Has anyone played ELP's "Tarkus" by ear? [Archive] - Jordan Rudess' Community Forums

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apcastle

02-19-2008, 07:09 AM

Hi guys,

Has anyone of you played Emerson Lake and Palmer's "TARKUS" by ear? I don't have the extensive musical training that Emo and Jordan have undergone, and I am simply a "play-by-ear" musician. I can read notes but I don't read it manually - I let my friend "Sibelius 5" read the whole piece for me. With this method, I was able to nail some simple classical pieces, but I haven't tried Tarkus yet. I know it's very long and tedious.

Any tips and advice will be very much appreciated. Thanks!

Gianni

02-19-2008, 10:58 AM

I have about 15 min of Tarkus.
The rest of the song, I'm not so sure about.

I'm building a gp5 with a drummer friend and as soon as we both are finished I'll post it somewhere.

Merka

02-19-2008, 12:12 PM

Mantarkus

02-19-2008, 10:15 PM

Actually Keith Emerson only had a few lessons as a kid and jazz theory by mail.

I never played Tarkus by ear, I used a version that Keyboard Magazine published in 1992. I did study it very very slow though since the sus4 chords are everywhere.

Good luck.

apcastle

02-20-2008, 01:43 AM

I have played Take A Pebble by ear, all the song, but in Tarkus I only have a part...

If you want to play Tarkus, you can divide the song in small parts and try to obtain the music of this small part, and later you can join all the parts that you have extracted by ear and play the entire song

This little "trick" is very useful ;)

Regards and GL ;)

Thanks for the advice.

Anyway, I was able to nail some slow portions of the song like "Stones of Years, Battlefield, and even AquaTarkus". Some fast and corky portions like Eruption, Iconoclast, and Manticore, I can't seem to get the hang of them. They're very tricky. I can't seem to digest how Emo had created this piece. Perhaps I have to do some warmup exercise that Jordan had shared in his DVD.

MarkDTMMZ

02-22-2008, 07:27 AM

apcastle

02-22-2008, 10:22 AM

That'd be awesome if you'd want to post that transcription =P

Click on the link belo to download the ZIP file of the 16-page transcription. It's in a form of a BMP file. I exported this transcription from a MIDI file through Sibelius 5 (music notation software).

http://www.filenanny.com/files/46dff7e742fd76763/Tarkus.zip

As I stated earlier, I dunno how to read notes, unless I used Sibelius as my guide. I play music by ear.

MarkDTMMZ

02-23-2008, 06:09 AM

Click on the link belo to download the ZIP file of the 16-page transcription. It's in a form of a BMP file. I exported this transcription from a MIDI file through Sibelius 5 (music notation software).

http://www.filenanny.com/files/46dff7e742fd76763/Tarkus.zip

As I stated earlier, I dunno how to read notes, unless I used Sibelius as my guide. I play music by ear.

Thanks so much! I appreciate it.

That's awesome that you work mostly by ear. Doing things by ear is way harder IMO..I've had to work on my ear a lot, so I try to read when I get the chance.

Mark

apcastle

02-23-2008, 09:50 AM

Thanks so much! I appreciate it.

That's awesome that you work mostly by ear. Doing things by ear is way harder IMO..I've had to work on my ear a lot, so I try to read when I get the chance.

Mark

thank you, Mark.

well, for me, playing music by ear is a lot easier... for simple and intermediate pieces... but for this one, it's tough because Tarkus has a lot of sixteenth notes in it. basically, what i usually do to be able to decipher pieces like this is to play it very slow first, and then once I got the hang of it, play it faster... hehehehe!

anyway, I thank you guys for sharing some ideas... at least i know what to do now.

vadali

11-17-2008, 03:30 AM

Hey,

the file you posted (http://www.filenanny.com/files/46dff7e742fd76763/Tarkus.zip) is no longer on the site...

perhaps any of you still got a copy of it?

or a different file with the piano score to Tarkus?

thanks,
vadali

Maximus

11-17-2008, 12:23 PM

No, i used a midi file and read the transcription on the computer (only learned eruption to impress other keyboardists) , i guess it can be played by ear but it would be too time consuming.

vadali

11-18-2008, 02:27 AM

http://www.exobit.org/~boo/ELP-DISC/pianobench.html

it got pretty much all we need :)

gylfih

11-18-2008, 09:17 AM

http://www.exobit.org/~boo/ELP-DISC/pianobench.html

it got pretty much all we need :)
:biggrin::biggrin:
That's an amazing link! The Tarkus songbook is very good for all the non-vocal parts, but when there are vocals the organ part just covers that with some chords :frown:. It's easy to work out those little bits though. The other transcriptions are incredible though.

Thank you sooooo much for this link:biggrin:!

vadali

11-18-2008, 11:08 PM

:biggrin::biggrin:
That's an amazing link! The Tarkus songbook is very good for all the non-vocal parts, but when there are vocals the organ part just covers that with some chords :frown:. It's easy to work out those little bits though. The other transcriptions are incredible though.

Thank you sooooo much for this link:biggrin:!

10x! :)
check out KE2, that's a whacked piece, one of my favorites! by the way, which is yours?

gylfih

11-19-2008, 05:16 AM

10x! :)
check out KE2, that's a whacked piece, one of my favorites! by the way, which is yours?
Well, I really like Pictures At An Exhibition, but they didn't write it so it doesn't really count. So, I think I'll have to go for............

Jeremy Bender:tongue:

Athox

11-20-2008, 09:16 AM

Jeremy Bender is great, but Karn Evil 2nd imp. just pwns. Also they did write some parts of Pictures at an Exhibition.

I do prefer Tarkus for some reason though. It's just more complete than KE and PAAE...

Still You Turn Me On is another favorite of mine, because Greg has such a beautiful voice and it just FITS.:cool:

Also Jerusalem... gah... can't choose one :tongue: