Sheet music - I never knew this

[Brian007]

Hi ALL,

It wasn't till I was looking on the internet the other day on how to pick all the different instrument's parts out of a song by ear that I found out that sheet music is not always written by the artist or performer of the song/instrumental piece themselves, but music publishing houses employ people to transcribe the song into sheet music i.e work out the chords and bass line etc so they can publish it ? Never knew that

All the best, Brian007

[Hugh-AR]

Brian,

I have known that for quite a while. I went to listen to a music teacher friend of mine play an organ at a pub .. and he never had any sheet music up in front of him the whole evening. Obviously he could read music fluently, and when I asked him why he never had the music up in front of him he told me just what you have said. The sheet music was an 'average' of what was played and put out for general consumption. It would never have those little riffs and counter melodies that you hear in the music. So he picked these up 'by ear' and put them into his playing as and where he could.

Hugh

[Brian007]

Hi Hugh,

And here was me thinking all this time that sheet music was the best way to get as near as the original as possible ? came across this the other day, its a piece of software which will isolate all the different instruments in audio recording and put them on seperate tracks ? below is a video of its capabilities ?



When the adverts appear, click the X in the top right hand corner of the rectangle to remove them.

All the best, Brian007

[Hugh-AR]

Brian,

When you play things I think you do pretty well with picking up 'by ear' all those little counter melodies in songs. And you were the first person who told me that you could put these into your music by 'multitracking'. I hadn't heard that word before. This is why I like listening to the music you post. You don't just use a 'standard' backing track but put into your music what you hear.

What I have discovered about a keyboard is that you can put some of these 'counter melodies' into MULTIPADS and they will trigger while you are playing 'live' so to speak. As in this one here. What would a song like The Story Of My Life sound like without having that whistle coming in?

Click the below to listen to the song played without the whistle .. and then with the whistle.

After listening, click the back-arrow at the top to get back to this page.
DEMO of 'whistle' in The Story Of My Life

Below is the sheet music for it. Although the whistle is not shown in the piano score, it is shown in the melody line at the top .. so probably not a very good example of what we are talking about.




Hugh

[Hugh-AR]

Brian,

Another example of picking out counter melodies 'by ear' and putting them into your music.

Below is the original True Love Ways by Buddy Holly.



In your version of this you have picked out the 'strings' counter melodies and included them in your recording.



Below is the sheet music for this. And again, it is showing the 'strings' counter melody, obviously considering it an essential part of the song. So it looks to me as if maybe we do get some of what we hear put into the sheet music.

[Brian007]

Hi Hugh,

This is the first time I have seen that in sheet music where the strings have been included in the sheet music unless of course if its a full score and that is mostly for classical and film scores

The beauty of the sixties music is that it is relatively simple in its structure and there was in the early sixties never a lot of different instruments in the piece so it is fairly easy to find out by ear what's what and re-create it for the tune your playing, but today's music is a lot more complicated in its structure and can use a lot more instruments in a piece. I have even heard recordings where the audio has been reversed such as drum and synths.

So I suppose that where a piece of software like in that youtube video above would be very handy for breaking down the tune into its basic parts and the re-creating them if you wanted to


All the best. Brian007

[Hugh-AR]

Another example of what one might find/not find in the sheet music. My wife and I went to see Oliver at the Theatre Royal in Bath, and although we thought we had booked seats that were five rows from the front, they had actually taken out the first four rows in order to have more space in the orchestra pit. Our knees were right up against the railings .. but one advantage of being so close was that we could see all the members of the orchestra quite clearly.

It was a fabulous production, and one song that really got me going was their arrangement of I'd do anything. Probably because I could see him as well as hear him, it was what the horn player was playing I thought went so well with the song. Obviously the sheet music the orchestra were using was written for each instrument, but when I got home I did look at some sheet music available for this song to see if that horn was written into the music anywhere.

The first one I came across was this one, which gave the melody and the chords for the song, but no clue as to what the horn player was doing.



Then there was this, which gave you a lot more notes .. but no chord symbols.





And still no clue as to what the horn player was doing.
So what was this fabulous 'part' the horn was playing that caught my imagination so?
Just as well I could hear and pick out the notes he was playing 'by ear' so I could put them in to my arrangement of this piece. This is what I ended up with. Listen carefully to the 'horn' part. Hope it grabs you as it did me.

Click the below to listen.

After listening, click the back-arrow top left to get back to this page.
I'd Do Anything (DEMO) from Oliver

The moral of this story? Don't always expect what you want to play to have everything you want to hear written into the sheet music. Be prepared to pick up bits and pieces 'by ear' and put them into your arrangement.

PS. In several places in this forum there are LINKS where you can listen to the music directly (as in the piece above). If you want to download the music from one of these LINKS, do a right-click on the LINK and choose Save link as... which will download the track into your Downloads folder (unless you have set your Browser up to ask you where you want it downloaded to).

[Brian007]

Hi Hugh,

That was a really nice version you played there, and I thoroughly enjoyed it, your right about trying to find out what each different instrument is playing and it can be very difficult to do, but then of course we always have the option of creating our own arrangement , and that's where the arranger keyboard really comes into its own.

All the best, Brian007