Help me transcribe Pet Sounds arrangements.

[Joshilyn Hoisington]

In the thread I recently posted about the IKTAA guitars, I put up a transcription of said guitars.  In looking through my materials, I realized I have done quite a few little transcription projects over the years.  There is that big Beatles book that has complete transcriptions of every Beatles song, and I know that this topic has come up before, but I wonder if there would be any interest in a collaborative attempt to transcribe some Beach Boys songs, in particular Pet Sounds because that seems to have the most potential in terms of people being interested, but also because it has such rich orchestration.

I certainly wouldn't plan on doing this as a commercial venture, as I'm sure there's very little market for it, but would anybody here be interested either in seeing the results, or swapping finale files and trying to hammer out some arrangements?

I imagine something like the Beatles book, with the whole arrangement transcribed in score format, and possibly providing tablature for the guitar and electric bass parts?  It could be an interesting resource, offered as a fair-use educational presentation.

Sound interesting to anybody?

[Freddie French-Pounce]

I'd be interested to see the percussion parts, but then again I've never taken an indepth listen to them through out for replicative purposes. But to have them would change that.

[AndrewHickey]

In the thread I recently posted about the IKTAA guitars, I put up a transcription of said guitars.  In looking through my materials, I realized I have done quite a few little transcription projects over the years.  There is that big Beatles book that has complete transcriptions of every Beatles song, and I know that this topic has come up before, but I wonder if there would be any interest in a collaborative attempt to transcribe some Beach Boys songs, in particular Pet Sounds because that seems to have the most potential in terms of people being interested, but also because it has such rich orchestration.

I certainly wouldn't plan on doing this as a commercial venture, as I'm sure there's very little market for it, but would anybody here be interested either in seeing the results, or swapping finale files and trying to hammer out some arrangements?

I imagine something like the Beatles book, with the whole arrangement transcribed in score format, and possibly providing tablature for the guitar and electric bass parts?  It could be an interesting resource, offered as a fair-use educational presentation.

Sound interesting to anybody?

I would *love* to have a copy of such a thing, though I'm not good enough at transcription to help much (if at all). Any chance, though, of exporting the finished thing to a more open format than Finale? I use Rosegarden myself, and it would be useful to be able to access the scores through that.

[Joshilyn Hoisington]

In the thread I recently posted about the IKTAA guitars, I put up a transcription of said guitars.  In looking through my materials, I realized I have done quite a few little transcription projects over the years.  There is that big Beatles book that has complete transcriptions of every Beatles song, and I know that this topic has come up before, but I wonder if there would be any interest in a collaborative attempt to transcribe some Beach Boys songs, in particular Pet Sounds because that seems to have the most potential in terms of people being interested, but also because it has such rich orchestration.

I certainly wouldn't plan on doing this as a commercial venture, as I'm sure there's very little market for it, but would anybody here be interested either in seeing the results, or swapping finale files and trying to hammer out some arrangements?

I imagine something like the Beatles book, with the whole arrangement transcribed in score format, and possibly providing tablature for the guitar and electric bass parts?  It could be an interesting resource, offered as a fair-use educational presentation.

Sound interesting to anybody?

I would *love* to have a copy of such a thing, though I'm not good enough at transcription to help much (if at all). Any chance, though, of exporting the finished thing to a more open format than Finale? I use Rosegarden myself, and it would be useful to be able to access the scores through that.

I'm not familiar with Rosegarden.  I could certainly just export the works-in-progress as a regular midi file, at the very least.

[AndrewHickey]

In the thread I recently posted about the IKTAA guitars, I put up a transcription of said guitars.  In looking through my materials, I realized I have done quite a few little transcription projects over the years.  There is that big Beatles book that has complete transcriptions of every Beatles song, and I know that this topic has come up before, but I wonder if there would be any interest in a collaborative attempt to transcribe some Beach Boys songs, in particular Pet Sounds because that seems to have the most potential in terms of people being interested, but also because it has such rich orchestration.

I certainly wouldn't plan on doing this as a commercial venture, as I'm sure there's very little market for it, but would anybody here be interested either in seeing the results, or swapping finale files and trying to hammer out some arrangements?

I imagine something like the Beatles book, with the whole arrangement transcribed in score format, and possibly providing tablature for the guitar and electric bass parts?  It could be an interesting resource, offered as a fair-use educational presentation.

Sound interesting to anybody?

I would *love* to have a copy of such a thing, though I'm not good enough at transcription to help much (if at all). Any chance, though, of exporting the finished thing to a more open format than Finale? I use Rosegarden myself, and it would be useful to be able to access the scores through that.

I'm not familiar with Rosegarden.  I could certainly just export the works-in-progress as a regular midi file, at the very least.

That'd be fine for my purposes, and I'd be very grateful.
Rosegarden is roughly the equivalent of Finale for GNU/Linux systems. It's Free Software, but not quite as featureful as Finale. On the plus-side though, it integrates very well with Lilypond, which does the most gorgeous music typesetting of any automated system I've seen.

[Dunderhead]

This sounds like a good idea to me, but I wonder how exactly you'll score the wall of sound parts, it just gets so hard to even tell which instruments are contributing on some of those sections, like the bridge on Here Today.

[Joshilyn Hoisington]

This sounds like a good idea to me, but I wonder how exactly you'll score the wall of sound parts, it just gets so hard to even tell which instruments are contributing on some of those sections, like the bridge on Here Today.

There will be some difficulties, for sure, but I've listened to the tapes as much as anybody, and I think I've got most of it down.  At worst, I'd have to resort to chord/slash notation for some of the keyboard stuff.  And anything totally conjectural I can give it my best guess and indicate that it's a guess in the score.

[SMiLE-addict]

Sounds like a great idea. Maybe throw in scores for Today and Summer Days in the same book and you'd probably have a commercial product salable at your local music store.

[Dunderhead]

Once we have the scores who wants to do everyone a solid and do some Liszt-ian virtuoso piano transcriptions of all the songs?

[Joshilyn Hoisington]

Sounds like a great idea. Maybe throw in scores for Today and Summer Days in the same book and you'd probably have a commercial product salable at your local music store.

That is an interesting prospect.  I suppose one might as well throw some Smile in there too.  What a lot of work that would be, though. 

[pixletwin]

To my ears smile would actually be the easiest to transcribe.

[Joshilyn Hoisington]

To my ears smile would actually be the easiest to transcribe.

I think you're right; transcribing four complete albums was what I thought would be a lot of work.  But Smile can be quite sparse, so it would be a bit easier.

[DonnyL]

My two cents is that it's a great idea that has yet to be explored, and to those interested, it would fill a major gap. I do feel that the appeal is fairly limited compared to stuff like gear/history kind of things, even when they are technical.

I'd love to help but really I'm not qualified for this one. There are probably quite a few here who are though!

[AndrewHickey]

My two cents is that it's a great idea that has yet to be explored, and to those interested, it would fill a major gap. I do feel that the appeal is fairly limited compared to stuff like gear/history kind of things, even when they are technical.

I'm not sure about that -- I know there are a *lot* of musicians on here, and at least some of us aren't at all up on the gear but would like to have a good resource to help figure out the arrangement side of things.

[hypehat]

I wish I could help out, but I'm a spectacularly musically illiterate musician, so couldn't be much help translating anything I hear into anything usable.

That said, it'd be a great resource.

Also, IDK if this helps or not, but wrt 'scoring' Smile, Project Smile has a bunch of accurate sounding MIDI files for the main songs.

[Sam_BFC]

It'd be a great idea.

And is it completely out of the question that here could be a market for something like this?  One of the greatest pop albums ever, admired in particular for its *out of site* arrangements?  It'd be a great academic resource for students at large as well as people like us.

[Joshilyn Hoisington]

If any powers-that-be see this, I would be willing to turn the result of this project over to BRI for free in exchange for access to the discrete multi-tracks for the album(s), which would make the scores much better and more accurate.

[FatherOfTheMan Sr101]

Do multitracks even really exist past a backing track? Considering the "live" recording style?

[Joshilyn Hoisington]

Do multitracks even really exist past a backing track? Considering the "live" recording style?

Yep.  Every track on Pet Sounds has at least three if not more discrete tracks of backing track and often more for vocals.  Having access to the discrete tracks would be invaluable in the transcription process.  Although it wouldn't be the same as hearing a discrete track from a more recent recording where there's just one instrument on a track, there's plenty to be learned.  For instance, often the horns got their own track, and there's not a lot of bleed or leakage, so I could be more sure of the voicings in the horn chords.  Oftentimes, you can hear a piano a little more clearly, or something.  It would still take some listening, but would help immensely for such a project.

[John Stivaktas]

I agree that the discrete tracks are helpful. I've been spending some time lately listening to the backing tracks for I Just Wasn't Made for These Times and Here Today (From SOT Vol. 14 and the Pet Sounds Boxset) and I can tell you that the bass lines in each song have never been transcribed accurately or covered as played on the tapes.  I hope to record these bass lines and upload to YouTube at some point in the near future because I believe they need to be referenced for the benefit of those who want to improve their musical education.

[Joshilyn Hoisington]

I agree that there are lots of subtleties in the arrangements that nobody has gotten right, even Brian's band.  Particularly bass lines, as you mention.  Here Today is weird because the string bass plays something under the fender during the verses that is really hard to hear but muddies up the waters.

Depending on my academic future, I would love to do a Ph.d at UCLA that would combine complete transcriptions of from the wrecking crew heavy years, and then that would be supplemented by an analysis of the recording process, the culture, the social aspects of that milieu, and a hardcore musicological study.  That might give me more cachet to be able to have access to the multi-tracks, which would truly be essential to the transcription process.  I just wish I had been around a little earlier so, if I do do a phd on this, I could have spoken to more primary sources.  But thank goodness the musical evidence will always be around.

[schiaffino]

This is a really good idea, don't know how can I help - aside from sending you good vibes. If there's one album that deserves complete scoring of its orchestral arrangements its definitely Pet Sounds.

Honestly, how can I help?

[Joshilyn Hoisington]

Starting with WIBN, there are a few lingering questions:

1.  With so many instruments playing the bass line, it is difficult to pin down what octave everything is in.

Here are some possibilities.  I'm pretty sure I hear something go up an octave.  It might be the dano bass, but I don't really hear that...

See below for the different possibilities:



2.  What do we think the little percussion thing is?  A tambourine, a shaker, what?

[Iron Horse-Apples]

Shaker I think.

How would we go about this, just do stuff then pass it around for checking / changing etc. Sure would be handy to have the multi's though.  Are you still in touch with Alan?

[Joshilyn Hoisington]

Sort of, but that is kind of a big ask.