The Beatles - Complete Scores | Full Band Sheet Music for Guitar Bass Drums Piano Vocals | 210 Songs in Standard Notation and Tablature | Deluxe Hardcover Collector Songbook for Musicians Teachers

This is one of the best books on Beatle music that I have ever seen. In fact, I've been using it for the past several months uninterrupted...and having a blast! While it's not a 100% accurate (I have never found any music transcription book free of error), it clearly is a most highly commendable book and worth every penny! Nothing short of fantastic! My only quibbles are as follows: 1. Claims to have all Beatle songs, but doesn't have Free as a Bird (one of my favs) and Real Love (I don't really miss this one anyways). 2. The type they used is too small (something like 8 pt or smaller) and often too difficult to read, especially for old duffers like me. A larger type would have been much nicer, but then it would turn this very heavy book into a massively heavy book. 3. Some of the notation was confusing to me, like the shorthand they used for repeating the notes from previous bar into the next bar rather than typing out the notes again. I was able to figure this out, but it would have been nicer to include a more complete musical notation legend at the beginning of the book. But these are minor complaints...I really have nothing but praise for the book. So, if you'll excuse me, I'm going back to my piano to play Lady Madonna.....

I got a hammered dulcimer for my birthday and wanted to play the music I listen to, Beatles, Who, Led Zeppelin, even Bee Gees, so it's suddenly put me in a position of checking for the good, bad, and mediocre of music books. This is one of the better ones. Put the complaints about the print size aside, if you aren't conducting a band chances are you're likely to transcribe just your instrument. Some of the phrasing is cut at an annoying place, Lucy in the Sky comes to mind, but get off your lazy duff. Forget chords, this book has staff music for every voice, guitar, bass, drums, sitar, and what not that made it to the recording. No Mellotron transcribed for guitar here. For example While My Guitar Gently Weeps, you get the piano lead in, George's acoustic, Eric Clapton's electric, and Macca's bass. Norwegian Wood has the sitar parts. I've been able to read music for 25 years and learned from this book that drums can be charted on a staff as well. It's not that hard and worth the effort, especially if like me you're on a solo instrument. Some bass bits, like the intro to Lucy in The Sky, need to be worked in and they're there. Having the drums, take Lucy again and that bit just before the chorus, is icing on the cake.

As other reviewers have noted, this book is encyclopedic. It covers virtually all of the Beatles' catalog, with strong emphasis on their work after they started writing their own songs. The tab notation is a real help; I do read, but as has been pointed out, while standard notation tells you a note, that note appears in several places on a guitar, and the ability to find the exact voicing they used is essential to getting that sound down. This really shows up in some places where they use unusual versions of a common chord. The only drawback is that the print is on the small side as others have said. The book simply isn't the size of 8 1/2 x 11 (A4) sheet music. The only remedy for that is printing it larger. If you have the hardware around the house to photocopy it and enlarge it, you can do that for the songs you want to work on. That's not exotic, expensive hardware any more, and doing that helps a bit.

I just received this, so I have only first impressions to give. I agree with other reviewers that the type is incredibly small and a bit difficult (but not impossible) to read. However, as it is a huge book that includes the scoring for all the instrumentation and vocals, I sort of expected this. Lets face it, this is not something you take to a gig and hoist up on a music stand in front of you! I see no problem with scanning and enlarging the print! Some of the other reviewers have pointed out that this does not include every single song recorded by the Beatles, just the ones that they wrote. I don't feel like going through every one of my old Beatles' LPs (I have the complete Beatles catalog on vinyl as well as copies in CD) But going through the table of contents, its clear this includes a huge number on non-Beatles penned songs. This includes Carl Perkins' numbers such as Matchbox, as well as some very old songs such as those included on the U.S. "Early Beatles" LP. E.g. "Anna", "Chains", "Bad Boy" etc. So it possibly is missing some very old non-Beatles penned tunes, but I don't think there are very many missing. If this book is missing some few songs, I suspect there were licensing issues that could not be resolved. So I see no reason to ding the product for this minor imperfection. I bought this for the Beatles songs, and in particular, for the Sitar and Indian instrumentation, which this has. I have been playing the main melody lines for Norwegian Woods and Within You Without You on Sitar, mostly by ear and memory. But some of the instrumental parts in WYWY that are played by the Dilruba (Indian Violin) have been illusive for me. Although they are labeled as "violin", this does appear to be the Dilruba parts, so I should be able to easily translate to Sitar. I will update this review if I feel I need to modify it, but right now this appears to be what I was looking for, and well worth the (rather large) expense, as there is no where else to get this information. I suspect that if you play in a Beatles cover band, this would be invaluable.

PROS: Una bella edición con la obra completa de The Beatles, incluyendo letras y la partitura de los principales instrumentos de cada canción: línea melódica de la voz, guitarras, bajo, bateria, teclados, otras voces (cuerdas, etc), dependiendo del arreglo en la versión de estudio. Acabo de recibir el libro, así que no he revisado exahustivamente, pero de ver las piezas que conozco creo que son transcripciones fieles. El precio que dá Amazon Mexico es más que razonable, comparado con el precio en US y en las tiendas de música en Mexico. El envío fue gratis y me llegó en menos de una semana. SIMPLEMENTE GENIAL. Este es un libro de todo fan de The Beatles, músico o no, debería tener. CONTRAS (SI HUBIERA): Un libro pesado, prácticamente imposible de montar en un atril, y aunque consiguieras hacerlo, el tamaño de la tipografía no te va permite leerlo desde una distancia razonable para intentar leer y tocar a la vez... pero ¿¡QUÉ DIABLOS!? ¿¡A quién le importa?! Tener tanta musica compilada, transcrita fielmente, en un solo tomo, a este precio, c'mon!! En mi humilde opinión, no creo que exista una mejor opción de compra para tener la música escrita de The Beatles, diferente a este libro.

I'm not sure the written music score can ever describe the emotions of a song. If you want to play it like the Beatles, you'll have to go back through time and be born in Liverpool. Failing that, there is enough here to take away for the pleasure in producing your own version of a momentary burst of creativity by these four universal and accidental collisions of nature.

Great resource for any musician that is interested in accurately recreating the Beatles magic. It really is all in this book. Fantastic.

Si te gustan los Beatles y deseas tocar sus temas en este libro tienes TODOS LOS ARREGLOS ORIGINALES de todos y cada uno de ellos. Originales, nada de ediciones cutres que circulan por la red con simplificaciones impagables. Todos los arreglos de Piano, Bajo, Bateria, Guitarras, Voz, Cuerdas y todo lo que cada tema tenga. IMPRESCINDIBLE. UN AUTENTICO TESORO, Podria pasar mi vida entera enfrente del piano con este libro tocando todos los temas <3

Ich schreibe diese Rezension nur, um diejenigen zu beruhigen, die wie ich zuvor wegen der negativen Kritiken vor dem Kauf zurückgeschreckt sind. Um das Ergebnis vorweg zu nennen: Die Kritik ist maßlos überzogen, und diese Ausgabe ein echter Gewinn. Das Buch wird als Hardcover-Ausgabe in einem eigenen Kartonschuber geliefert und macht bereits äußerlich einen sehr gediegenen Umfang. Die Notation ist - anders als einige Kritiker einwenden - nicht zu klein geraten. Sie entspricht etwa dem Format, das ein Klassik-Fan von Bärenreiter-Taschenpartituren kennt. Als Klavierspieler kann ich mühelos aus dem Buch abspielen. Das Notationsformat entspricht allerdings nicht dem bekannten edlen Stich, den man von deutschen Partiturverlegern kennt, sondern ist in seiner äußeren Gestaltung ein kleinwenig einer handschriftlichen Partitur angelehnt. Dies stört die Funktionalität aber überhaupt nicht. Die Seiten wirken auch nicht unübersichtlich oder gedrängt. Man darf hier nicht übersehen, dass die Beatles in ihren Songs nicht so viele Stimmen gesetzt haben wie Richard Strauss, sondern dass meistens zwischen acht bis 10 Tonlinien ausreichen. Oft spielt "die eigentliche Musik" dabei nur auf den beiden Notenlinien eines Pianosatzes. So können viele Songs komplett auf zwei bis drei Seiten wiedergegeben werden. Völlig übertrieben finde ich das Gerede von den angeblich vielen Fehlern. Den ein oder anderen Patzer mag es geben; insgesamt macht die Ausgabe aber, die ja vom Hören her entstanden ist, einen hervorragenden Eindruck. Ich habe etliche Songs auf dem Klavier nachgespielt und eindeutig von dieser Ausgabe profitiert. Denn jetzt kommt der springende Punkt, den jeder kennt: Die meisten Ausgaben der Beatle-Songs sind in so armseliger Weise notiert, dass sie den Originalen auch nicht im entferntesten nahe kommen. Die Synkopen fehlen, die Begleitung beschränkt sich auf simplifizierende Akkorde und interessante Zwischenstimmen fehlen. Ursprünglich fürchtete ich, mit dieser Ausgabe nicht arbeiten zu können, weil eine Partitur u.U. zu unübersichtlich ist. Auch diese Befürchtung kann ich zerstreuen: Man erkennt deutlich, dass etliche Songs vom Klavier aus erfunden worden sind und dabei keinen komplizierten Fingersatz haben. Ich bin kein Profimusiker, kann jedoch ganz leicht die Stimmen von Fool on the Hill zusammenfassen, während meine Bekannte z.B. mit ihrer Geige die Singstimme spielt. Das Stück klingt nun richtig gut. Andere Songs konnte ich mit Hilfe der Partitur und einem Notationsprogramm (Sibelius) hervorragend für Klavier und Geige bearbeiten, weil die Autoren die eigentliche Arbeit bereitst besorg haben. Norwegian Woods oder Strawberry Fields höre ich mir jetzt gerne mit dieser Partitur auf den Knien an... Ich glaube, ich hätte dieses Werk auch für 200 Euro erworben, so viel neuen Spaß hat man mit den lieb gewonnen Songs. Zu diesem Preis kann ich jedenfalls jedem Klavierspieler nur raten, zuzuschlagen.