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-m32: Maybe you could add a courtesy accidental to the An in the R.H. here, as it could be accidentally mistaken for an A# (you also added one in m42 it seems)Yeah that's a good spot for one, added it
-m37-38: I think I hear a C# on beat 1.5 of these two bars in the L.H., but I'm not 100% sure.It's definitely a bit difficult to pick apart from the F#M vocal chords in m37. That said, including both notes together on beat 1.5 sounds too rich, and I like the sound of an F# better than a C# because it creates a stronger separation from the C# on beat 4.5 of the measure before and avoids carrying over the C#M sound. I can hear an F# much more clearly in m28 though, so I'm more convinced that's what's really played.
-m66: Maybe instead of tying the R.H. note to that 8th note, you could just change it to an 8th rest, so it doesn't look like there's a connection between that note and the next line.Oh yeah, I think that's a good idea! Gets rid of that super tall stem too
-m67: I don't hear the high Eb on beat 2.5 of the R.H., I'm pretty sure that's just an overtone.I still hear it really clearly, at about the same volume as the E from m66 in fact. It's clear enough that in my ears it overpowers what would be the fundamental lower octave if it were an overtone, and I don't think that's characteristic of piano timbre is it? There aren't really any comparable overtones in the adjacent notes either, so I'm convinced the higher octave is well-defined enough that it must've been played intentionally, and I've still left it in.
m34 RH beat 3.5: I meant an E in the RH. Although, now that I'm listening again I hear that D in the LH too.Oh right, I totally misread and missed that. Added it
I was hearing those extra notes in the piano part specifically (along with that E in m34). It might not hurt to transcribe those parts as they were performed, even if it is a bit more awkward to play (I think this was a live recording, wasn't it? maybe not, idk).m44 RH beat 3.75: I think I can make out an F# in m44 but I can't hear anything resembling a C# and it would be difficult to play anyway, so I added just an F#.
m12: I know this is nitpicky, but the diminuendo here is ever so slightly not aligned with the crescendo in m10-11Thanks for being nitpicky, I spend hours pixel-perfecting sheets myself lol. I used the align dynamics tool this time so it should be right
m32 LH beat 3.5: There is a low C# hereYup I hear it, added
m34 RH beat 3.5: There's an E under the G# hereI hear a D natural in the piano actually. I think the timpanis are tuned to E, but the D natural chromatic approach seems more in line with the low C# you mentioned in m32. I added it instead.
m44 RH beat 3.75: There are some additional notes (C# and F#) under the A#I don't hear any new notes, all I hear is the sustained F#M in the chorus with those pitches. If anything I might barely hear an anticipatory F natural on beat 3.75, but I don't think it sounds very good played there since F natural would be immediately reiterated on the next bar. Speaking of, I removed the lower G# octave from m45 because I didn't notice it's kind of an awkward position coming from the 16th A#.
m48 RH beat 2.5: I think there's a C# under the F#I don't hear this one either. I'd rather keep the clarity in the melody line anyway, like it does in m54
m67 RH beat 2.5: I'm not hearing the high Eb hereI hear it pretty clearly myself, and I'm pretty sure it isn't an overtone or anything. Even though it's kind of weird palcement, I think the regular ascending scale sounds kind of bland leading into the most complex voicing of the song. I think adding the octave helps a bit.
m69 LH beat 3: There should be a Db hereYeah I hear that too. Added it
m74 LH beat 1: I think there's an additional Bb an octave above the low one.I think you're right that there's an octave, but I think an A1 is too low. The tone down at the bottom of the piano doesn't sound delicate enough to me, so I added an upper octave instead.
m81-81: Maybe put a crescendo here like in m76-77.I left it out on purpose just like in m21. Most of the phrases in this song fade out at the end, and I don't want the energy to increase into a rallentando/smorzando
If you want, you can disable all those natural signs in the key changes by doing to Document > Document Options > Key Signatures > uncheck "Cancel outgoing key signatures". Unfortunately, this also includes key changes from more to less sharps/flats, but luckily you don't have that here so it won't be an issue. I just think doing this eliminates unnecessary visual clutter.That's a great tip, I had no idea you could do that! Thanks, looks a fair bit nicer without those accidental clusters
Also nitpicky, but Halo 3 was published by Microsoft Game Studios specifically, not the company as a whole... it's probably fine either way though.I was going off the copyright credit on the soundtrack boxart. Bungie isn't actually even credited as copyright holders but it feels like they should be on there too ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
Great arrangementThanks!
They're still there in m12 thoughWhoops guess I forgot about the second time
I think I see what you're thinking, but I think the Ab is just a passing tone, not a part of the chord. m7b9 chords don't appear that often anyway I believe, because they don't really sound that good. The Gm7 isn't a strange chord to have in Eb major, so I don't think people would quickly forget the Ab's they played before.Alright sounds fine to me, changed it back to Gm7 with no courtesies
-For m8 RH, I've always heard the melody note on beat 3.5 as being an octave lower than you currently have it. I know it's a weird jump from the chord on beat 3 but that's what I hear as the more prominent note (you could leave out the F for playability if you want). I also hear a D on beat 4, you could include that instead of the F there if you wanted. Also shouldn't the chord symbol here be something more like Fm/Bb or Bb7sus2?After talking about it a bit, I think this is what's going on in there
-For m23, you have the chord labeled as a Bb9sus in the sheet, and Static listed it as a Bb9sus4, but the 4th isn't actually there—it's a 7sus2 chord. Whenever I see "9sus" or "13sus", I usually infer that it's a sus4, but in this case since it's a sus2 which is a bit more uncommon I think just calling it an Fm/Bb might be better. I'm no expert on this though, so let me know if I'm wrong.So we talked about this for a bit and it seems like Bb7sus2 is a better representation of the movement from V to I, but chords are very hard so if anyone else can present a case one way or the other I'd love to learn lol
Looks great! The ties especially look much better now, but if you wanted to do some more tiny adjustments, I'd align the right side of the ties as the beginning of m4, and in m7.I'm all about tiny adjustments. Fixing the ties already took hundreds of them, so I can do a couple more
-m4 and m12: The Fb's in the second layer here should be En's too.Oops fixed em
-m11: The courtesy accidental Ab here isn't really needed right? You're not coming from an An or something.I put the accidental there and in m3 because Ab isn't part of Gm7 so I thought it might be easy to miss, but maybe it's just a m7b9 chord instead. I changed the chord symbols to include the b9, but I'm still new to these chord things so let me know if that's right
-m20: The should be a staccato on the 8th note Bb at beat 4.5Ah yeah it looks like Finale keeps the midi duration from the import despite the written duration, so I didn't notice when listening back. Yet another thing to watch out for I guess. I just changed them all to staccatos, the m22 durations feel more staccato-y to me
-m22: Beat 2 and 4 (the C and Eb) are played shorter, maybe add staccatos or change them to 8th + 8th rests?
-m23: I hear a grace note C before the D before beat 3.Oh yeah, I had it in the original project but I must've accidentally deleted it at some point. Good catch
-m25: You can add the G to the grace note before beat 4.5 too: the thirds aren't that hard to play. If you do prefer a single note, I think it'd be better to choose the G anyway, as that is the melody.I mentioned this is Static's feedback too, but I think it's kind of difficult to cleanly move 4 into 3-5 there at high tempo. It's a lot easier for me to just roll the whole hand from 2. I think either the top or bottom grace note is able to get the point across fine and they sound much different at tempo, but I'm not a very good pianist lol so if it's not actually a very hard fingering I can still change it
-m28: There should be a staccato on the 8th note D at beat 4.5More of 'em, very sad
-m29: Again a staccato on the D but now on beat 4
-m30: And like in m22, a staccato or 8th+8th rest at beat 2 and maybe beat 4, though that one is a bit longer.
-m33 and 41: I hear a grace note Cn before beat 1I left these grace notes out because the player doesn't have much time to reegngage the pedal before they have to lift off the chord and move to the arpeggio, and I didn't want them to catch the clash from the grace note. Also freeing up the pinky lets you use it for the Eb to start the arpeggio which is a slightly nice. This also made me realize m37 wasn't the easiest thing in the world to pull off, so I moved the bottom Bb octave up to Eb instead
-m37: Grace note Ab here too
-m45: Though not necessarily wrong, maybe you could rewrite the grace note before beat 4.5 as a C# instead of a Db, as the song is in a modulating part where these chords fit into Eb major more.I'm not sure about this one. I think it might be up to the player, but it's easier for me to parse the single natural accidental as a minor second rather than reprogramming my brain for the only sharp in the piece
At least for readability, I think leaving it as Db is more useful than indicating where the modulation is going-m17-32: Maybe you could add tenuto mark ings or legato slurs to the notes that don't have a staccato dot (except the tied notes), so it's a bit clearer which notes aren't staccato too.I added some slurs, I think they make less visual clutter than tenutos
-m33 and on: I'm not really sure if the bass pattern here needs those extra octaves and fifths: this voice is pretty subtle (if there at all sometimes), but it makes the left hand pattern a bit tiring because of all the repeated notes in the pinky. I think a better pattern would be something like the beginning part.I changed up the pattern a lot to have fewer doubled notes and a lot of alternating octaves instead. I added the fifths because unlike the first section the RH doesn't play offset accompanying chords, so the continuous bass octaves sounded kind of lame to me. There's a low guitar in there playing power chords that you can pull from, so I included some fifths for a little additional motion
I meant in the LH, but there is an Eb there in the RH too.Ohh that's actually a much better place. Switched it to the LH
on page 3 the b9 of Eb7(b9) should be Fb. Likewise, for Db7(b9) it's technically Ebb, but keep it as Dn since it's simpler and matches the chromatically-moving bassline in m38.Ahh I knew I'd miss something. Thanks for the catch
The game was co-developed by Gulti, so you can add them to the copyright info.Sure, I usually reference the box art but it shouldn't hurt
Any time you have a grace note in the middle of a set of four 8th notes (such as m5 beats 3-4), you should beam those back together. For some reason, Finale breaks beams when you add grace notes.Oh that's annoying. I wonder if it's because they consider a grace note a short duration, like how a 16th would break the beam... I'll have to keep that in mind in the future
There's a lot of ties that are touching surrounding notes (m7 RH beat 3, m15 RH beat 1, etc.) I'd go through the sheet and adjust those.I've always thought Finale's ties looked bad, and now I know why empirically lol
There are also ties that don't match direction when they go across systems, such as m3-4.
You're a bit inconsistent when it comes to using dotted half notes. Throughout all of Page 1, you use dotted halves on beat 1, but on Pages 2-3 you use half notes tied to quarters. I think just making all of them just dotted halves would look better and reduce clutter from the ties.Yeah I forgot this happens when you start from a midi import. Went through and made everything more uniform, and it did help a lot with clutter
Similarly, you're also inconsistent when using dotted quarter notes. Page 3 has a bunch, but on Pages 1-2, you use quarters tied to 8ths instead (or the other way around). I'd just make them all dotted quarters.
m14 RH beat 4.5: If you want, you can unhide the half rest here and flip the ties to their normal positions. the ties at the end of m14 should match the ones at the start of m15.After fixing the tied quarter on beat 3 a lot of the clutter disappeared, so I think it looks ok with normal ties on the last note
There's other spots you can hide rests, such as m37, 39, and 41 RH. You already did that in m33 anyway. Leaving it is fine too.After changing the tied half notes to dotted I felt like the lack of a visual beat on 3 was a little unclear, so I unhid the rests in those places and flipped the ties down to make it explicit which voice comes back in on beat 4
You already put in the work naming all of themRenamed those 37 chords
For that chord tied into m1/9, I think the Eb is a D there, but you can leave it if you want.Oh yeah you're right about that. I feel like I had D there at some point but changed it for unknown reasons
m1/9 LH beat 3.5: There's an Eb 8th note here (middle of staff) instead of just a held quarter note.Yup I missed that one
m7 LH beat 3.5: Bn should be Cn.Yeah that does sound right
m8 RH beats 3-4: Since the melody takes over at beat 3.5, you might want to consider making beat 4 just Eb instead (since it's the same as the pickup measure).The voice leading sounds a little weird to me with that one. With an Eb, the downward slope leads your ear into the D instead of the melody's Bb. I think I'm gonna leave it be
m13/31 beat 4.5: This chord is actually a Bbsus at first, resolving to Bb on beat 3 of m14/32. There's no D in the accompaniment before beat 3.There's actually a D in the saw through those four beats, but judging from the progression at m31 I think they were going for a Bbsus there so I changed it
m21 RH: I would move the F to G instead, since it's actually an Fm9 chord and the F is doubled in the bass.Yeah I think that sounds good
m25 RH beat 4.5: Wouldn't it make more sense to use the Gn grace note here since that's the top voice?When I tried playing it I found it really difficult to roll 4 into 3+5 with 4 on white and 5 raised on a black key. It's a lot harder to move 4 and 5 independently, so using the index finger for the grace note and rolling upwards into the dyad was much easier for me
m33: This chord is missing a B (G#m9 chord).I can't hear a B here no matter how hard I try. I can maybe hear something very subtle in the register above the melody, but it could easily just be overtones or something. That said, G#m9 does make the most sense over any chord options which omit the B, but I don't think it fits well with the particular voicing here. Putting a B on the bottom is a pretty large and awkward stretch, and putting it on the top next to the Bb causes a cluster of dissonance near the melody. I think it's best to leave it out even if the chord symbol doesn't quite match
m34 beat 3: This chord on beat 3 adds an Dn, creating a C#7b9 sound.I do think I can hear this one. Added it with an additional chord symbol
m37/41 beat 1: This chord is also missing a B (G#m11). I probably would go with B-C#-F#-A#, bottom to top. You don't need to double the 9th (A#), and the 5th (D#) isn't required.Again, I maxed out my deductive tools here and I can just barely make out a B in m37 with some frequency isolation. At the very least the C#-F#-A# completely dominate the sound, so including the B in any available inversion adds a lot of extra tension that I don't hear myself. I'm going to leave it out like in the other places
m37 beat 4.5: This C#7b9 chord is missing the Dn. The Dn plays throughout m38.Oh yeah, this fills a bit of a gap I was hearing between the B and F. That said, I moved beat 2 to a C# instead of continuing the D because of the accompaniment that plays higher than the melody normally. I moved it down to make the main melody line stand out
m41 beat 4.5 RH: The flat 9th (B) is pretty prominent in this chord, so if you want you can move the bottom C# to a B (either up or down).I originally took the B out because the low B was a big stretch, but I don't think it sounds too bad up an octave. Added the higher one
m45 beat 1 RH: This chord is B#m11, so you can include the 9th (Cx) if you want.I left that pitch out because the fingering makes a weird claw shape that's kind of awkward to form coming out of the eighths in the measure before
m47 LH beats 3-4: I hear the bass going B-F#-B-C# here instead of B-G#-A#-C#.Oh yeah I dropped that part into the bass from a run that happens in the upper register because I felt like the normal bass fifths sounded thin with only the F#-A# dyad in the RH. I think I just left too much out of the RH chord though, so I added a D# to the RH and swapped in the normal bass line
m48 LH beat 3.5: The bass restrickes on C# here, so it's a 3-note pickup back to m1.I originally had a 3 note pickup there, but the main bass either doesn't restrike or plays extremely legato. That said, the snare hits clearly signal 3 notes so I think it still works to add in the extra note. On top of that, listening back from this comment made me realize there are actually two basses in there, one is just waaaaay back in the mix. The secret bass plays the 3 note pickup too so I think it's the right change
m33-end: This might work better in Gb major, not only since it keeps everything in flats, but also because of how it resolves back to Eb major. In m45-48, you'll notice it has roughly the same progression as m13-16, which is written with flats there. Writing it in Gb will remove a lot of those double sharps.Yeah I changed it to Gb. I changed the chord symbols before editing the key and looked at the accidentals again after, so hopefully everything is still spelled right
Sorry if I was unclear before, but this is what I'm hearing in m55:Oh wow I hear that even less lol
The Bb is the note that I hear as an echo, not the An. I don't hear the Bb actually restruck on beat 2.
m40 RH: This arpeggio marking is at a slight angle for some reason.Oops must've clicked something I shouldn't have
m55/71 RH: Beat 2 should be An instead of Ab, and I think the grace note is just from the echo and not actually a note.Yeah I agree that it's an An but I doubt it's an echo, it's enunciated way more than the background echos. Changed the note though
m79 RH: I would suggest including the Eb in here from the choir part, both to show its resolution to D in m80, but also to give a taste of that augmented harmony in m79.That's probably a good idea. I also added some voice leading in the measures around it and separated the layers to show the movement
Maybe include a D.C. or repeat, since the track repeats in-game.Hmm yeah the soundtrack doesn't loop, but it wouldn't hurt to tell the player where the repeat goes. Added a D.C. to the end
pp and mp seem a bit soft for the song? It's subdued but doesn't feel that subdued, to me at least. Up to you thoughI had another listen over the whole song and changed the dynamics placement a bit. It starts at p now and climaxes with mf at m81, whereas before the loudest point was mp at m33 which definitely didn't sound like the most energetic place in the original
I think the octaves in the LH in m. 4/8/12 make it sound a bit heavy. How about removing the lower G?Yeah I agree, took out the octave
The LH in m. 32 sounds a bit weird with open fifths - you get exposed tritones on beats 2-3. I think making these triads (adding the third) would sound better. Same goes for m. 48, what do you think?Oh yeah I didn't notice those 3rds in there. Made them into triads
I'm not sure I understand the reasoning for putting slurs specifically in the places you have them, but it's up to you.I don't think I did a very good job with the slurs in general, so I did another pass and leaned more into phrasing than legato for the placement. Hopefully it's better now
For the slur in m. 19/35, is this supposed to convey the existence of the bottom layer? It seems a bit odd to have it bend from the Bb to the C. I think I'd suggest writing these couple measures similar to how 27 is writtenTook this advice nugget
You could use a slur on the single notes in m. 84-85 to signal they're part of a different phrase.I think those notes are clearer now that the other phrases are marked with slurs. I still want them to be staccato to indicate lightness, so I'm hesitant to add a slur and make them look tenuto
Along similar lines, the upper LH notes on top of beat 1 of m. 77 and 79 strike me as a bit odd, obscuring the bass note strike. Could they be included as RH harmony instead?I originally lowered the entire harmony in that section by an octave since the melody leaps down in m78, so otherwise the harmony would obscure the melody instead of the bass there. But you're right about it sounding a bit muddy, so I think it sounds fine to just leave the harmony in the upper register and omit the D from m78 specifically. I still included the second D above the melody in m80 because that m79 Eb in G major wants really badly to resolve to D
I'm definitely hearing this as Gav wrote it but with the grace note being An instead of Ab.
I'm listening again and I hear the An pretty clearly right on beat 2 of both of these measures. The Bb only plays on beat 1, and there is no grace note (it's just an echo). It's easier to tell when it's slowed down (like 0.75x).Yeah I still think it's not an echo too. You can hear the delay effect on the Bb from beat 1 there and it sounds much different than the An. There's also not an An played anywhere beforehand that could've caused an echo. Still agree about changing it to An though
