Customer Reviews

The Beatles - Complete Scores

5 star:		(149)
4 star:		(54)
3 star:		(18)
2 star:		(10)
1 star:		(8)

 

 

This is an amazingly complete and accurate collection... musicians attempting to learn and to replicate the Beatles sound will not be disappointed. Included are all instrument parts, all vocal parts, and chord names above the staff, with tablature for the bass and guitar parts. What a bargain!

At times, the authors were able to capture some subtlties in the music which had gone unnoticed by me... but a careful re-listening to the song revealed the score to be surprisingly correct.

Regarding some of the complaints in other Amazon reviews, which made me a bit hesitant to buy:

1) Size of the print: it really is not that small, and it is quite legible.

2) Supposed inaccuracy of chord names: it appears that there is a general chord name above the staff, but more detailed guitar-part scoring in the staff... they were not trying to name the exact chord every time... in some cases not every string is being played.

3) Complaints about the inclusion of 'tab' for 'musical illiterates': tab actually includes, concisely, information which standard notation cannot show easily... like exactly which string/fret to use, out of several options on the guitar. And, by the way, Paul McCartney STILL does not read or write standard notation himself.

NOTE: I also compared this book to Hal Leonard's "The Beatles" (21 songs, in their "Transcribed Scores" series), and was amazed how much better The Beatles Complete Scores is.

I have owned at one time or another the 4 Lennon McCartney song books.

The major flaw with those books was that they replicated the melody line and attached a chord, but in most cases they came nowhere near the actual arrangements. This is particularly true on piano based hits such as Hey Jude, Let it Be, Yesterday, Lady Madonna, Back in the USSR etc.

This book gets the original arrangements as played by the Beatles which are generally much better and actually easier to play a lot of times. You can discern McCartney's piano style which is not technically difficult. After all you are accompanying a voice and not playing a melody.

So when you play Let it Be it sounds so much better, and with Hey Jude you think that's all he did to make that sound. Lady Madonna enables you to sound ridiculously accomplished playing something that is technically quite easy. Obviously I am approaching this from a piano player's viewpoint.

As far as guitar is concerned, it has very authentic transcriptions, certainly on the fingerpicking songs such as Blackbird and Julia, which are not that difficult to reproduce.

I have found this book to be unbelievably helpful. You are getting some of the Beatles trade secrets here. You finally get to see the outside the box thinking that separated the Beatles from the rest. I rate this book the best sheet music investment I have ever made, and a must for any aspiring musician. The genius is in the details.

I hopethis review was helpful.

If you read the reviews below, most people will sufficiently let you know about the minor inaccuracies in the orchestrations, vocals, etc. From what I've seen, however, 99% of the songs are dead-on accurate for the guitars and bass.

If you want to learn how to play guitar, here is a way to learn from the best! Same with bass....and even piano (though anything other than "Let It Be" will be challenging for a newcomer to the instrument). If your band wants to be the next "1964", here is their owner's manual! The only thing that this book is lacking is the type of guitar and amp you should be using when playing the song in question!

Only two things that make my teeth grind: 1) They will show a C# barred at the 4th fret, go to another chord, then come back to the C#, but now its barred at the 2nd or 3rd fret (even though the handwritten chord letter is correect). This is probably not the author's fault, but rather some lackey forced to write this stuff down. 2)While the transcriptions are accurate, some are shown as played with a maximum amount of difficulty. Prime example is "Blackbird"...there is a much simpler way to play the same notes EXACTLY, without having to make comparatively difficult fingerings.

I would definitely recommend spending some bucks to get this book...if even to see the transcription to "You Know My Name (Look Up The Number)"!

This book is as good as it gets - period. All titles from The Beatles catalog of British & American releases (during the group's career together) are represented. That's the first major plus of the book - you get The Beatles' arrangements of all their covers from Buddy Holly, Chuck Berry, etc. They are great fun to play and many Beatles' versions are better-known than the originals. I know of no other source for these arrangements.

As mentioned by many other reviewers, you get a pretty heroic stab at scoring all the instruments heard on every song. This admirable attempt gets you on the right track (in the right key signature, etc.), but falls short on detail of all but the simplest (usually from the early years) songs. Clearly The Beatles had extensive use of multiple 4 track machines and eventually 8 tracks as they matured. This book "scores" usually only 5 parts. It would be impossible to score ALL the over-dubs and extremely lengthy to include all instrumentation, notes and George Martin's orchestral arrangements. So, I pick a bone with the authors using the title, "The Complete Scores". To me, that term means something very specific which is not appropriate for these types of recordings. The Beatles, George Martin and his engineers were awsome craftsmen. The layers of sounds we hear on the finished records are a one-time snapshot of their creative process - often with somewhat muddy results. For example, "I Am The Walrus" does have a guitar part - pretty lost in the mix and not represented in the book. I just don't think it's possible to get the "Complete" details on these recordings.

To save space, the authors often have you incorrectly play a single part for each verse repeat. I know this is getting picky, but the building bass line is the counter-melody in "Something" and the dualing guitar fills in "The Ballad of John & Yoko" change as the song builds. Both are important to each song's development and resolution...

In fact, if you really really try, you can find little errors in many songs; mis-titled chords here, incorrect licks there. The non-standard guitar tuning referenced in "Rain" I believe is wrong...BUT, pop in a CD and open the book - you'll get an extremely good idea of what to play. By scoring all the main parts, the authors make this book good as gold for aspiring cover bands.

It may not really be "The Complete Scores", but this book is surely a treasure map to some of the finest and most creative recordings in pop music. I love it!

WORTH THE PRICE? YES! PERFECT? NO.

- But still a very commendable attempt to score the Beatle's music. Considering that this book was written in 1989, you would have to assume that most of the work was accomplished using only the sharpest of musical ears and an old 33-1/3 vinyl record-player. The sheer volume of the book (1100 pages) suggests that years of work and preparation were involved.

The bad news is that there are mistakes here, so even though the scores appear to be hand-written, there are what we call "typos". For example: The ending of "Cry Baby Cry" is missing (Can you take me back weary people...). Also, if a song is written in "repeat" mode, you only get the guitar/bass notes for the first time around. Finally, the transcribers took the liberty to just "guess" what the notes were (such as the orchestral crescendo in "A Day in the Life", but that was an impossible task anyway).

The good news is this book contains the most exhausting note-by-note transcription I have ever seen of any Beatles book. Infinitely many more notches above the "fake-books" (which only offer lyrics, a simple piano accompaniment and guitar chords, all in the wrong key). The guitar solos are there, the horns are there; it even includes the sitars and tablas in the George Harrisons compositions... Hell, they even score Ringo's drums!

The great news is that the book is so close to perfect, it has achieved "nik-pick" status. In other words, the only ones that complain are the perfectionists (like myself); even though we know way deep down inside that there is no way to score the backward sound-effects in "Tomorrow Never Knows".

The format is a little strange. Staves are almost always reserved for vocals, guitars, bass and drums (which works for most songs), even though they are not used sometimes (leaving pages and pages of "whole rest notes" for the contempory songs). Each page yields an average of 12 measures of music composed on 9 parallel staves.

The main reason I bought this book was because I was curious how anyone could ever decipher Revolution 9. It was an expensive gamble, but I won! If the book was perfect, I would have awarded it the highest score possible. If only they would only re-edited it...

A job well done by those 4 guys (not John, Paul George & Ringo but instead to the authors; Tetsuya, Yuji, Hajime and Goro)!

CMcF

This is filled with inaccuracies and sketchy. I don't doubt the transcriber labored much, but a work such as this requires a team of transcribers comparing versions, some basic research, and--most important--careful editing. It is the responsibility of the publisher to make sure its books are what it claims they are. This is a collection of sketches, not of scores.

Compare this transcription of "Eleanor Rigby" with George Martin's score printed (in part) in his "All You Need is Ears". George Martin probably keeps a library of his Beatle arrangements. Why didn't the publisher contact him? The frequent and often nonsensical mangling of lyrics is inexcusable. Compare the clarinet rhythms on the recording of "When I'm 64" to what is mis-notated here. Listen to "Blackbird": that's not a bass drum; that's McCartney tapping his foot. I could go on.

Also recommended: PENTATONIC SCALES FOR THE JAZZ-ROCK KEYBOARDIST by Jeff Burns.

I have to marvel at the reactions of many Amazon reviewers to this book. Here we have an attempt to transcribe nearly every sound put on to record by The Beatles offered at a very fair price and people are giving it one star ratings. Meanwhile another Hal Leonard offering, The Beatles Complete - Volumes 1 & 2, which is an arrangement for piano, guitar, and vocals bearing little resemblance to the original recordings receives nothing but positive reviews. I understand that these transcriptions are not wholly accurate and the use of repeats often glosses over subtle variations in the actual recordings, but this is still a work of monumental proportions. One must not lose sight of the fact that there were no original scores kept with the desired level of accuracy. Any scores needed to come from transcriptions of the original recordings. The fact that four musicians were able to sit down and reverse engineer complex studio tracks to this level of detail is impressive. While these transcriptions are not perfect, they are quite good. It would be easy to get the impression from reading these reviews that this book was so inaccurate as to be useless. This is simply not the case. I have owned this book for over 10 years and still find it remarkably useful. I have learned a great deal about the construction of pop songs from this book. I have been able to create my own arrangements using these transcriptions as a starting point. I have even been able to create reasonable facsimiles of some of the original recordings using these transcriptions in a home studio environment. I understand 3 and 4 star ratings for this book but anything less than that really seems like an overreaction to me.

I agonized before buying this book of scores, especially given the strong criticism of some the other reviewers and the rather steep price. I took the plunge and don't regret it at all.

The arrangements are virtually perfect and accurate. Yes, there are a few errors, but they're rare and obvious (and it's not like you're obligated to play the incorrect notes!). For a guitarist, having the music, tabs, and chords allows you to invest as much or little effort as you want in learning different parts of each song - the transcriptions compliment each other.

Criticisms -- most notably the format is WAY too small given the detailed information. Even though I have perfect vision, I find that a magnifying glass comes in very handy.

There is a lot of annoying little stuff which wouldn't have cost the publisher any extra to avoid. There are no running titles (the title is listed only on the first page of the song), so you can't easily thumb thru the book to find a particular song. And even though the songs are arranged in proper alphabetical order, the table of contents lists all titles starting with "The" under "T". Which is really weird.

All in all, a wonderful investment. Get it as a gift.

Let me begin by saying that this book has a large number of deficiencies and errors, many of which have been noted in the Amazon.com reviews. Despite this, I have given it five stars because I do not expect anything better to be produced in my lifetime. There is a huge quantity of accurate information here in a very accessible form at a very small price. You can get a very good idea of what the book is like by reading the reviews here on Amazon.com. Basically, most of the songs that the Beatles recorded through Help are transcribed quite accurately. As the songs became more complex (say Rubber Soul on) some of the transcriptions can be more fairly characterized as "sketches." However, the sketches are some of the best on the market. Someone wanting more completeness would do well to price school band music where the charts for a single jazz standard run about half the price of this book. If you have any knowledge of the music publishing industry, you should have a good idea of what it would cost Hal Leonard to make significant improvements or someone else to produce a competing text. Might as well buy this and make corrections in the margins.

This is the book that all musical Beatles fans (at least those who can read music) have been waiting for. Every song the Beatles ever recorded on album or single. Very accurate, though I have found a few miniscule errors, and easy to read. The inclusion of tablature for guitar and bass is a big plus.

The only problem with this book is something the authors had no control over, and that is the many sound effects the Beatles used that are impossible to transcribe on a musical staff. For example, the transcription of John Lennon's sound collage, called "Revolution 9", is almost unintelligible. Of course, "Revolution 9" is also impossible to perform on stage.

***A must-have for any Beatles fan who can play and read music***