As a new owner of one of these great keyboards, I thought I would write a question and answer for all the sorts of questions I had as I learnt to use it.

Can you use a sustain pedal for the organ section?
Yes. In all sorts of ways. If you want to use it to keep the notes going, like a piano sustain but with no decay, you can (real organists would complain about this and call it cheating but I can only respond that there is no pedalboard to fill in the gaps). One of my favorite features is that you can configure the pedal mode so that, when the piano section is active, it acts as a sustain pedal and when the organ section is active, it becomes a toggle pedal to switch the leslie from slow to fast and vice versa.
Read the rest of this entry »

Today you get another live intro for Captain Jack, this time from 1976. Billy played ‘The Bottom Line’ as part of the Turnstiles tour and ended up playing 7 of the albums 8 new tracks there. The version of Captain Jack played there has quite an interesting (if somewhat short) intro – distinctly different to the usual version. Sheet music here. MIDI if you like.

In my mind, Billy Joel’s Captain Jack is one of his finest creations. Originaly from the Piano Man album, it was actually written a few years earlier and was the song that first got him AM airplay. The thing is that, on Piano Man, the song is played by session musicians without the power of its live equivalent. As Joel himself said “‘Captain Jack’ plays with much more power and conviction when a roaring Philadelphia audience sets off a kind of internal explosion and the adrenaline screams through our veins … When we play ‘Captain Jack’, we are actually committing an act of pure brutality.”

I completely agree that the live versions are better and I have many. The best part of many of them is in fact the intro, where Joel plays on the piano what was originally done on an organ.Each version has a variation on the theme and is well worth a listen. As such, I have taken it on myself to transcribe, note-for-note, these intros. While the studio version has been done in a note-for-note form, the live ones have, as far as I can tell, never been written out. So here we go. Live Billy Joel sheet music. Totally free and note for note transcriptions.

The first one I have done is the masterpiece from Songs in the Attic. July 1980, Spectrum, Philadelphia, PA. Powerful stuff. And the corresponding sheet music. There may even be a MIDI if you are lucky. I’m too good to you all.

The Internet’s latest minor phenomenon is Keyboard Cat. Tacked on to any distasteful video, you have instant chuckles. Now you too can play along with Keyboard Cat with my handy Keyboard Cat Sheet Music! Everyone’s favourite organ line and erratic drum line.

If you have not already played Ferry Halim’s Orisinal Winterbells, then you are missing out. Along with the addictive nature of an exponential score increase, there is the looping music that gets stuck in your head. It got stuck in my head. So I transcribed it. Sheet music for Winterbells. Violin, Cello, any other strings you have, piano. In PDF format. You saw it first here.

Being a musician with a programming background (or vice versa), my recent discovery of GNU Lilypond is beyond my wildest dreams. A free means of score production via a text markup language. I am there. However, although the documentation really is good, some features were not documented very well. I wanted to create a lead sheet with chords, multiple verses and a guitar chord dictionary at the bottom. Although I knew that Lilypond could do all of the above, finding out how was rather difficult as examples of lilypond sources files are hard to find. So, after sorting out all the problems (the fretboard feature is great but almost completely undocumented), I have decided to share my source file for Shout to the North. The source and its output. Happy ponding.

In my journey through the internet, I recently found a mysterious CD entitled ‘Billy Joel Sings’. Being the obsessive Joel fan that I am, I recognised that no one seems to know exactly what is on this CD, how it fits into the Joel timeline and whether it is worth getting. There was 1 short review that I could find but I decided that, as I own the CD, I should fill in some gaps.

Read the rest of this entry »

I know it now: I am diverging from the original topic of this blog. However, I am no longer sure what the original topic of this blog was so I can hardly be pulling away from it. Blogging rate has gone down lately as I have been distracted by that Bethesda classic: Oblivion. Whatever people tell you, managing vampirism isn’t easy but a whole lot of fun. Oblivion adds plenty of useful things to Morrowind (how long has the ‘yield’ option been needed?!) and is well worth the buy. But Oblivion is not today’s topic.

I will be reviewing The Billy Joel Keyboard Book – a complete review. Everything you ever needed to know before you buy it. At the same time, I’ll be experimenting with WordPress’ embedded media options (for superior reviewing). Without further ado.
Read the rest of this entry »

Ever needed an orchestral string sample of a string section blaring its stuff?

Need a sample for that final huge note? You came to the right place.

Read the rest of this entry »

So I recently tried my hand at making an ad for a car. Of course, it was not intentional. I am not a huge fan of automobiles – as long as it gets me from point A to point B, I am fine with it. So I was on holidays in New Zealand and stopped to admire the view. After looking back at the car, the scenery just said “This is a car ad”. So I took a photo. After adding a logo and the like, I have my Holden ad.

So the question is, would you buy it?