Key Musical Transcriptions

Key Fanworks
41

Hey all,

Tsukiwarawa is out. It was unexpectedly difficult to transcribe since the voices and effects were all so spaced out on the keyboard if directly translated for piano as to render the piece unplayable, and probably would’ve remained unfinished were it not for a stroke of inspiration that hit me a couple hours ago. To a rather large extent, (perhaps unfortunately) most of this transcription is original - where almost every accompaniment figuration is not native to or derived from the track. Chord progression remains largely the same though.

Tsukiwarawa, or Moon Child, is the final track from Summer, and is oft referred to as Kanna’s theme. A lone plaintive melody, with a constant twinkling in the background, and occasionally punctuated with an accompanying lamenting voice, Tsukiwarawa seems to me to be a painting of forlorn longing, and perhaps sorrowful despair. Quite interesting here, that the title here draws links to the legend of the Bamboo Cutter, or of Kaguya-hime.

Here are the sheets, notes to be added in the future,

Also, the notes for Semigoromo have been added.

Next up is Giniro (orgel), and Futari. They’re mostly there just for completion’s sake.

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42

Hey all,

Both Giniro (orgel) and Futari are done. They’re mostly added just for the sake of completion, since there are already so many other transcriptions of the exact same thing out there. There are some modifications to Futari though. Applying regular treatment to it, the strings voice that is left out of other transcriptions is added here, and to supplement for the richness of the main voice, a couple of passages are now in octaves.

I suppose little more needs to be said about these two, especially Futari.

Here are the sheets:


Next up, comes Futari’s twin track, Koko - the track that first reeled me in to the OST, and Giniro.

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43

Hey all,

Koko and Giniro are done.
A bit of a preamble on the tracks here:
Koko, which is almost only played immediately after scenes where Futari is the background track, seems to carry a haunting air of anguish that none of the other tracks have - in my opinion. For a long time coming, perhaps more than half a decade, since I finished Air, I wanted to play Koko on the flute or the piano. So, I suppose, having actually transcribed it and tested out my transcription, this is quite a personal milestone for me.

This transcription of Koko remains largely faithful to the original, almost to an extreme. It’s definitely one of the most difficult in the set - largely due to the inclusion of the flute solo’s echo - but there’s an ossia without it, to make the piece more accessible. Additionally, I’ve added a small cadenza at the end, that I felt would fit and lend more finality to the ending.

Here are the sheets:

The notes for this (and all the others in the backlog) will probably be up in a few weeks’ time. I envision that the notes for Koko ought to be quite instructive, since most of the challenges in playing the transcription are quite unique and aren’t exactly covered in advanced repertoire.

And on Giniro, it seems to function as a prelude of sorts to Aozora - which isn’t very surprising, since Giniro is an instrumental arrangement of Aozora. All it lacks is Lia’s brilliant vocal performance. With all that out of the way, from this transcription, I think the warmth and tenderness of Jun Maeda’s heartrending composition translates well into piano.

Here are the sheets.

Next up, is Aozora - which will probably come in a month or two.

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44

https://musescore.com/user/1299936/scores/2800171

So I did a thing and tried doing a medley of Key OSTs (plus a ONE track) in piano. It’s still in progress, and the linked sheet only includes the first half aka the portion that I have more-or-less done making a draft out of. These still need a lot of polishing to come out decent at least. The runs in Slow Curve here sounds quite off from the original.

I also tried to make the arrangements as simple as possible. I also made sure for it to be playable on a five-octave keyboard (it’s the one I have). It’s hard to evaluate the difficulty level as I have yet to put into account the fingering for the arpeggio chords and some melodies, but I can see people finding Slow Curve’s jazz-sounding runs to be intimidating.

So far, it seems to me that the Jun Maeda pieces are the most difficult (as they employ more techniques than the rest), followed by Yuuigi (with the jumpy rhythm).

The first three pieces and Ame to Robot are all fairly easy. They all have their fair share of challenges, but are all generally simple.

Included so far are Hibi no Itoma ni, 2 Steps Toward, Mishiyou Kyoku 1, Yuuigi na Jikan no Sugoshikata, Ame to Robot, Morning Glow, and Slow Curve. The ones to be included later are Sha la la Ecstasy (yes you’re reading this right), Burial, Grief, Radiance, Yotsuyu, Nouryokusha-tachi, and Oppidum. BTW, I chose tracks that I haven’t noticed to have gotten a piano cover yet.

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45

Okay. I’ve come across this today on the twitter: https://twitter.com/sowsow252521/status/794746532838809600
This person here made a transcription of “Ai wo Sosogu” theme from Rewrite Harvest festa!
Link to the sheet itself: https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B14ChuW-jCyQU2pkZ2psUnZ2aTQ/view
Sad enough, I can’t check how good it is… But, well :smiley: Hope someone will.

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46

Ooh, that looks like something that I can play. Will take me a long time to practice this though if ever. XD Thank you for sharing :smiley:

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47

Hey all,

Aozora is up.

Like Koko, this transcription also doesn’t deviate much from the original. By that, I mean that the sheets can almost be played by a chamber group as it is. It’s orchestral to an extreme, and hence highly unpianistic - a bit of a notch up from Natsukage in that respect, but on the whole, more manageable imo.

Still, the main vocal line - (a stupendous performance by Lia, no doubt) - is played only on single keys, and there are no octaves or thirds or whatever piano pieces often employ to strengthen the melody, so you’ll really have to make it sing. Also, mimicking Lia’s melodic slurs, loads of acciacaturas have been added into the melody. It makes for a more vocal-ly performance, if executed well. Otherwise, it just sounds gimicky, so feel free to take it out if it’s difficult to perform on your instrument.

Next up, Hane and Yasou.

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48

Hey all,

Hane and Yasou are both done.

Hane is pretty much an orgel arrangement of Tori No Uta, so there’s not much for me to add here. It departs from the rhythmically-driven and highly emphatic atmosphere of the song, and injects slow melancholy to the song; a rather romantic interpretation of the melody. You might want to use the una corda pedal a lot to get a muffled sound from the accompaniment lines. Interesting to note is the subtitle, ‘Plume’, which not only refers to birds’ feathers, but can also be defined as long bands or trails of smoke/vapour, alluding to some of the lyrics of Tori No Uta.

Then there’s Yasou. Clearly, it’s a nocturne, but in my view, quite unlike your typical Chopin or Field nocturnes. Rather, it resembles more of Bartok’s night music, characterized by “eerie dissonances providing a backdrop to sounds of nature and lonely melodies”. Of course, there’s less bird calls and insect chirps here, but you get the picture. This transcription features lots of tremolos, like Aozora before it, to mimic the rising pad sounds. The tremolos can be a really big problem as they will easily come off sounding like a swarm of locusts on an insensitive piano, so you might want to play this on a decent keyboard or electronic piano instead. I had lots of other ideas for this transcription, but ultimately decided on this, deviating least from the original. Suppose I might one day do a set of variations on Yasou.

Next up, Farewell Song.

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49

Goodness, keep up the momentum! How many are left?

50

There’s still Farewell Song to go, and maybe all the unused tracks. Furthermore, I’m looking to overhaul Tori No Uta, Tsukiwarawa, Sousei, and Kannagi in particular. That makes roughly 10. But there’ll also be some more edits here and there, so I guess there’s still a month’s worth of work left at least. At worst, it could stretch to next March.

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51

Felt like sharing my sad attempt at transcribing Yuriha. Yes, the Rewrite OST Yuriha. I’ve been wanting to transcribe Key OSTs since discovering that there’s so much transcriptions found in a lot of Japanese websites and finding out that there haven’t been much transcriptions for the more recent Key OSTs. I also wanted to train my ears, and also to appreciate OSTs much more deeply.

I’ll be selecting some tracks from Rewrite, Harmonia, and maybe LB! to do transcriptions out of, and here’s Yuriha. It’s not quite accurate, but I uploaded a MIDI (linked in the video description) for those who want to improve on it. (BTW, I also did a transcription of Kurohoshibyou before, but it hasn’t accounted for the SFXs yet.)

I already expressed my frustrations in the video description itself, but to be fair, I did learn a lot from the experience. :slight_smile:

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52

I transcribed “evening breeze” from the Angel Beats! piano arrange album Holy. The song was originally played on guitar, but I prefer the slower piano arrangement, so I wrote it down since I didn’t find sheets anywhere. The arrangement turned out to be fairly easy to play, which was a welcome surprise.

Here is a link to the sheet on Noteflight, which you can use to print or listen to it:

If you have any feedback or suggestions, please don’t hesitate to let me know.

I plan to transcribe “girl’s hop” from the same album at some time in the future, but I’m currently distracted by making a Lucid9 medley, so I don’t expect it to be done soon.

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53

Great to see all the work being done to transcribe Keys music!

54

Hey all,

Farewell Song (the full version - the shorter ones are quite different, so I guess I’ll finish them next time) is done.

So before I go on to the more pertinent stuff, here’s some backstory.
Farewell Song is actually the first track I began transcribing, but that was many years ago, and it seemed like too much to put down for solo piano back then, so I had to give up and improve my technique (play more piano). Then my hard drive crashed, wiping all my efforts - and it was then that I started practicing intensely, hoping one day to avenge myself and finish this transcription.

And thus,

There will be notes on this piece in particular, but they will mostly be interpretive in nature.

Farewell song is easily one of the densest, if not the densest, tracks that Key has thus far produced. It’s chock full of little bells, chimes, bass rings, and other nuances, that are all quite deliberate and add up to form a colossal soundscape. This transcription tried to capture as much as it could - no mercy, as usual for this set of transcriptions.

Perhaps one of the most unique things about Farewell song is that there is no resolution in the song (I can argue that even the ending stanzas of the lyrics are ambiguous). While Tori No Uta achieves this as well, by navigating through multiple keys and bouncing melodies around, Farewell song is overwhelmingly dominated by a chorus line that repeats itself umpteen times, only swelling in intensity each time. It both starts and ends on a G note for the melody, and a G chord at both points as well. But despite ‘hitting’ home so many times, the chord progression never allows a cadential resolution, and the melody keeps on springing back to the dominant - effectively, diminishing any sense of resolution from approaching the home key. In essence, the home key does not feel like a home key - a clever move befitting of the title of the song.

In the original song, to accompany this sort of never-ending motif recurrent throughout Air, the song fades out, like Tori No Uta. But where Tori No Uta fades out on “new” material, that is simply rehashed from earlier portions, and effectively defuses tension by way of a long coda passage - ending the song on an uneasy sobering tone, Farewell song does the exact opposite. It begins fading out in the middle of a ‘farewell’ section that’s been repeated for a good minute or two, but it ends right before yet another flying melodic motif kicks in, and ultimately nothing gets resolved. But if every phrase practically ends in a grounded G, is there a need for a resolution?

But I digress. If you don’t really get the song, perhaps the best way is to sing it out, including that wailing bit at the end. Back to the transcription, I’d like to highlight the importance of proper preparation and avoiding injury.

To prepare for it, it’s advisable to tackle the other Air transcriptions, especially the ones marked Advanced along with Mizutamari and Tori No Uta, since Farewell song utilizes techniques covered by the others in the set. Don’t play through the pain; you’re not working out. Also, for Farewell song, it is especially important to train your arms and back, lest you wear out in the middle of the piece.

Next up is cleaning up the set. I might consider simplifying some of the widest leaps in Farewell song, but that remains to be seen. Tori No Uta gets a revamp. Kannagi will be completely overhauled. Tentoumushi will be slightly simplified. The final section of Niji will be slightly changed. The beginning of Esoragato will be changed too. Tsukiwarawa might be changed. All others will be edited a bit, and cleaned up. Not to mention, the 6 unused tracks. Additionally, I’ll try to post videos of the transcriptions, just to give a better clue of how they can be played.

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55

Ahh, this is looking awesome. I’m gonna promote the hell out of the complete collection when it’s done.

56

Thank you for this! Is it OK if I use this and adapt it for a full orchestra?

57

Hello everyone,

It’s a bit of a heresy to post a not-so-high-quality transcription in what I now consider @eptakyrios topic, but here’s what I made, my very first arrangement: Song for Friends which I subtitled “The Story of Kurugaya”.

So basically what I intended was to transcribe Song for Friends fulfilling the following criteria:

  • Toning down the difficulty.
  • Conveying the feelings of Kurugaya’s route.
  • Following the vocal melody but disrupting it at times with the piano accompaniment.

As for toning down the difficulty, mainly what I did was to completely eliminate all chords in the right-hand accompaniment during the first and second verse. While it takes out a lot from the original vibe of the song, I feel like it was necessary to make it playable by not so proficient people like me. Secondly, while the vocal melody and the piano accompaniment could have been combined without omitting much, it would have turned out to be a complete mess of chords and probably a constant 3 voices to be played throughout the whole song.

This leads us to the third point I listed: my approach was to take the vocal melody and the low-pitched accompaniment and, if I could fill in the blanks with the higher-pitched accompaniment, then I would, but I wouldn’t write too many chords which would have upped the difficulty too much. So I ended up taking away the vocal melody when I felt that the piano accompaniment could give a more varied feeling to the melody. This happened mainly at the bridge to the chorus and the final part of the chorus.

Finally, the second point and what I considered to be the most important: making it convey the feelings of Kurugaya’s route. Because of this, I’ll spoiler tag the whole explanation due to obvious Kurugaya route spoilers.

Kurugaya was aside from everyone at the start, and she didn’t really understand what emotions are, so to portray this, I started off sticking to the piano accompaniment during 16 bars, without any of the vocal melody being shown. This would show the dull gray life that Kurugaya was living at that point. To further show this sentiment, I added the note “Senza espressione” which translates to “without expression”, so that these first 16 bars should be played without articulating as much as possible. This means, reducing the accent on the “strong beats” of each bar and avoiding making it sound too much as a legato.

then we jump to the bridge and first chorus, which represent the time where Kurugaya discovers the Little Busters! and starts understanding what Joy is. This is why the note “Festoso”, which roughly translates into “with joy”, is used to indicate a more cheery way of playing, accentuating the higher pitches of the vocal melody over the lower pitches of the accompaniment. The fact that the vocal melody doesn’t have chords helps making it a more plain melody which also helps transmitting that feeling of joy. To further enhance this feeling, the loud, syncopated accompaniment takes the place of the vocal melody at the latter part of the chorus, allowing three more rising notes before returning to a slightly modified vocal melody with extremely loud left-hand octaves.

The following part of Song for Friends is the second verse, with the same melody as in the beginning. In this arrangement, this time the vocal melody is played to depict how Kurugaya had been changed by the Little Busters and had snapped out of her lonely, gray life. To add a bit more of colour to this part, a simple embellishment is made at bars 28 and 29.

Following is the chorus again. The mood is still the same: Festoso, it’s meant to be played just as the first one.

Now we move on to the verse/bridge to the last chorus. At this point, Kurugaya has accustomed herself to the life with the Little Busters! This is conveyed with a “Comodo” (comfortable) way of playing, slowing tempo a bit and using “legato” or a lot of pedal. On a side note, I chose the high pitched part of the accompaniment for this part since it is barely audible but made me feel like it could represent quite well the three girls messing with the Little Busters. During this part, the bullying was barely important. However, then, on the bar previous to the chorus, an octave spam getting progressively louder depicts how the bullying got worse and Kurugaya snapped.

Now we’re approaching the end, with once again, the happy feeling to the chorus due to her spending her days with Riki, however, she is well aware that that it can’t go on forever, so a “Pesante” (heavy, slow and sad) way of playing is advised, slowing the tempo and and avoiding the accentuation of the vocal melody too much. The accompaniment is also changed slightly to combine rising and descending groups of notes instead of just using ascending ones. This helps giving a very subtle sad connotation to the accompaniment, although this effect isn’t too big (this a big failure due to my inexperience composing).

Finally, we have the main motif again except that the left hand is playing some minor chords which accomplish two things. First, minor chords have a gloomy sound that help with the purpose of making the ending slightly sad. Secondly, using those minor chords forced me to use some notes that were off scale, so there’s a small feeling of them not belonging there. This was made to represent the chaotic world in which Kurugaya and Riki were living during the end of the route. Since I know that these chords will be to the liking of anyone, I added and Ossia with the regular accompaniment from the beginning in case you prefer it. And, to finish the piece, the left hand stops playing and the right hand starts rising in a D arpeggio while getting more and more silent until disappearing, just as the world ended at the end of Kurugaya’s route

Well, if you’ve read through that massive text wall, you have my thanks. I’m well aware that the cover is far from perfect, it’s my first one after all, but I still ended up pretty satisfied with the way it ended up being.

If you want to download it, be it the MP3, the MIDI or the PDF file with the sheet music, all of those links are in the description of the youtube video I linked.

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58

A version I might actually be able to play with a bit of practice, very nice :haha:

Though it does get a bit advanced for me in some parts :help:

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59

Hey, same for me. I’m still practicing it cause I can’t get the chorus 100% right :sweat_smile:

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60

Yami no kanata e’s piano version. It sounds so good ( both the original and this ). The midi file used to be there but I am not able to access it. If anybody knows where I can get the midi for this song I would really like it.