Rock'n'Roll Archives - Great Scores Sheet Music Blog

Für Elise Boogie Sheet Music

We’ve just shot a video for our Boggie Woogie arrangement of Ludwig van Beethoven’s classical masterpiece Für Elise.

We have plenty of versions of the original piece, tiered by levels of difficulty, but we dcided it would be good fun to turn this piece into a Boogie-Woogie, as the melody and harmony of the piece lend themselves to the Boogie treatment rather well. The sheet music is available here.

In the video I also go over some of the technical aspects of playing the left hand patterns that occur in the piece (from 1:48 onwards). I actually change between two Boogie patterns in the piece – something not normally done on a Boogie Woogie composition, which usually sticks to one type of left-hand pattern.

If you want more Boogie Woogie pieces, or want to learn how to play in that style check out our Boogie Woogie Licks and Jerry Lee Lewis Boogie Collection, which contatins the piece Jerrry Lee Lewis Booige, as well as three guides: one on Left Hand Patterns, one on Right Hand Patterns, and one on Section Endings.

Axis Of Awesome – 4 Chord Song

I thought I’d share this great little video by the musical comedy band Axis OF Awesome. In a very funny way they explain how most pop tunes really share the same chord sequence.

Generally people always assume that rock/pop composers sit hunched over their manuscript paper trying to find great and original chord sequences – this could not be further from the truth. There basically are only a limited number of chord sequences out there, which is why you cannot copyright them – so you are perfectly entitled to take the chord sequence from Let It Be, and write your own melody over it. The net result is that many, many, many songs share the exact same chord sequence.

In the video below they are singing in the key of E major, and the chord sequence is E, B, C sharp minor, A.

So if you look at the sequence neutral of the key, the sequence is I V VI IV – so the chords on the 1st [I], 5th [V], 6th [VI] and 4th [IV] degree/not of any major scale)

Therefore in the key of C major this would be the chords of C, G, A minor, F.
In the key of F major it would be the chords: F, C, D minor, Bb
etc…

The songs they sing are:

Don’t stop Believin’ – Journey
You’re Beautiful – James Blunt
Forever Young – Alphaville
I’m Yours – Jason Mraz
Happy Ending – Mika
Amazing – Alex Lloyd
Wherever You Will Go – The Calling
Can You Feel The Love Tonight – Elton John
She Will Be Loved – Maroon 5
Pictures Of You – The Last Goodnight
With Or Without You – U2
Fall At Your Feet – Crowded House
Not Pretty Enough – Kasey Chambers
Let It Be – The Beatles
Under The Bridge – Red Hot Chilli Peppers
The Horses – Daryl Braithtwaite
No Woman No Cry – Bob Marley
Sex And Candy – Marcy Playground
Down Under – Men At Work
Waltzing Matilda – Banjo Patterson
Take On Me – A Ha
When I Come Around – Green Day
Save Tonight – Eagle Eye Cherry
Africa – Toto
If I Were A Boy – Beyonce
Self Esteem – The Offspring
You’re Gonna Go Far Kid – The Offspring
U & Ur Hand – Pink
Poker Face – Lady Gaga
Barbie Girl – Aqua
You Found Me – The Fray
Don’t Trust Me – 30h!3
Kids – MGMT
Canvas Bags – Tim Minchin
Torn – Natalie Imbruglia
Superman – Five For Fighting
Birdplane – Axis OF Awesome
Scar – Missy Higgins

Easy – so all you have to do now is write a catchy melody, some lyrics and you’ll be rich ;-)!

Thanks to my Godson, Jean-Pierre, for introducing me to this video.

Lincoln Jaeger

Swedish Jerry Lee Lewis Boogie

Hi There

A while back we did a posting about a customer of ours from Sweden who videoed a performance of one of our jazzy Christmas arrangements of Silent Night (you can see the post here)

Well, he has been practicing diligently, and has now performed the very tricky Jerry Lee Lewis Boogie (which is also one of our best-selling pieces of sheet music). Fantastic. Well done Christopher:

He also has his own band, Black Pearl, you should check them out:

Black Pearl gets our vote for the next Grammy nominations :-).

Official Great Scores Blog Launch

Welcome to our official blog launch.

We want this blog to be about you, the customer. We invite your feedback and active participation, be that in suggesting new ideas for tutorials, guides, sheet music, videos, or in answering your (sheet) music specific questions.

We already have a few plans in mind with regards following on from our videos on our youtube page.

Our Jerry Lee Lewis Boogie with it’s tutorial and videos has proved extremely popular:

Click here for the sheet music.

Following on from that we added a Rock’n’Roll licks collection with 4 video tutorials and accompanying sheet music download, here is the first of those four videos:

Click here for the sheet music.

We are planning on doing more of these instructional videos that include accompanying pieces/guides as downloads.

We have already had the suggestion to create a piece from the Rock’n’Roll licks collection (thank you Hendrik).

Further ideas include a guide to how music works – but not your usual boring theory guide, but a more practical view on harmony, and how you can use this knowledge to fully understand music (it’s easier than you think). This series of guides would enable you to work pieces out from your ipod yourself.

Other plans include guides on improvisation, walking bass lines, time signatures, etc, but of course we will try to make these fun.

We’ll also try to answer any questions, and have regular Q&A sessions. To get things started, here is a little teaser question. You often come across bars of music that seem to have many more beats in them, than the time signature suggests. How is this possible?

Here is an “easier” example to solve; there seem to be eight beats of music in the right hand, when there should be four:

For the more seasoned pros, here is a more difficult one. There appear to be two beats missing in the left hand, and extra quavers (8^th notes) in the right hand, but 6 of them, plus a minim (half notes) and some strange note that seems to be a minim (half note) and a quaver (8^th note) at the same time on beat 3:

Now it’s over to you, suggestions on upcoming guides, videos, sheet music and answers to our little teaser question are very welcome.

Take care

Lincoln