Elmo Peeler Note-for-Note Piano Transcriptions |
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Greetings!
Today is the first day of November and time again for my monthly newsletter, to keep you informed of recent transcriptions and other news of the last month.
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Mavis Staples & Matt Rollings
recording "Hard Times Come Again No More"
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Brand-new this month is my own piano solo arrangement of one of the most beautiful love songs ever, Elvis' "Love Me Tender".
Also new is a transcription of Matt Rollings' amazing piano part in Mavis Staples' recording of "Hard Times Come Again No More", written by Bob Dylan's favorite songwriter.
Plus, there's a new exercise for the crossing of hands that will improve Left/Right coordination, accuracy in jumps and articulation.
BTW, to make sure that my email doesn't end up in your Spam folder, please add me to your Contact list and/or mark my email as "Not Spam".
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Note that every Title Heading is clickable.
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ALL of the Sheet Music listed on my website has been personally transcribed by me, and guaranteed to be note-for-note perfect.
Whether you:
- have a cover band and want to get your keyboard parts exactly correct,
- are a professional who wants to study the styles of rock's greatest keyboard players, or
- are a hobbyist that wants to learn how to play pop/rock and great piano music,
...these note-for-note transcriptions will prove extremely helpful.
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In the News! - Mavis Staples, Matt Rollings & Elvis' "Love Me Tender"
From an 1854 Classic by Dylan's Favorite Songwriter to a 1956 Classic
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Mavis Staples was born in Chicago, Illinois, in 1939. In 1950 she began her career with her family group.
Her father, Roebuck, known as 'Pops', was born near Winona, Mississippi (about 34 miles from where I was born and raised), and grew up on a Mississippi cotton plantation, learning guitar from and playing with Delta blues legends Charley Patton, Robert Johnson and Son House, before forming the family band.
Initially singing locally at churches and appearing on a weekly radio show, the Staples scored a hit in 1956 with "Uncloudy Day" for the Vee-Jay label.
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Mavis Staples & Matt Rollings
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When Mavis graduated from high school in 1957, the Staple Singers took their music on the road.
Led by family patriarch Roebuck 'Pops' Staples on guitar and including the voices of Mavis and her three siblings, the Staples were called "God's Greatest Hitmakers". With Mavis' voice and Pops' songs, singing, and guitar playing, the Staples evolved from enormously popular gospel singers to become the most spectacular and influential spirituality-based group in America.
Bob Dylan had first heard the Staple Singers on the radio in 1953 and has often mentioned their influence on him. “It was the most mysterious thing I’d ever heard. It was like the fog rolling in… I knew who Mavis was without having to be told. Her singing just knocked me out.”
Mavis commented, “Bobby (Dylan) would always say: ‘Pops has a velvety voice, but Mavis get rough sometimes’”. They did “court awhile”, after meeting on a TV show in New York in the early 1960s. “We would write letters back and forth, because we wouldn’t see each other until we were on a festival together. And we’d smooch!” Dylan proposed marriage to her, but Mavis turned him down, feeling she was too young.
“I often think about what would have happened if I’d married Bobby, though,” she says. “If we’d had some little plum-crushers, how our lives would be. The kids would be singing now, and Bobby and I would be holding each other up.”
By the mid-1960s The Staple Singers, inspired by Pops' close friendship with Martin Luther King Jr., became the spiritual and musical voices of the civil rights movement. They covered contemporary pop hits with positive messages, including Bob Dylan's "A Hard Rain's a-Gonna Fall". The Staples sang "message" songs like "Long Walk to D.C." and "When Will We Be Paid?," bringing their moving and articulate music to a huge number of young people.
In 1968 the group signed to Stax Records, joining their gospel harmonies and deep faith with musical accompaniment from members of Booker T. & the MGs.
The Staple Singers hit the Top 40 eight times between 1971 and 1975, including two No. 1 singles, "I'll Take You There" and "Let's Do It Again".
In 2004 some of the best talents in the business were asked to contribute a track to an album, Beautiful Dreamer, offering homage to legendary songwriter Stephen Foster. Participants included John Prine, Alison Krauss, Yo-Yo Ma, Mark O'Connor, Roger McGuinn and Mavis Staples. Beautiful Dreamer won a Grammy for Best Traditional Folk Album in 2005. Mavis' contribution was "Hard Times Come Again No More".
Check out this video of Mavis Staples performing "Hard Times Come Again No More", written by Bob Dylan's favorite American songwriter, Stephen Foster. BTW, it was Dylan's grandson Pablo who recently turned me onto Mavis Staples' outstanding recording of "Hard Times", and who told me that Stephen Foster is his granddaddy's favorite songwriter.
My new Mavis Staple transcription:
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Matt Rollings, the pianist on Mavis Staples' recording of "Hard Times Come Again No More", is one of Nashville's A-list session players.
Born in 1964 in Connecticut, Rollings' family moved to Chicago when he was nine, where he began studying with Alan Swain, a well-known jazz pianist with a teaching studio.
At 15 he moved to Phoenix where he played Fender-Rhodes in his high school jazz band, later moving to Boston to attend the Berklee College of Music, convinced he was going to be a jazzer.
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After getting a call from Lyle Lovett encouraging him to come to Nashville, Rollins moved there in 1986. Soon he began working for Jimmy Bowen, president of MCA Records, for double-scale.
Periodically going on tour with Lovett, Larry Carlton, Mark Knopfler and Alison Krauss, Rollings became one of Nashville's leading players.
Within the Nashville scene, he is a sought-after collaborator whose unique piano sound graces numerous landmark releases. Continually recognized by the industry, the Academy of Country Music awarded him “Pianist/Keyboardist of the Year” ten times (1991-1998, 2002, and 2007).
In his own words, "As an instrument, piano is the whole world to me; the landscape is all laid out. The piano covers so much musical ground. It can at once be an orchestra, a boogie-woogie band, or the smallest of lullabies.... It’s everything.”
My Matt Rollings transcriptions:
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In 1935 in Tupelo, Mississippi Elvis Aaron Presley was born to Vernon and Gladys Presley in a two-room 'shotgun' house that his father built for the occasion. His twin brother, Jessie Garon, was stillborn, leaving Elvis to grow up as an only child.
He and his parents moved to Memphis, Tennessee, in 1948, and Elvis graduated from Humes High School there in 1953.
Elvis’ musical influences were the pop and country music of the time, the gospel music he heard in church and at the all-night gospel sings he frequently attended, and the black R&B he absorbed on historic Beale Street as a Memphis teenager.
In 1954, Elvis began his singing career with the legendary Sun Records label in Memphis. In late 1955, his recording contract was sold to RCA Victor.
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By 1956, he was an international sensation. With a sound and style that uniquely combined his diverse musical influences and blurred and challenged the social and racial barriers of the time, he ushered in a whole new era of American music and popular culture.
And it was in 1956 that Elvis recorded "Love Me Tender", one of the greatest love songs ever.
My Elvis Presley transcriptions and arrangements:
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Mavis Staples & Matt Rollings -
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This month my new transcription is of a truly beautiful piano track - Matt Rolling's piano accompaniment for Mavis Staples' heartfelt performance of "Hard Times Come Again No More".
As recorded in 2004 by Mavis Staples with Matt Rollings on piano, "Hard Times Come Again No More" sounds like a very soulful R&B song, which in her version it certainly is.
And during the 1930's it became the theme song for the American Depression. But it was actually written in 1854 by Stephen Foster (Bob Dylan's favorite American songwriter).
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Mavis Staple's powerfully-emotional recording is very sparsely accompanied, primarily by Matt Rollings' amazing piano track, with a little dobro, Hammond organ, and bass guitar (no drums).
Rollings' gospel-influenced piano part startis with a piano-only Intro, then gradually builds as the song progresses, complete with his piano solo about two-thirds of the way through, then ends with the final notes from the piano.
If you enjoy gospel-style piano and R&B soulfulness combined into a remarkably beautiful piano track, you'll love "Hard Times Come Again No More". It's a gem.
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One of pop music's most beautiful, heart-touching songs is Elvis Presley's "Love Me Tender", which was a huge hit for him in 1956, early in his career.
However, the music - the melody and chord progression - had already been around for almost a hundred years, since 1861, when published under the name "Aura Lea".
During the Civil War it was adopted by soldiers on both sides, and was often sung around campfires.
Elvis' "Love Me Tender" was my favorite song when I was a child, so I've arranged it for solo piano, requiring no other instruments to accompany it.
For me, it is simply one of the most beautiful melodies ever.
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If you like Elvis' original version of "Love Me Tender" - which was only an acoustic guitar and background vocals accompanying Elvis - I believe you'll enjoy learning/playing this version for solo piano.
My arrangement for piano:
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An Important Technique That Looks Great to the Audience
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The ability to cross hands over and under each other is an important technique for pianists. This exercise will improve your ability to cross your hands more comfortably, and at the same time improve your Left/Right coordination, the accuracy in jumps, and articulation.
Some pieces require one hand to move over the other, which looks harder than it is, but always impresses the audience, whether it's classical or pop. Crossing of the hands is a great visual.
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This exercise contains five sections, three of which have the Left Hand crossing over the Right Hand, and two have the Left Hand crossing over the Right. They involve moving up and down both step-wise (2nds) and in larger intervals (3rds & 4ths).
The lowest note and the highest note of each pattern use a different hand than the three middle notes. When one hand strikes the first note, it immediately lifts up, crosses over the other hand (which plays the subsequent three notes) and then strikes the highest note of the pattern before lifting again, descending over the other hand, and striking the lowest note again.
When you hear this exercise, you're hearing one hand play the lowest and highest notes while the other hand is playing the in-between notes.
This exercise is available as both a sheet-music PDF and as a MIDI file.
BTW, if you need other good, effective technical exercises, please check out the other 92 exercises available.) |
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(to listen to it, click here) |
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The Hangout Place for Gospel Classics
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You don't have to be from the Deep South to love Gospel piano, nor do you need to belong to any particular religion. All you have to have is a love for wonderful old-time, swinging, uplifting piano-playing.
Leon Russell, Billy Preston, Richard Tee and Ray Charles, some of the greatest keyboard players ever, loved the style and infused their own performances with Gospel licks and rhythms.
Inspired by the wonderful playing of the portly Associate Pastor/Musical Director of my childhood's Baptist Church deep in the piney woods of Mississippi, in recent years I've transcribed and/or arranged a few Gospel classics.
This little corner of my newsletter is where I'll keep you informed of my latest efforts to share that old-time Gospel sound.
Here are my Gospel transcriptions and/or arrangements, plus some exercises:
Full-blown Gospel:
Heavily Gospel Influenced:
Moderately Gospel Influenced:
Gospel-related Exercises:
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Helpful for Those that Don't Read Sheet Music Well
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Most of my transcriptions have heretofore been available only as sheet music in PDF's. That is gradually changing - some are now also available as MIDI files, which can be especially helpful for those who would prefer to listen to them than to read the sheet-music notation.
This section of my newsletter is where I'll keep you informed of which transcriptions and exercises are available as MIDI files.
BTW, if you'd like my sheet music in a MIDI file, just let me know which one(s).
Here are the currently available MIDI files of my transcriptions, arrangements, and exercises:
MIDI Files of Rock & Pop Transcriptions:
MIDI Files of Exercises:
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If you're using a vintage synthesizer, please check out our synth patches here.
These are the most highly-organized and best-sounding synth patches available anywhere, guaranteed. Get the most out of your vintage hardware with these large patch libraries:
Ensoniq
Kawai
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Roland
Yamaha
Even if you don't use the actual hardware synthesizers, there are software emulations that will allow you to play these patches on your computer, as VSTI's in your sequencer. These include:
Korg Legacy Digital Edition (for M1 & T1 synths)
Native Instruments FM8 (for DX7 synths)
Aurora FM (for DX7 & TX81Z synths)
SQ8L (for ESQ-1 synths)
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I've had the good fortune to have taught some of the biggest names in the entertainment industry, and if you're serious about learning, I'll be happy to help you, too.
By means of Skype lessons (or in-person if you're in L.A.), I can coach you and help you to improve your technique, your rhythm, your ability to improvise, your knowledge of music theory, your sight-reading, and to develop relative pitch.
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- The Beach Boys
- Rod Stewart - All 'Unplugged' Concerts
- Ricky Nelson - Stone Canyon Band
And I've also won classical piano competitions performing Beethoven, Rubinstein and Saint-Saens' Piano Concerti. See me playing here. "Josie's Boogie" is quite the virtuoso dramatic minor-key showpiece; check out the ascending double-octave run at the ending... :)
Thanks to the internet, I can help you play piano better - rock or classical, by ear or by note.
Or if you live near the Hollywood Hills, I'll teach you in my home.
1) Your musical background
2) Where you are currently, musically-speaking
3) Your musical goals
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My students include members of:
- Weezer (Rivers & Brian)
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Vampire Weekend (Ezra & newest addition, Greta)
- Incubus (Mike)
- The Strokes (Nick)
- Rooney (Robert)
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Jason Schwartzman (Mozart in the Jungle)
- Courteney Cox
- Pablo Dylan
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Franz Liszt - improvising on
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"I accidentally stumbled on to your sheet music, and was intrigued and bought a piece. Which was the Melton Meltdown boogie, not sure if ill be able to complete it, but I will dedicate a lot of my time to hopefully complete it. This deserves so much more attention, I hope you will be blessed by the YouTube algorithms someday. You're a beast."
- Luckless 3213
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Los Angeles, CA
323-650-6602
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