K-On!! Tenshi ni Fureta yo! (天使にふれたよ!) sheet music transcription (all instruments)

"But hey, we were touched! By a lovely angel..." Well it's been a few months, and it's become clear that the Army can't afford to call up any additional deployable soldiers, so while I wait to hear back from private sector openings, I did what any incredibly masculine military servicemember would do when off-duty: I biked away 15 pounds and watched K-On! This insert song in particular caught my attention, and not (only) because it was emotionally moving, but because there were only four distinct instruments (with no synthesized sounds), and the difficulty of their rhythms were inversely proportional to the difficulty of identifying their played notes. And it's less than a year old (OMG). I knew I had to write down this song. I found in my initial research that the few arrangements out there are piano reductions and/or use chords that are usable but inaccurate. So I decided to take the long route and do it all by ear. That's right, my first song without borrowing someone else's notes! (Actually it's not entirely true, I had to look at a drum cover by Senri Kawaguchi (   • けいおん!! 天使にふれたよ！ 叩いてみた K-ON!! Tenshi ni Fur...  ) to find where the hi-hat might get pedaled... Then again, anything I watched her do had to be toned down because she's even more technical than Ritsu! But hey, I found all the chords myself =p ) Because the few instruments sounded so distinct, the only tools I really ended up using are Windows Media Player, which has a pitch-corrected play speed slider (important to figure out all those sixteenth notes from an already fast marching pace), and the driver for my HT Claro Halo sound card, which has a setting to center-cancel the output (which really helped bring out the keyboard). In the process, I learned two new tricks: dynamics notation and the pan slider. The dynamics notation dictates how loud to play a specific instrument (f = forte "strong", p = piano "soft"), which I used to control the balance between the instruments at certain times so they don't overpower each other. Then I panned the instruments left or right to more closely match how the song was played to Azusa in the Season 2 finale (left to right: Mio - bass, Yui - guitar, Ritsu - drums, Mugi - keyboard). Then I found out you're allowed to rename the instruments =p On the other hand, I also had to make a couple assumptions, that of the keyboard bass line, the pedaled hi-hat, and who actually sings the harmonies, all of which I could never really hear. The bass line I usually assumed to match a simplified version of the treble line, with some chord inversions to keep it from sounding too dark. For the hi-hat I had to rely on the anime, Kawaguchi's cover, and my experience as a former drummer (not like you'll actually hear it anywhere anyway). Educated guesses were used to harmonize the pre-choruses, and I had everyone in the bridge because they all "sing in unison" (which they already do in the chorus, based on the anime). For some reason, Sibelius was missing the sticks sound, and I had to use claps as a substitute. It all still turned out pretty good considering I had to induce those solutions. Now if only Sibelius could render out those percussion spikes and the 50 ms vocal delay, and I can find where they put the "al niente" or "smorzando" modifiers, and I learned what actual notes come out of a guitar chord... So that's the story behind this score. Now it's time to ride off some more fat and keep trying to find a place willing to take in young, unencumbered, semi-experienced pop music transcriber/IT manager/Second Lieutenant/backstage staffer/admin assistant/future State Department officer and world traveler. I hope you enjoyed this presentation of After School Free Time, and thank you for actually reading through this excessively exhaustive exposition! =D link to the full music sheet pdf: http://www.mediafire.com/?jchh14dcp3y... link to individual music sheets: http://www.mediafire.com/?51cy2t9p66a... // Preemptive Legal Defense // (you know, just in case) The original song is copyrighted by Pony Canyon Inc (I think). Under US Copyright Law, I publish this work with an argument for Fair Use due to the following: This work is an advancement of the arts by creating what does not yet exist (a full song transcription), and transforming the original work by creating a new, educationally-valuable insight (the hopefully accurate musical notes of the original song); This work is non-commercial in nature and is not designed for any financial profit; There exist no free alternative to the original work to reference from; Possible copyright infringements by other artistic recreations of the original work have generally not been pursued; and This work is not expected to adversely affect the potential market for the original work