphasizes that “there is a lot of wiggle room for creativity to make the song sound great, as if it were made for marching band.” 

Beyond the arranging of the music itself, the 110’s process for learning the drill (how the performers move around on the field) and coordinating the music is another meticulous feat. Grass, the junior mellophone player, explains the condensed timeline that takes the band from practice to halftime-ready. 

“We learned the drill in about a day and had a week to rehearse it and put it on the field with music,” she says.  

This is the case for most of the band’s performances, as they typically learn a new show for every home game they perform. The speed at which the ensemble can turn out performances ready to be viewed by the world (and a certain ) is truly impressive. 

This also wasn’t the first time the band has performed a song from pop culture. The 110 is well-versed in taking songs that just hit the radio and performing them live for audiences to enjoy. “” from “Wicked,” “Soda Pop” from “KPop Demon Hunters,” and “Tears” by Sabrina Carpenter are all pieces the band has quickly turned into memorable performances. But “The Fate of Ophelia” was unprecedented in one way.

“This is the first Taylor Swift song the band has ever performed, so it was a new experience for everyone to be playing her music.” Crook says. “Swiftie or not, it seemed like it was a hit!” 

The excitement about the piece only grew when Swift herself reacted.

Much chatter ensued among the community of performers when Swift’s reaction acknowledged their hard work. 

“Everyone was pretty excited,” Grass says. “Even the non-Swifties were kind of losing their minds about it.” 

Grass said she found out about Swift's "like" via social media. 

“We were all freaking out a little bit,” she says. “I didn’t know about it right away, but then somebody posted about it in our Facebook group and that’s when it really started to blow up and everyone in the band was talking about it.” 

Crook was thrilled about the feedback as well. 

“I had never used TikTok but decided to create an account so I could see [the reactions to the video] first-hand. Of course, it didn’t take long to find, and I saw it. The clip had blown up.” 

He says he spent a day reading “every single comment” on the post.

“I was on cloud nine! It was amazing to see music that I had arranged being loved by so many. Truly the highlight of the week.”