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Some different selections than the YesYears one from a decade or more back. And You And I & Starship Trooper appear for the first time. Every lick... Some nice 80s tunes appear for the first time too.
How accurate are the transcriptions?
Quite.
I'll have to look for that one, then. I managed to figure out some of Starship Trooper and And You And I, but there's large sections of both songs (and a bunch of others), that remain a mystery to me.
That's not tablature, by any chance, is it?
Music isn't about chops, or even about talent - it's about sound and the way that sound communicates to people. Mike Keneally
It's tablature and notes both.
Hmm...very interesting....
Thanks, Sean!
Music isn't about chops, or even about talent - it's about sound and the way that sound communicates to people. Mike Keneally
Wow.Originally Posted by Gorillclub
/looks at his dusty collection of tab books with a scornful eye...
I'm holding out for the Wilson-mixed 5.1 super-duper walletbuster special anniversary extra adjectives edition.
I'd rather buy the book than pay 5.99 a pop for those. Though that's a cool idea.
I think this is cool because you finally get a look at those Leslie-d licks in AYAI that were always hard to make out in the mix.
...ha....I still have a 1970's publication of a Fragile/TYA songbook arranged for piano. For a guitarist, learning anything from THAT book was a lesson in frustration. Also have a '70's Deep Purple Machine Head/Fireball book...same thing...arranged for piano and not worth the paper they were printed on.
I've got a piano/guitar/vocal arrangement book for the "edited highlights" CD that was put out at the same time as 20 Years Of Jethro Tull. None of the unreleased songs are in it, and Thick As A Brick is just the first 3 and a half minutes or whatever, but I did at least give me the chords for stuff like One White Duck and Moths. I can read music just well enough to figure out the Aqualung riff from that book, too. The gave you enough information that you could work up your own arrangement that may not be true to the original, but at least you could make the song recognizable someone who maybe knew the record.
I've also got a Pink Floyd tab book that, leaves out all the guitar solos. They leave all the instrumental stuff in Echoes, basically just notating the vocal sections. I think at least one of the songs was in the wrong key, I know the Set The Controls... riff wasn't quite accurate, and the thing I thought was hilarious was that they notated the intro to the Ummagumma version of Astronomy Domine, identifying it as "synth arranged for guitar" (uh, that's not a synth).
Yup, I've got two PF books that cover the Syd era and there are songs in completely different keys in them.
But whoever thought it would be great creating transcriptions for bands like Yes that have their songs stripped of all the instrumental parts and anything not featuring vocals should be water-boarded. I'm sure they lured some grad student from Berklee or somewhere and just threw albums at them and said "We need these transcribed by Wednesday!"
That said, I do have a few ELP books that are awesome. But the crazy thing with those is that the KE music is fully transcribed and detailed while the Greg Lake songs make no sense whatsoever.
I'm holding out for the Wilson-mixed 5.1 super-duper walletbuster special anniversary extra adjectives edition.
I was going to suggest that. You're limited to The Yes Album, Fragile and Close to The Edge. It is very helpful though, you can slow it down 50% and not lose pitch and loop it too. It has helped me a lot. Highly recommend it.
I have a few ELP sheet music books. One is called Antholgy, it's from the early 80's.
Fugue from Endless Enigma
Great Gates of Kiev
Love Beach (!!!)
Lucky Man
Memoirs of an Officer and a Gentleman
Pirates
Still...
The problem is that they are what I call "piano reductions", even most of the stuff with no 6-string guitar is simplified. Lucky Man and Still... are pretty worthless as they don't transcribe the guitar parts at all. Both those and From The Beginning have shown up in guitar tab magazines over the years, I have all 3 and they're very accurate (love playing the guitar solo from From the Beginning).
ELP also released a Tarkus songbook, it was supposed to be the first of a series of the albums up to and including Love Beach, but that never happened. Again, it's fairly accurate but it doesn't have any of the solos or bass lines and at points is close to a "let's take the vocal line and build the keyboard part out of that instead of what the actual part is" piano reduction. I'm at work and don't have them at hand, but back in the late 80's I sent a check to an address in Santa Monica as payment for some transcriptions of KE9 done by a guy whose name I can't recall. They're very well done but have some odd touches like having a bunch of key changes in the guitar solo section at the end of First Impression Part One which are unnecessary because it's all in Ab anyway (I think it was done to avoid having a lot of accidentals). They're very accurate and I used to be able to play the bass and guitar parts for the whole suite. Now, not so much!BTW, I finally cancelled that check after a year, it never got cashed, I think Keith could have used the money at that point!
I have a Yes book with all of TFTO and some other pieces, but again, none of the instrumental bits are included and the transcriptions are very simplified. The Relayer songbook is really frustrating, it's one step above chord charts.
Here's a great collection of Gentle Giant tabs, major respect for the people that took on the job of transcribing them. One of these days I'll be able to play the bass part for Way of Life at the proper tempo.
http://www.blazemonger.com/GG/Sheet_music
...or you could love
You have to pick and choose carefully, most come up short for anything but chords (often those can be questionable as well). Having the vocal line written out when a guitar part is there as well and not showing it is lazy and insulting, but common.
Last edited by Sean; 11-17-2014 at 08:14 PM.
I have a "Close to The Edge" song book in which all the songs are transcribed 1/2 step lower than the recording. So "And You and I" is in Db, for example, which is just weird. The transcriber was obviously using faulty equipment, and also was not familiar with the standards of guitar-based rock music.
The best sheet music book I own is the apparently now quite-collectible Mahavishnu Orchestra book. These are actual musical scores, not tabs or “arranged for piano,” completely transcribed and annotated by John McLaughlin himself. For a classically-trained guitarist especially, this book is a godsend, and it’s a damn shame Yes doesn’t have something like this.
Confirmed Bachelors: the dramedy hit of 1883...
Or perhaps he assumed the band was tuned down a half step, which is a common practice amongst guitarists (so, ya know, the singer doesn't have to strain his voice so much).
Pat Metheny put out a book like that back around 2000, which had all of his recordings, fully transcribed in that fashion, I believe.
I have four different arrangements of "Astronomy Domine" published over the decades, two for piano, two for guitar. All are surprisingly different in what or how they transcribe something. It certainly was quite a common practice to change keys, leave out solos or instrumental sections and to create the instrumental part by duplicating the vocal line with some chord tones rather than trying to re-create the actual playing. I think the ideas is generally that anyone can pluck away on this with their Guitar/piano and create a noise that resembles the tune. Though for an "off the record" transcription, the Pink Floyd book mentioned by GuitarGeek is lacking.Yup, I've got two PF books that cover the Syd era and there are songs in completely different keys in them.
But whoever thought it would be great creating transcriptions for bands like Yes that have their songs stripped of all the instrumental parts and anything not featuring vocals should be water-boarded. I'm sure they lured some grad student from Berklee or somewhere and just threw albums at them and said "We need these transcribed by Wednesday!"
While I agree with you that the 70s Yes transcriptions are at times woefully inadequate, I still found the Yes Complete book (piano arrangements of all their album tracks from 1970 - 1980) useful when trying to appreciate the band's music and to generally learn more about it. But then I don't really play any instrument and I can't really to pick up harmonies or lines accurately by ear. Even mediocre sheet music has been more useful than nothing at all. Mind you, what really is criminal is doing a vocal-sections-only arrangement of "Firth of Fifth", completely omitting the famous piano/synth cadenza. Gabriel-era Genesis transcriptions were almost all poor. Well, "The Lamb Lies Down on Broadway" is ok, though it writes out the line "Rael the Imperial Aerosol kid" as "Real Imperial Aerosol kid"
Funnily enough, probably the best whole-album Yes arrangements are the last ones made, that is Union and Talk. At least there the piano parts generally try to emulate the band and there some are approximations of guitar or synthesizer solo lines added to the vocal staff during instrumental sections. There seem to have been a trend towards a more faithful arrangements in pop music at the time. The Word of Mouth book by Mike & The Mechanics (yes, I like the book and I like the music) advertised their attempts to do more justice to the music.
As for how and who transcribed the material (again, the transcriber was rarely credited before the late-80s), I'm always reminded of Dave Stewart's joke in his Keyboard column about having to do lead sheets for Virgin. "At least Tangerine Dream was easy to do" and then he presented a one-measure transcription which was basically "hold a middle E for twenty minutes and add synth effects".
If we're talking of the same book, it only includes the lead lines and chord symbols, while McLaughlin's actually transcribes all the instrumental parts (albeit simplified at times), not just the guitar. While I'm not the greatest fan of McLaughlin's music, I've found the book pretty impressive. Good full-score books of rock, let alone progressive rock bands are scarce enough. I've only come across anthologies of Kate Bush, Dream Theater and Queen, plus the Rock Score series, which includes Jethro Tull and Genesis.
There are Japanese Band Scores that are pretty good, including one for ITKOTCK that seems very accurate, an Early Genesis one that has Watcher, Firth One for the Vine, several YES, books include Fragile, one that has AYAI and SK and a few other songs, one for 90125 and Big Genrator, a UK songbook, Floyd, Rush, and ELP one. They all have accurate arrangements with the guitar, keys, bass parts.
I have the MO book. Excellently laid out and super props to whoever wrote out the drum parts !!!
Someone else mentioned the ELP books. I have the Trilogy book, from what I can remember, it is pretty decent.
The explanation I once heard was that traditionally, sheet music publishers would have to pay extra to publish the arrangement that was heard on the record. When I was in middle school, I was in the school concert band, and I remember the teacher saying that he didn't playing "modern" music (ie pop hits of the day) because the musicians tended to insist on playing the song the way they knew it from the radio, which they technically weren't allowed to do, because of the copyright issues. So you had to use the arrangement that was in the published sheet music, and then maybe you might add a few tweaks of your own (for instance, I remember the band teacher adding cymbal crashes to one of the songs).
Well, apart from the fact that I think you're misusing the word cadenza, you're also forgetting that such an arrangement would also exclude Hackett's brilliant guitar solo. I guess most guitarists could probably pick that solo out by ear, but some of us (me included) have difficult with figuring out melodic lines that way. That's why note-for-note transcriptions are a Godsend for a player like myself.
Funny, I always thought "Real Imperial Aerosol Kid" was what he was singing in that part of the song.Gabriel-era Genesis transcriptions were almost all poor. Well, "The Lamb Lies Down on Broadway" is ok, though it writes out the line "Rael the Imperial Aerosol kid" as "Real Imperial Aerosol kid"
Well, Tangerine Dream's music was a little more complex than that, but I do see his point. I wonder if he transcribed the sequencer bits (which did tend to vary as Chris Franke used to "play" the controls on the sequencer, changing which stages were being triggered, where the sequencer reset back to the first stage and so forth.As for how and who transcribed the material (again, the transcriber was rarely credited before the late-80s), I'm always reminded of Dave Stewart's joke in his Keyboard column about having to do lead sheets for Virgin. "At least Tangerine Dream was easy to do" and then he presented a one-measure transcription which was basically "hold a middle E for twenty minutes and add synth effects".
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