MapleStory Sheet Music Site!

Am I the only one not seeing the difficulty in that? That looks perfectly reasonable to play from my perspective...

As for why that second one is simplified, the blocked off chords give you less to worry about, allowing you to focus your attention on that "difficult" right hand. Simply put, if your left hand is simply droning on playing a D chord over and over, it gives you one less thing to worry about, diverting your attention to the right hand. Its the same concept behind hands separate practicing, slow metronome practicing, and melody first practicing.

Music has patterns, and once you can recognize them, it isn't hard. For example, once you recognize that there's a voice exchange between the outer voices in the treble, then reading it becomes not so hard after all.

PS: You can't just drop the whole freaking piece an octave. It changes the mood of the piece completely. Try it some time. Play your Henesys theme two octaves down, and tell me if it keeps the playful, careless mood it has.

Agreed on the orchestral score but not much beyond that unfortunately...

Have you ever transcribed music? Because it doesn't sound like you have. It doesn't sound like you've played piano for very long, at any rate.

First off, I thought I explained pretty well why I thought the blocked out chords were unnecessary, but let me try again: Anyone who can play at a level high enough (which really isn't high at all, really) to interpret the right hand can also play the left along with it. This isn't some made up theory, I've personally watched several individuals learn piano from scratch; believe me when I say that there really isn't that much of a difficulty spike between the two hands that would warrant butchering the song like it has been. The problem isn't that it's simplified, it's that it isn't simplified enough. Look at it again:





If I were trying to simplify a piece for one of my friend's beginning students, something I've had to do several times, I wouldn't just leave that right hand part there. First off, if I was going to make the left hand that simple I would have the melody in the right hand broken down into a monophony, so it would be easier to pick up for a beginner. But if I were doing that, I wouldn't leave the left hand quite that simple, because right now there is so much dissonance between the two hands that it's comical.

Secondly, since I know you're going to home in on this quote here like it's a flower and you're a honeybee fueled by hate:

It doesn't sound like you've played piano for very long, at any rate.

Let me explain exactly what I mean. It's because of the following quote here:

As for why that second one is simplified, the blocked off chords give you less to worry about, allowing you to focus your attention on that "difficult" right hand. Simply put, if your left hand is simply droning on playing a D chord over and over, it gives you one less thing to worry about, diverting your attention to the right hand. Its the same concept behind hands separate practicing, slow metronome practicing, and melody first practicing.

This is an incredibly horrible thing to say to anyone trying to learn to write music. Never, ever ever ever do this. The whole concept of practicing one hand at a time (which once you've played long enough, you'll find is actually wholly unnecessary and actually detrimental to yourself in the long run) is only something people do because trying to figure out a new piece of music with both hands is incredibly difficult for inexperienced players. Normally, what happens is that over the years, you'll gradually find that you'll either drop the habit completely for easier songs as you sightread, or as I find most of my peers and colleagues do, piece together the melody hands-separated for measure or two, maybe a line or two if the piece is particularly challenging, and then put them together.

If a piece is written with the intention of reinforcing the behavior of practicing with your hands separated or focusing on a particular hand, it is badly written. There are no exceptions to this rule. Piano isn't about having one hand play and the other sit around as backup, it's a musical instrument. Let me put it like this: if someone's playing the flute, they play the notes and whatever they entail, whether that be melody, harmony, or anything else. A well written song or part will have the player playing using the entire instrument.

Piano is no different. A good piece of music won't do something like have one hand be unimportant, it'll have both hands working together to produce a song. That's the goal, and it's why I brought up changing the octave of the piece. Most of the time, as a rule, you keep the activity of a song at the center of the piano. This isn't a hard set rule, but it is something that you'll find as you play more and more music. While many songs do have the pianist away from the center often or constantly, it is very rare to find a piece that consistently keeps the melody off in the stratosphere for no reason. This is one of the other reasons I think you aren't very experienced, because you think that changing an octave could throw off the mood of a song. There is no reason, none at all, that something like the Henesys theme wouldn't sound just as good were it brought down an octave. I'm not saying playing everything two octaves below middle C, I'm suggesting that you simply bring the melody down from two octaves above middle C to one above.

The melody for Henesys is written for a flute. The flute has a range that generally starts at middle C and goes up from there, so songs written for flute are much higher. The piano does not have that limitation, and trying to force a melody written for a different instrument with a different range is an awful, awful idea. Would you say a piano playing a part originally written for contrabass, tuba, or bassoon would have to play the melody as low as those instruments originally did?