How Do You Find the Chords to Chart Pro Keys?
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I don’t really play piano, so this is kind of difficult to find out. It’s even worse when I want to chart orchestrated parts such as: strings, brass, all that stuff. Help with this would be greatly appreciated.
lots of people search for a MIDI of the song they’re charting; there’s plenty of sites out there to look through (a few good ones are listed in C3’s tutorials) and you’re likely to find one that’s at least partially accurate (unless the song you’re charting is really obscure). personally, i do it by ear, but i know there’ll come a time i’ll have to fall back on MIDI.
I know very little about piano, so what I did, assuming I couldn’t find a free midi online, was search youtube for “song name piano cover”, and often you can find a digital video tutorial that is very easy to follow, and will give you everything you need to chart it. Here is an example video of what I mean. However, be weary that sometimes these tutorials include vocal parts, and sometimes even bass or guitar, but it should be pretty easy to tell them apart. However, that also means there is a good chance they will include strings, or any other instruments you may want to chart on keys. I also use these to help chart vocals, since as I mentioned vocals are sometimes included.
If you read music, music books are an option. While there aren’t as many “authentic” keyboard transcriptions and boks like there are for guitar, there are still several to be had. The next best choice are books with arrangements for “piano / voice / guitar”, which usually have a single, “condensed” arrangement for piano plus chord maps and lyrics for others to play and sing along. Finally, some of those “authentic” guitar books are sometimes good for figuring out a keyboard part as well. The chord listings can help you pick out by ear what the keyboards are playing, and some books have more prominent keyboard parts transcribed for guitar.
If you don’t read music, the chord listings I mentioned can still help you pick stuff out, as long as you know what the notes are in a given chord. You can find charts online for that. And speaking of online, if all you want are chord references, there are lots of free guitar tabs and chord maps that people have released for tons of songs, all at your fingertips courtesy of Google.
I’ll tell what I had to do for my Chicago project. There was one book that gave me the basic chords for a song. I would use that as a starting point but in the end most of the charting was done painstakingly by ear especially any solos. That was due to the nature of most of the songs being deep cuts. If it’s not to obscure try looking for a good midi
Learning to use your ears will give you the best results. Finding sheet music/MIDI or covers on youtube help a bunch, but if they don’t sound right to you you should try your best and author what you think does sound right. It takes a lot of practice, but it’s worth it.
I agree wth Drihscol: ultimately the song itself should be your primary reference. Everything else is just to help you figure out what you’re hearing. At the very least, have a keyboard or a keyboard app handy, and be prepared to do lots of plunking in search of notes. REAPER itself of course can be used for this, but I find it easier to have a separate keyboard by my side for experimentation.
Both of those sites will take any song you give it an automatically analyze the chords. They’re not guaranteed to be right, and in fact will probably contain errors, but it’s a great way to get started if you have trouble hearing chords.
Try to search on youtube for Synthesia game videos.
Or you can use videos where you see fingers at piano, like this
As well i can share with you 2 pictures of pro piano i’ve made with notes (as they appear on Reaper) on keys
I dont know how you Rock Band guys test your customs, but as a Phase Shift user i just exporting the modified .midi file to test song folder, alt tab to Phase Shift, and restart a song in practice mode, so i can test the changes in 10-15 seconds after i’ve made them.
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