Category: testing category

In honor of The Godfather’s 50th anniversary, we’re excited to share sheet music for Speak Softly Love (Love Theme from The Godfather) by Nino Rota and performed by Robin Spielberg for free this month! This version is arranged for piano.

Download now for Free

Fun facts about Speak Softly Love (Love Theme from The Godfather):

• The instrumental version is known as “The Godfather Theme”.
• Italian composer Nino Rota’s music has lyrics by Larry Kusik, and was originally recorded by crooner Andy Williams.
• The score was nominated for an Academy Award, but it had to be removed when it transpired that Rota had used the same melody (albeit at a different tempo) in a score for a 1958 film, Fortunella.
• Nonetheless, Rota’s score for The Godfather Part II won the 1974 Academy Award for Best Score, despite the fact that it contained the same piece.

We’re excited to announce that our Instant Ordering System just got better!

You can now use SoundCloud links to get price quotes for all your custom Sheet Music, Backing Track, Piano Performance Video and Karaoke Video needs.

It works just the same as using a YouTube link – find the song you like, click the “Share” or “Copy Link” button and paste it into the our Instant Ordering System. Hey Presto! You know how much your project will cost, and can see the price update in realtime as you adjust the details and settings.

We hope you like using it – head to our homepage now to give it a go.

We’re excited to share sheet music for  I Do It For Applause by Neil Sedaka for free this month! This version is arranged for piano.

Download now for Free

Fun facts about Neil Sedaka:

• Wrote his first hit in 1958 with Howard Greenfield named “The Diary”.
• A career spanning 6 decades as a singer, songwriter, composer, pianist and author.
• Inducted into the Songwriter’s Hall of Fame, has had a street named after him in his hometown of Brooklyn, and was given a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame.
• Received the Sammy Cahn Lifetime Achievement Award from the National Academy of Popular Music / Songwriters Hall of Fame at the organization’s 35th annual induction and awards ceremony in New York.

Welcome to our Featured Transcriber series, where we sit down with some of the members of our transcription team and find out a bit more about them. This week, we’ll be speaking to Manuel in Venezuela. Manuel is one of our top guitarists, with an incredible ear for detail, but today we’ll be learning that his favorite thing to transcribe is… bassoon?!

Tunescribers

Hi Manuel – why don’t we start off with a bit of a background about your work as a musician and transcriber?

Manuel

I’m a classical guitar player – that’s my specialty. After I studied classical guitar, I became interested in arranging and composition. I studied harmony and counterpoint and started doing some small arrangements for music theatre for friends, or people would ask me to do something for string quartet or things like that. Small pieces and projects. So since I started to get into arranging, I had to learn how to transcribe, because when you arrange, almost always there is at least a small phase of transcription.
As a guitar player, I also play electric. I think for us as guitar players, the transcribing process is very important. You are always learning to these solos and riffs, and you don’t always have the sheet music, so you have to use your ears. So I think for guitar players, it is a little more important than for other instruments – a violin player maybe doesn’t have to transcribe so much. I don’t know, I’m not a violin player! But for us, it’s a very very important part of our learning process.

Tunescribers

Definitely! And the other thing with guitar, of course, is that it has so many specific things you need to know about when you’re notating for it. Every instrument has its own things you have to learn, but guitar, in particular, has this whole world of strange shapes and lines all to itself!

Manuel

Yeah – a lot of composers have this fear of writing for guitar. They can write for piano and for violin and for orchestra, and all these other instruments and ensembles, but guitar is so particular! A piano is almost a limitless instrument, but guitar can be very limited, and you have to take your score to a guitarist to see if it is even playable!

There’s one transcription I did for Tunescribers a little while ago that sticks out – Remington Ride by Danny Gatton. It was about nine minutes long and had crazy guitar soloing all the way through the piece. He uses so many different techniques, and it was difficult because, for parts of it, he was just making noise on the guitar. Just shredding, but it’s not clear what notes he’s playing, because at the moment, in the feel of it, they just become noise! It really works, because he has so much feel in the song, but when you put it on the sheet – you’re like “how do I transcribe this, it’s pure noise!”

Tunescribers

Can you tell me a bit about your process – how do you approach a song like this?

Manuel

Sure – when I’ve sent a transcription job, the first thing I do is listen from the beginning to the end. I listen to the whole thing before I write a single note. That way, I can say to myself “OK, it has a rhythmic part; it has a solo; this part I have no idea what’s going, I’ll have to be aware of that”. Then, after this first listen, I open up Sibelius and do all the file set up – entering the key and things like that.
When transcribing, I have an advantage, since I have absolute pitch; it is rare when I’m transcribing that I’ll actually pick up the guitar, or sit at the piano. I do it all by ear! And because I have so many years of playing guitar, I have the fretboard in my mind. So unless the song is in an unusual tuning, I almost “know” where all the notes are, so I don’t need to pick up the guitar and play it.

Tunescribers

And what is your favorite kind of thing to transcribe – what should our readers send your way?

Manuel

A lot of the transcription process can be quite mechanical, but there was one I did a while back for a bassoon quartet that was one of my favorites I’ve worked on. It was a piece called Miranda by Jean Sibelius, and it was so beautiful, and such an interesting ensemble. So I think the perfect transcription or the ones that I like the most are those where the ensemble is very rich and may be rare or unique. I really enjoy that!

Do you play with an unusual ensemble that will intrigue and challenge Manuel? Get in touch for a quote, and use MANUEL5 at checkout to get 5% off your order, and specifically request Manuel at the same time!

We’re excited to share sheet music for Make You Feel My Love by Bob Dylan for free this month! This version is arranged for piano and is performed by Henry Newbury.

Download now for Free

Here are some fun facts about Make You Feel My Love:

• The song ranks in the top 10 of Dylan songs tackled by other artists. Perhaps as many as 459!
• Texas-born musician August “Augie” Meyers, who is best known as keyboard-player with the Sir Douglas Quintet and the Texas
• Tornados, played organ on this track.
• The song has been recorded by a number of well known artists, including Billy Joel, Garth Brooks & Adele.
• The sheer number of covers prompted Rolling Stone to suggest that the song may one day qualify as a true American standard.

Have your own request for sheet music? Visit our homepage to get a quote!

Happy New Year, and welcome to the next phase of Tunescribers!

Over the last year, we’ve been hard at work here at Tunescribers creating a new and greatly improved version of our site. 

Here’s some of what’s new:

• New Look!
  We’ve given everything a lick of paint, including new art we’ve commissioned.

• Easy access to all our products
  Did you know that as well as being the world’s leading provider of custom sheet music, we can also create awesome Backing Tracks, Piano Performance Videos, and Karaoke videos? Up until now, these have been add-on products to our core focus, transcription. We’re super excited to welcome these products to the main Tunescribers lineup.
  
  For the first time ever, you can order a Backing Track without Sheet Music, a Piano Performance Video with a Karaoke video, or any combination you like!
  
  You can order any of the products individually by selecting the appropriate tab on the homepage:

And if you want to add another product to your order, you can do that too!

• Revised Order Form
  One of the things we’re most proud of here at Tunescribers is our incredible instant pricing and ordering tool – by answering a few brief questions, you can tell us everything we need to know about your project and get an accurate price, instantly! Well, as of today it’s got a huge upgrade.
  
  You should now find that the questions you are asked at checkout appear in a more logical order, and will only be asked when relevant. For instance, you will now only be asked if you would like “Score and Parts” when you have more than one instrument in your ensemble.

Likewise, you’ll only be asked for lyrics when there is a singer or choir on the list.

There are dozens of these tiny tweaks and changes like these that all add up to a much nicer experience.

• Redesigned Account Page
  You should find your orders easier to find and filter on your account page. We’ve added a search bar, the ability to sort by date, song title, or artist, as well as the ability to filter based on whether you’re looking for your Backing Track orders.

We hope you like these improvements to the Tunescribers site. If you have questions or run into any problems, just contact us, we’re always happy to help.

We’re excited to share sheet music for The Wind Beneath My Wings by Jeff Silbar and Larry Henley for free this month! This version is arranged for piano and is performed by Neil Archer.

Download now for Free

Fun facts about The Wind Beneath My Wings:

• The most famous version of this song was Bette Midler’s, who recorded it in 1988 for the movie Beaches, in which she starred.
• Midler revealed to The London Times on February 14, 2009, that she initially disliked this song, but it later grew on her.
• The song won the Grammy Awards for Record of the Year and Song of the Year in 1990.
• This is the most popular song for funerals, beating out Celine Dion’s “My Heart Will Go On” and Whitney Houston’s “I Will Always Love You.”

Welcome to our Featured Transcriber series, where we sit down with some of the members of our transcription team and find out a bit more about them. This week, we’ll be speaking to Joanne in Malaysia. Joanne has been with Tunescribers the longest out of anyone on the team, and is one of our busiest, most-requested transcribers.

Tunescribers

First of all, why don’t you tell us a little bit about how you got into transcribing – what’s your background?

Joanne
I started when I was 17 years old actually. It was just for fun, and a little bit for my class. We had to do a short arrangement of one of our songs. That’s how I started with music notation software.

Then, when I graduated high school, I was working in a music school. I had a music mentor at the time – he was very good with contemporary music, so he got me to do some transcriptions to help equip me for university.

Slowly, I began to get transcription work, and as I went through university, the transcription helped me understand different kinds of music. I was classically trained, so there was a lot to learn!

Tunescribers

What instruments do you play? And where do you play them?

Joanne

I mostly play the piano and keyboards. I’ve played in a church band since I was 9, and they mostly playoff chords and lyrics. I learned to play from lead sheets during university – I’ve tried to bring proper arrangements in, but not everyone is trained to play that way!
I’ve also played in some musicals before – we did Joseph and the Technicolor Dreamcoat, which was fun! We did a production here in Malaysia last year; I was the musical director, and my husband was in the band. We only had a five-piece band to cover the whole orchestra, so I had to play around with it quite a bit and played some of it on the keyboards.

Tunescribers
Let’s talk a little about your transcription process then – imagine you’ve been sent a standard piano/vocal score. Where do you start?

Joanne

I usually listen to the song all the way through, once, then I’ll start with the piano parts first. I don’t stop to work out the chords or anything beforehand, I just go start to finish with the piano part. I’ll go back and check the chords again, one more round, and I’ll do the vocal parts later.

I work in Sibelius, and I use a MIDI keyboard for big chords, but I work faster with the computer keyboard – with Numpad especially.

Tunescribers

How long have you been with Tunescribers then? I know you were one of the earliest recruits!

Joanne

I started before Tunescribers was a thing! I got hired by Jeff [Tunescribers founder and president] through a freelancing site, and he told me he wanted to find some transcribers to join a team. Gradually, as the company has grown, I’ve stuck with it. I think I’ve done a little over five hundred transcriptions with Tunescribers.

Tunescribers

Wow, that’s a lot! Do any of those stick out at all – any memorable ones?

Joanne

Well, there’s one project that was quite long. It was a musical called Elite and was interesting to work on such a unique project.

SIDENOTE:
Jeff says: Elite was one of the most ambitious transcription projects we’ve ever done – the music was extremely complex and we were working from single-track, 30-year old cassette tape recordings. However, we were extremely fortunate to have the music’s original composer involved with the project to review our work and help us through some of the murkier sections.

I also really like working on gospel music – those are fun! They’re some of the hardest things to transcribe, but enjoyable to listen to. I recently worked on a great version of Joy To The World. The harmonies of the choir part were super difficult – it didn’t help that they didn’t line up with the piano part at all! Vocal rhythms in gospel music can be very fluid, and sometimes there’s a bit of guesswork about what is intended because it’s not exactly in time.

Tunescribers

Apart from gospel music then, what is your favorite thing to transcribe?

Joanne

Solo piano music – not so much rhythmically complex jazz, but certainly film music, or pop. I do play a bit of jazz here and there, but I’m not a superb jazz pianist or anything, so I find it a bit harder. So yeah, simple, enjoyable piano music is the best!

Do you love that kind of piano music too? Get in touch for a quote, and use JOANNE5 at checkout to get 5% off your order, and specifically request Joanne at the same time!

We’re excited to share sheet music for Santa Claus Is Coming To Town by John Frederick Coots and Haven Gillespie for free this month! This version is arranged for piano and is performed by Leyton Lake.

Download now for Free

Fun facts about Santa Claus Is Coming To Town:

• Served as inspiration for the 1970 stop motion Christmas television special Santa Claus is Comin’ to Town.
• The song has been recorded by over 200 artists, including Bing Crosby and The Andrews Sisters, The Crystals, Mariah Carey, Neil Diamond, Bruce Springsteen, Frank Sinatra, Bill Evans, Chris Isaak, The Temptations, Michael Bublé, and The Jackson 5.
• It became one of the most successful Christmas carols of all time, outsold only by Rudolph The Red-Nosed Reinder and White Christmas.
• Haven Gillespie was a prolific songwriter, and wrote the lyrics of the song, while John Frederick Coots wrote the music.

Welcome to our Featured Transcriber series, where we sit down with some of the members of our transcription team and find out a bit more about them. This week, we’ll be speaking to Gatot in Indonesia. Our top transcriber in terms of volume, he’s completed nearly 2000 transcriptions at the time of writing.

Tunescribers

Where most of our team will work on 2-3 songs at a time, you tend to have more like 10-15 going at once! That’s got to take some organisation, walk us through a normal transcription day for you.

Gatot

I divide my working day into sections; for part of the day, I’m actually doing audio editing work, and later in the day I do transcription for Tunescribers. So I keep busy!

As part of my workflow, I really like to use my iPad Pro and Apple Pencil. I do the simpler tasks on iPadOS, and finish up and fine-tune on my laptop later on. I tend to make small chunks out of every project – input some notes here, input some lyrics there – that way I can pick up where I left off any time. The iPad really helps with that!

Tunescribers

You’ve transcribed for just about every instrument under the sun, but what instruments do you play yourself?

Gatot

My main instrument is guitar, but I play synthesiser with an experimental group – soundscapes played in Ableton Live with a MIDI controller. I play some piano, but I’ll never be more than a beginner with keyboard instruments! When I was 11 years old, my sister forced me to learn classical piano for two years But I can’t help it, I group up listening to 90’s alternative rock: Nirvana, Green Day, that sort of thing, so my heart is with the guitar. But the time I spent learning piano really opened my mind towards notation, and it means I know how the piano “works”.

Tunescribers

With the number of jobs that you take on, you’ve completed several hundred more transcriptions than our next busiest team member – do you have any that particularly stick out in your memory?

Gatot

For me, the story behind why we’re doing a transcription is big part of it. There was some work I did a few years ago where I did 2 or 3 songs every week for the same client. I found out later that the client was actually the composer’s wife who was collecting manuscripts of his music after he had passed away. She wanted to preserve the songs. Hearing that got me a bit misty-eyed, and made me feel so grateful to be working on those songs, and helping pay tribute and preserve the legacy of this composer.

This kind of story really makes me want to work, and take every job seriously. There is no simple or complicated work when you think of it like this – we’re always working for a real person, and maybe the song is super meaningful for them.

Tunescribers

That’s really beautiful – it’s always nice to hear that the work we do has real-world impact. Finally then, if you could imagine the perfect transcription job, what would it be?

Gatot

I always wanted to transcribe Chris Cornell – any Chris Cornell song! Soundgarden is my favourite band of all time, and Chris Cornell is my favourite songwriter. So yeah, I think that’s it, that would be my perfect transcription job.

Are you a Chris Cornell fan too and want sheet music for your favourite Soundgarden track? Get in touch for a quote, and use GATOT5 at checkout to get 5% off your order, and specifically request Gatot at the same time!