Aquiring rock band sheet music

[Rockitman]

I'm the kind of keyboard player who must have the sheet music in front of me to learn the song. I can't just pick it up on my own. With that said, there is a band who needs a keyboardist. They cover many of the 70's and 80's rock bands and I was wondering what is the best way to get my hands on the keyboard parts of the songs they play? Must I go to a music store and purchase this or are there resources here or elsewhere on the net to find what I need?

Lot's of Rush, Van Halen, Zep, etc.

Of course they're limited to the type of music they can play without the keyboardist, so hopefully, we can expand the repetoire a bit after I get settled in.

[Bartolomeo]

As a rule complete charts with all the notes played by the keyboard artist on the album are, regrettably, unavailable. There are some exceptions, like "The Billy Joel Keyboard Book."

 

You can get a fake book with chords and melody line. In most cases you can also get what I call the "Hal Leonard Arrangement," that is so commonly published by them - being a solo piano arrangement of moderate difficulty with, at best, a few of the riffs sketched out.

 

I've not seen complete charts for sale that are directly applicable to playing keys in a band, except in a few rare cases.

 

Bartolomeo.

[MIDIdiot]

I agree with Bartolomeo. It's very rare to find sheet music with the kb part broken out. Exception might be a solo, if you're lucky. Sure, you can get the chord changes but the other player(s)in your band may already have the changes. You would probably still have to "listen" to the record to decide what you want to play.

[Rockitman]

Thanks guys. That was what I was afraid of.

And yeah, when you do go to a music store and buy a band's music, it's usually in that Vocal/Piano/Chord style where it's basically the main melody that is documented.

 

yeah, guess I'll just have to listen to a song over and over and slowly try to pick up the part. Not an easy thing to do.

[Ben One]

I believe that some groups like Dream Theater do provide full scores of selected songs/albums which include the instrument-by-instrument arrangements, but this is very much the exception rather than the rule.

 

Another route is to find MIDI versions of the songs that the band wants to play, and then analyze them by using a MIDI notation or sequencing program such as Sonar or Noteworthy Composer. The programs can show you the instrument-by-instrument arrangements of the songs and you can see the keyboard parts (and even hear them in isolation). Note that, of course, the MIDI transcription may not be completely accurate (or even in the original key of the song) but they usually provide a lot of help.

 

And with many programs, you usually need to tinker a bit with the way the score is displayed, by making sure the notes are in the best possible staff (or else you'll get lots of confusing ledger lines), and in some cases, splitting up the part into treble and bass clefs (if the program lets you do that).

 

You can find legal MIDI transcriptions of popular songs by checking out some of the links at this Google directory site.

 

Good luck!

 

Ben

[daBowsa]

Or you can get a keyboard instructional book that teaches you a particular style of playing. This usually provides you with signature licks/riffs that can usually be a good starting point.

 

I have this book which helped me learn some cool stuff. It gives you a bio on about 8 famous keyboard players, a page of licks and then a tune. There's a CD that comes with it to help you get the feel right.

[Immo]

OK I realized my lenghty midi post mostly copies that of an earlier post. So I cut it down to be slightly less lengthy with some minor added details...

 

First problem:

The midi file is only as good as the person (people) who sequenced it. I got a midi file of roundabout to get Rick's organ solo. while the midi solo sounded cool, it wasn't right. Had to figure it out myself anyway.

 

Second problem:

Well this is less of a problem than it is a nuisance. You have to download some sequencer software, which you can get for free on download.com, but then you have to open the midi file with it and try and figure out which tracks are associated with which instruments. Then after you do that, it may be the case that real sheet music wouldn've written the notes out on two stalves, whereas you'll have to piece together multiple stalves that represent different keyboard instruments. Once again a nuisance, but not impossible.

 

Best of luck in your quest!

[marino]

Back in the days, I was lucky enough to find complete trascriptions, including drums and all instruments on separate staves, for groups like the Weather Report and Mahavishnu Orchestra. I must say that studying those 'scores' helped me improve a good deal. It seems that the Japanese kind of specialize in those transcriptions. I've seen japanese transcriptions of Emerson, Lake and Palmer, for example; plus, I've bought a lot of jazz books when I was in Tokyo. They tend to be horribly expensive, though. And yes, any explanation is usually in Japanese only.

[Rockitman]

Ok, I have a program called FL Studio on my PC. I've never used it and opening it up it is totally "Greek" to me. I opened a Midi file and and it came up with a warning that there is no Midi plugin found. It proceeds to play the file but I have no sound. Does anybody know what I need to do to take a Midi file and turn it into sheet music?

[Immo]

I've used a free piece of software called Quartz AudioMaster FreeWare 460E. Don't know if it's actually any good for anything else, but I could direct you how to get sheet music out of it (although it's confused me at times as well).

[coyote]

Yeah, but there's still a benefit: Often, even an imperfect midi file provides enough of a road map for you to get the rest of the way there on your own. And musicians ought be good enough listeners that they can make corrections in imperfect notation.

Originally posted by Immordino:

First problem:

The midi file is only as good as the person (people) who sequenced it. I got a midi file of roundabout to get Rick's organ solo. while the midi solo sounded cool, it wasn't right. Had to figure it out myself anyway.

[Immo]

Originally posted by coyote:

Yeah, but there's still a benefit: Often, even an imperfect midi file provides enough of a road map for you to get the rest of the way there on your own. And musicians ought be good enough listeners that they can make corrections in imperfect notation.

Good point. Even though it may have only been a few small parts, I did borrow some from the quite errant midi file.

[Canoehead]

A number of years ago one of the major music publishers, possibly Warner, released some books called "Rock Scores". These included transcriptions of guitar, bass, drums, keyboard and vocal parts. If I remember correctly some of the bands included were the Rolling Stones and The Who. Try googling or searching Ebay for Rock Scores.

 

Good Luck,

Canoehead

[Byrdman]

Originally posted by Rockitman:

Thanks guys. That was what I was afraid of.

And yeah, when you do go to a music store and buy a band's music, it's usually in that Vocal/Piano/Chord style where it's basically the main melody that is documented.

 

yeah, guess I'll just have to listen to a song over and over and slowly try to pick up the part. Not an easy thing to do.

You'll get better at it with practice and it will improve your overall ability as a musician too, so its a valuable effort in its own right.

 

At first it is a terrible grind. Get yourself some tools that allow you to slow down and loop parts. I don't have a good recommendation as the way I do it is kludgy. I could use a good recommendation (variable speed and smart looping so it will preserve the groove around the loop automatically is what I would like - with a lot of the music I play the groove is the most important part.

[Dave Pierce]

I gotta agree with Byrdman -- teaching yourself to learn pieces by ear is SO worth the effort. And you'll find that once you've struggled through a couple of songs, they'll get easier and easier.

 

It's really an indispensible tool for a rock/pop keyboardist.

 

--Dave

[Rockitman]

Yeah, but it's like this sequencing software that I have called FL Studio. I have to teach myself how to use it as there are no tutorials. It might as well be rocket science because I have no clue how to use it. How does one teach oneself anything if they have no concept of what they need to learn?

What is a good starting point to learn to play by ear? It's like trying to learn a foreign language without a dictionary or an interpreter.

I have played exclusively by sheet music my whole life. Improvising scares the hell out of me. I might as well be a beginning piano student when it comes to trying to make music with just the name of a chord in front of me!

[Byrdman]

Originally posted by Rockitman:

What is a good starting point to learn to play by ear? It's like trying to learn a foreign language without a dictionary or an interpreter.

I have played exclusively by sheet music my whole life. Improvising scares the hell out of me. I might as well be a beginning piano student when it comes to trying to make music with just the name of a chord in front of me!

I know just where you are coming from because that's where I was around 4 years ago.

Here's some things I did.

 

 

 

Get yourself some ear training software to help you recognize chords and intervals. There's a tool in Band-in-a-box that will do this but there are probably better dedicated tools available.

 

 

 

Get yourself some play-along backing type cds. Homespun has some and here's another possibility to look into. I have not reviewed these myself - just saved the link

 

 

 

 

Find yourself a blues jam and get out and play. Its all improvised and at first it will be scary. When you get comfortable at one Jam, find another - you are not there to be comfortable - you are there to work your ass off improving your ears.

 

If you are lucky you will find some Jazz cats who are willing to help an upcoming musician. As long as they are playing fairly straight-forward stuff (no Giant Steps etc) it will be more challenging than just Blues but still feasible.

 

Be assured such people do exist. In fact they are not that uncommon and they tend to be the best musicians too.

 

But you will probably run into some others for whom having a jam is just an opportunity to try to make everyone else on the stage look bad. If you run into those, hang in there (the worst thing you can ever do is "walk" - leave the stage because you can't hack something) but if its their jam or they are regulars don't go back. Its not even worth going back to blow them away in turn when you get good, because they aren't listening to anyone else and won't notice.

 

The whole point of doing this work is to improve your ears. You will be playing songs for which you don't know the chords and will have to pick them up from hearing them.

 

After a while you will find that even if you cannot work out the chords you can get by on a solo just by letting your ear do the work - you have to learn to stop your concious brain inserting itself in the middle and going "Yikes" - at first it feels like you are Wiley Coyote stepping off a cliff and walking on the sky.

 

The most amazing moment for me was the first time I found myself sitting at the piano watching my hands playing a solo as if they were someone elses. That was really weird but also enthralling. It means your ear is connected directly to your hands without any attempt at notation getting in the way.

 

Another good exercise is playing along to the radio. However this is no sub for jamming because the radio won't listen to what you play and interact with you. Learning to interact with the other musicians on the bandstand is very important.

 

Hope this helps. Remember unless you are lucky enough to be in a school situation where you can work on this every day we are talking several years work here. So don't get discouraged.

[Immo]

That's some excellent advice Byrdman.

 

I'll throw in my two cents (even though I happen to be an ameteur at playing by ear), but I was told and have found that for most mainstream music (meaning excluding more exotic jazz voicings) you'll find that if you can figure out the bass line, you'll have a pretty good idea of what the chord behind it is. Frequently they're the same. When it's not, you already usually know one of the notes in the chord which gives you a good start towards figuring it out.

[Sergievsky]

I've been trying out Transcribe! , a software for playing back cd and audio files (mac&pc). It's pretty awesome now at version 7. Different speeds (same key), karaoke functions which can be quite useful since it sometimes isolates some parts (depending on the mix) eq, etc.

 

But yeah, training your ear is something all musicians really should do, even though it can be a bitch in the beginning. It'll help not only your playing but for me it is a huge boon for arranging as well.

[Rockitman]

Thanks for all the helpful advice. It is all very inspiring and I guess I need to just drop this defeatist attitude and dive in.

[moj]

I use Midinotate for midi/notation conversion. It's very good at creating accurate treble/bass clef "split hands" parts.

 

Midinotate

 

The advice regarding developing your "ear" is essential for playing ALL styles of music and it does take time to improve your transcribing skills. You'll get better at it and eventually you won't need to depend on notation (though having notated scores on file will be good for review).

 

Here's a suggestion if you want to learn keyboard parts: hire a teacher or musician to play the KB parts as a midi file. You'll now be able create a notated score. I've done this for my students and some bands that needed written parts.