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PDF can be found at Some useful gumpf; click on SHOW MORE (just below). It's scored, as usual, with Sibelius 7.5 Peter’s vocals and Steve’s guitar solo come from the centre channel of the 5.1 DVD mixes. The rest of the audio (piano) was created in Presonus Studio One v4.5 using Modartt’s Pianoteq 6 Steingraeber Grand piano and processed thru Valhalla’s Vintage Verb. First of all, it sounds very fast! But it isn’t… Usually, when I play this as a solo piano piece, with or without ‘singing’ along (I use the term loosely…!), I play everything except the instrumental section around 10% slower than the original. i.e. at the speed shown in the PDF (72bpm) rather than around 80bpm which is the speed of the original. But because I’m using the original vocal and guitar solo, I decided to sync my playing to the centre channel track that they come from rather than timestretch the vocals & guitar (would’ve sounded suss). The thing is, to me, it sounds faster than the original, especially the link coming out of the guitar solo and on to final verse. But, of course, it isn’t (you can verify this by looking at how long this and the original last for). It’s an aural illusion. I believe it’s because hearing the piano on it’s own gives a bit of a false perspective. It’s Phil’s drums that make it sound slower on the original as he plays very slightly behind the beat. This is an amazing effect that a really good drummer can impart on a song. If he were to play slightly ahead of the beat the piece would sound faster with the exact same piano track! In fact, I wouldn’t be surprised if the piano track was recorded first as a guide and Phil used his considerable playing skill to effectively rein it in :) So, on to this transcription. There’s not an awful lot to say as the piano part is actually pretty straightforward (Tony wrote the music back around 1970 as I believe he also did with A Trick of the Tail). The key thing to grok is the tied notes that occur in all the Intro/Link bars and most of the verse bars too. These are really vital to make the piano part sing. In fact, you actually hold on all these tied notes even longer than they're written! e.g. in bars 34-37 (Intro/Link), hold each tied Bb over the 2nd semiquaver in the group of 4 almost until you play the 3rd semiquaver (the A). Same goes for all the other occurences, but make sure you note where these don’t occur. i.e. where there’s a rest written. And, the ties in the middle of bars 5 & 7 are meant to be there :) I believe the Intro/Link section is scored exactly as Tony plays it during the Link bit and it certainly sounds as close as needs be to the Intro. Remember, the piece doesn't start on page 1 (bar 1) but on page 3 (bar 34). Yes, yes, I know, but it saves on paper! The Verse is scored as a starting point template and sort of incorporates Mike’s bass line and a snippet of Tony’s synth line (last two left hand quavers of bars 5 & 7). I play the 1st verse pretty much as written and gradually increase the rhythmicity of bars 1-4 of the 2nd and 3rd verses by slightly arpeggiating the chords. Feel free to impart your own playing style on those first 4 verse bars :) The instrumental section is hard. The right hand is OK once it’s up to speed, but trying to play the left hand at the same time (again, based on Mike’s bass line) is tricky, especially bar 33! Just play bar 25 again instead if it proves too complex. If the other bars of this section don’t seem to be ‘happening’ either, try just playing the first two left hand semiquavers in each bar as a single quaver (using just the 2nd of the two notes). e.g. bar 26 play an octave G quaver on beat one rather than the F & G semi’s. The second semi’ pair in each bar should then be reasonably OK. Also, the rests in the left hand are obligatory! :) Anyway (they say she comes on a pale horse…) that should be enough to get you going. Have fun! :)
