Songbooks

[peluche (Chris)]

Maart - you already have an incredibly busy life, yet you still find the time to produce songbooks. Can I ask, is transcribing what you hear onto paper a joy or a chore for you ??
Cheers, Chris

[Paul]

I'd just like to add a big thank you for the song books. They must really be a labour of love, and are greatly appreciated by Fairport fans.

Paul

[Maart]

Although it looks like I'm busy all the time, there are periods in every musician's life where there's nothing in the book. That’s an ideal opportunity to set about doing a songbook. The technology has really come on since the first FC book I did back in 1993 when I was using the score section of a sequencer program. Now I use a fantastic program called Sibelius. So far I’ve notated 120 FC songs in two books, 100 Kieran Halpin songs in two books, 42 Allan Taylor songs in a book, 25 Swarb tunes in a fiddlecase tunebook, reset 13 hymns for Beth Nielsen Chapman’s Hymnbook and I’m currently halfway through (27 songs of 51) the Sandy Denny Complete Songbook which I had hoped to bring out by Xmas but I got very busy. My guess is now that it will be ready in time for Cropredy.

When I was young the standard of songbooks/music books was pretty low. I remember being really excited when I bought a Jimi Hendrix songbook then desperately disappointed to realise that it was totally wrong. Purple Haze was written for piano in Bb! There were no good tutor books or DVDs/videos as there are now so I learned to play by copying other people’s records. This, along with learning to read music, made it so much easier to understand music, and I decided that if I ever made a songbook it would be correct.

As for whether it’s a labour of love or a chore, most of the time it’s great. You can really get inside someone’s head by notating their songs. Sometimes it’s difficult figuring out the timing on someone’s phrasing and sometimes a blur of notes can be difficult to decipher. That’s why I was very grateful to Ric Sanders for transcribing his own solos in Songbook Two. It saved me a lot of time.

The best bit though is when it comes back from the printers and I open the first box to inspect my new book. Every copy is checked before it leaves here and I get some great feedback about the books. It’s nice to know I’m doing something right.

Maart

[Paul]

Which version of Sibellius do you use? I was a beta tester for G7, and it is a fantastic program.

You're right about songbooks in the past. Most of my earlier songbooks are piano transcriptions, and don't transfer well to guitar. I play stairway to heaven an octave below everybody else because that's the way the piano part is written 

Paul

[peluche (Chris)]

I agree Paul - as a 'youngster' I invested a huge amount of money in Beatles Complete - however, it taught me no guitar parts whatsoever!! Still, it makes for a good strum-among kareoke type book !!

[Maart]

I use Sibelius 2. I looked at version 3 but couldn't really see enough difference to justify the rather large update cost.

Which Beatles Complete Book do you mean? The Beatles Complete Scores is pretty good, with all the parts written out. Apparently there are a couple of mistakes in it but I haven't found them yet, and I am finally able to play some of my favourite George Harrison things. Now there was a guitarist!

Maart

[peluche (Chris)]

Which Beatles Complete Book do you mean? The Beatles Complete Scores is pretty good, with all the parts written out.

It certainly wasn't Beatles Scores - this was going back to around 1980, large white songbook. Looked great, always wanted to play like George, unfortunatley, turned out to be a very simple piano score with a few random 'chord boxes' thrown in - taught me how to strum the intro to Let it Be, but did nothing for my Get Back lead break !!!

[Paul]

The Beatles Complete came in 2 versions, guitar and piano. The guitar version was in fact just the vocal line with chord boxes. They are not very good, and many are in the wrong key. Get Back in Bb??

The newer Rock Scores are much better.

Paul