Use this topic to share any musical transcriptions of Key music that you’ve either produced yourself, or found on the internet. Let’s catalogue them here so people have a resource to look for if they want to play Key music!
Hello all. This is Youko Meko.
For anyone who plays the piano or keyboard, I’m currently arranging the entire Air OST for solo piano.
All of the arrangements are quite likely going to require some level of proficiency in playing, but it will all be very playable. I’ve just finished the first two tracks and have written some comments on the first track, 回想録.
The following links below lead to the sheet music for 回想録, and some notes on it respectively. For those who have too much free time on their hands or aren’t very well-versed in playing the keyboard, I recommend reading the notes just to get a taste of what you’re up against.
Thank you.
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@eptakyrios This is amazing work! There aren’t nearly enough piano sheets of Key music in the world, so you’re doing us all a huge favour! It really excites me to see such talented people joining Kazamatsuri to share their work for the fandom.
Hey everyone.
As I’m currently working on a solo piano transcription for the entire AIR OST, I reluctantly decided to transcribe the full opening theme, Tori No Uta. I think I’ve already spent all my free time over the past two months on Tori No Uta since I more or less started work on the piece a few days after joining the forum, and I’m proud to announce it’s finally done.
It’s a massive piece of work that hews closely to the spirit of the original song, spanning 26 pages for the whole 6 minutes of the song, and it is also transcendentally difficult - probably one of the most diversely challenging pieces for solo piano I’ve ever seen, perhaps fitting of Tori No Uta. I can pretty much remember how a large portion of my time was spent testing my limits. It can probably be played as a duet piece as it is.
If anyone who plays the piano here is feeling brave, or if anyone wants to listen to how it’s supposed to sound with just two hands, the MIDI and the music score is available here: http://sheethost.com/sheet/EMIVs3/
Some notes for consideration are also available on my Wordpress.
I hope you enjoy listening to it (and wish that some will make it past the second page). I’m considering revising the piece in the distant future, but for now, I’ll move on to Natsukage.
Thanks.
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…oh gad. This is meticulously brutal. Outstanding. I love your take on this amazing piece of music. 
I’d like to play it if I could, but if I could only barely get past the octaves in Nirinsou, I don’t think I could even be able to make it even to the tenth bar here. I don’t even have the right keyboard - well, for a 5-octave electronic keyboard, it sounds good, but it’s not touch-sensitive and does not come with a sustain pedal haha.
I’d like to hear someone play this though. I will love you if you do.
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Jeez, this is absolutely fantastic. I’m not even going to attempt it, but if (many years from now) I feel like I could at least semi-reasonably play (limp through?) it I’d love to give it a go. Only time and effort will tell I suppose.
Your entire Wordpress post was really enjoyable to read, although I’d be lying if I didn’t say that some of the contents went over the head of a total beginner like me. I do feel like I learned some things, though. Your parallels between the themes of AIR and the general vibe of the music added a lot of cool flavor, and your writing overall is brimming with passion. Seriously, great read.
As @BlackHayate02 said this piece really needs a proper recording since the MIDI can’t do it justice. That said I’d recommend you upload at least the full length MIDI here in case people want to listen without having to create a Sheethost account. Because that MIDI is still damn impressive.
I eagerly await your other AIR transcriptions since it’s probably my second favorite Key OST (and VN), and has the most consistently good tracks I believe. Think I’ll check out your other transcription notes after I go scratch my piano playing itch.
Thank you for all your good work.
It’d be nice to see some of the other talented people here posting instrumental Key covers. I know we’ve got skilled people hiding 'round here.
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Even if @eptakyrios doesnt upload the MIDI here, it is 100% worth anyone’s time to go download it and listen. Its even more impressive when you read the sheets while listening, too. Thats freakin ridiculous man. 11 gooey concentrated peach juices/10
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@Yerian @BlackHayate02 @LinkThinks
Thanks, but I can’t seem to upload it on the forum. Says that the file format is unsupported.
As to whether I’ll record myself playing it, I definitely will, but Tori No Uta is horribly difficult, so I suppose I’ll need 6 months to over a year’s worth of practice to iron it all out.
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Hey all.
I’ve just finished the transcription for Natsukage, one of my favourite pieces of music. It’s a piece with many piano transcriptions and arrangements, so I stuck to my guns and evoked the original track to the best of what I think is suitable for the piano, and achievable with two hands. The result is a highly nuanced and impressionistic piece.
While it is far from being as technically monstrous as Tori No Uta, it is very transparent, requiring fine and subtle nuances in playing, especially with the tremolos - trying to make the piano sound like the cello. It is a typical case of a piece that is (somewhat) okay to play, but difficult to play well.
Here are the sheets: http://www.sheethost.com/sheet/oxNgKm
For anyone who wants to play it, I highly recommend reading these notes since the music score is effectively barren of markings.
I’ll be doing the next four tracks in bulk. They’re probably coming out in a month’s time.
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Thank you so much for transcribing Natsukage! Still one of my all-time favourite Key BGMs.
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If I ever get the chance, I’d love to play these works! Awesome transcriptions, guys. I’m still quite a newb, so I’ll stick with playing/learning the Entertainer super, super slowly.
I hope to transcribe the Karuta version of Ichiban no Takaramono someday; the background piano in that is just gorgeous, particularly around 3:43 (you can hear their fingers dancing around the keys; it’s awesome).
I wonder if the Holy instrumental CD has sheet music anywhere, since it is all solely piano. Maybe in a Key site?
I found a website where a lot of the tracks from Key (and outside Key as well) are sequenced into MIDI. Not sure what to call it, since all I can see is corrupted text haha. Makes it hard to navigate, though I managed to look into it enough to figure where the MIDI files can be downloaded.
http://mo7779.sakura.ne.jp/index_frame_bgmon.html
You can try hovering over the “PLAY” link on each row so as to figure what it’s about. ^^;
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Around the time of the AIR bookclub I was working on (though never finished) a (slight) arrangement of Tori no Uta for guitar. I posted an audio clip I recorded with my phone of me playing it on a nylon guitar… Not sure where that is now.
Anyway, here’s the tab for it, plus a few extra bars:
Though, this guy’s arrange is much better:
You can find a PDF-form of his tab here: http://www.gametabs.net/forum/topic/23095 (though it’s in a zip file with a few other tabs/arranges, including some from other Key works).
From the few I looked at, it seems all of his PDFs also include general score information, so it would be suitable for playing on other instruments (such as piano/keyboard) as well.
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Wow your arrangement is amazing! It sounds already very good in midi, I can’t wait to see how great it will be when actually played!
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A while back I tried to make an arrangement of “Town, Flow of Time, People” using a MIDI file I found here. It didn’t sound quite right to me though, so I tried transcribing it myself, but I couldn’t identify the chords. Anyone happen to have a better score I can use? I found out there’s also a PDF of Key sheet music available for sale here. I haven’t decided whether to buy it though. Should I?
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Hey all,
Back again. The next few pieces seem to be going quite smoothly, so I’m ahead of schedule.
Here, we’ve got 跳ね水, or Kano’s theme. It’s a spritely and straightforward piece, arguably the easiest thus far, so it makes for a good starting point. Just lay off the damper pedal and it should be fine.
The piece is here: http://www.sheethost.com/sheet/EBGgrW
Notes are available, no matter how short and redundant they might be.
水たまり should come in a week.
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@supercoobie I don’t know of any sites that have them just yet, though I suppose I will have to in time to come. On your second issue, I would encourage you to get it, if it’s still available. Pico-Score, while it was still online, has a very nice collection of basic transcriptions that I liked to play.
@BlackHayate02 I’ve used the site before, and still am right now. The MIDIs are surprisingly accurate and take a good deal of time off from having to listen to subdued instruments in the tracks. It shows in Japanese for me, so I bet it’s in Japanese Unicode.
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Hey all,
Back again with another transcription of AIR’s OST. This time, following the album order, it’s Mizutamari, another one of Kano’s themes, and runs quite counter to Hanemizu. For this one, to accomodate for all the voices in the original track, there’s a lot of slow jumping to do across the keyboard. It’s written in four staves to facilitate reading and is more or less comparable to Hanemizu in difficulty.
Here are the sheets: http://www.sheethost.com/sheet/6kHUCV
Yumegatari and Niji should come out very soon.
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Hey all,
Yumegatari marks the last of Kano’s themes, or at least the happy ones. Rounding it all up, Yumegatari happens to be the easiest of all the transcriptions, so anyone who wants to give a shot will definitely find it more forgiving than the others. I use the word ‘forgiving’ because there are challenges here too, since it is a piano transcription, not a piano reduction. There’re one or two rapid and extremely light descending chromatic scales that require utmost delicacy to pull off convincingly, but they can be easily omitted, it’s all fair and good.
Personally, the pastoral mood and plaintive (yet evocative) melody seems to sing out to me as the saga of a long-travelled soul who finds sanctuary in some alcove, or like a sheperd playing on his pipe. A very lovely piece, in my eyes,
Here are the sheets and the notes: http://www.sheethost.com/sheet/n8FSkf
Next up, is Niji - the first of Minagi’s themes.
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