I'm trying to learn popular music, by Gershwin, Cole Porter and other 'Broadway composers'. There are great sheet music collections available - I have "Cole Porter - 100th Anniversary" and "The Great Songs of Gershwin". But I'm a poor sight reader, able to cope with the tunes I know well but hopeless on the rest. It would be great for someone at my level if there was a CD available that played just the notes as written in the original scores. Unfortunately everything I can find has pianists playing much more complex arrangements (not always better in my opinion). There must be a market out there for sheet music / CD sets of the original scores. All it needs is for a good sight reader to record those collected works. Any suggestions?

Bribe a good pianist on the forum to play and record them for you??

Good luck on your search.

Your first post deserves a better answer, but I don't have one. Others may well give you better suggestions.

But sincerely, welcome to Piano World!

The original score is the hard part to answer. I recommend to you the Piano Play Along Series for great broadway composers and you also have a concert level pianist to play along with and the music background is very excellent. Very inspiring. Great fun. The Hal Leonard series is my favorite and this one is very good, Broadway Classics with CD, $12.99, with 8 broadway tunes as follow: Ain't Misbehavin, Cabaret, Guys and Dolls, Cats { Memory} Oklahoma, South Pacific, The Sound of Music, Carousel. Cheers, Sandy B

Your rare vintage is showing Aussie sved (retired) ,

Pity more of the Computer Era kids don't cotton on to the Tin Pan Alley hits and discover what quality keyboard writing is all about ... presumably your need for a CD capturing the exact original notes is to act as a model upon which to boost your present piano efforts ... and thereby offset a sight-reading hang-up (let it be said ... the comment of millions).

Much as one wishes you well in your mission ... I'm not convinced that there is anything to compare with the original score ... I'm looking at Fats Waller's "Ain't Misbehavin' for instance ... here's the Chorus (have his CD with Fats doing the honours)

web page

What could be simpler than the opening sustained G to go with the growling Eb/Gb chord by the LH on which to mount the familiar "No one to talk with, .......... all by myself, No one to walk with, .... but I'm happy on the shelf. Ain't Misbehavin', I'm Savin' My Love for You."

Having said that ... there are really so many hits from the 20s to the 50s that you might be hard put to find a CD with but a fraction of your old favourites ... why not list a few gems and see whether others can come up with an authentic keyboard rendition (as with "Ain't Misbehavin").

Thanks for the suggestions folks. Given the large number of tunes, I suppose it is unrealistic to expect recordings of more than a few, although I would have hoped that one could narrow it down to a manageable number of 'standards', particularly the ones with the best harmonies, eg Gershwin. I just came across 'Mine', 'Soon', 'Of thee I sing', which look great but I'd love to hear how they should be played. I look enviously at the classical piano field where every known piece will have at least one recording to give a feel for what the piece might sound like.

I rather like the idea that one bribes a good sight reader to play through the pieces. But I had hoped that there would be a commercial market for CD + sheet music combinations. It ought not to be difficult or expensive, although I don't know about the copyright issue.

Hi John,

You might want to consider an opposite approach. Instead of fiding recordings of the sheet music you have, try getting usable scores of recordings of solo piano you find interesting. Do a search on the web for wav to midi converters. Although not perfect, they can provide you a framework of arrangements from people such as peterson or tatum, whom are difficult to follow on your own.

Follow Peterson or TATUM? Hmm... But thanks for the suggestion. I've got to get into this midi business.

If you buy electronic sheet music online at Musicnotes.com, it comes with a Musicnotes player that will play the music back for you with perfect pitch and timing.

With the player, you can point and click on anything on the score and it will tell you exactly what it means--for example, if you point and click on "pp" it will read, "Pianissimo: as softly as possible."

It is also easy to adjust the speed of the playback--slower, faster, half-speed, three-quarter speed--anything you want. Just play along with it to learn the piece more or less perfectly. It is a helpful teaching device.

Once you learn a piece this way, you have the rest of your life to perfect and personalize its expression.

Also there are transcriptions of various pianists out there. Two good ones are Vince Guaraldi of Charlie Brown fame, and George Winston who plays many very easy but very beautiful pieces.

Their personal transcriptions of their own recordings are easy to find online. Any online sheet music store has them. Then you buy their CDs, and you can play along with Vince or George, note-for-note. Personally I find this supremely enjoyable.

Prospero, Many thanks for the Musicnotes.com info.

I've bought one tune to try it out. Slightly frustrating in a couple of ways but it looks promising. I'm a Mac user, and it seems that the player doesn't work on Macs, which wasn't obvious from the site. I switched to a Windows computer, where it did work OK, the only problem being that the tempo of the Gershwin piece, Of Thee I Sing, seems to be set to 224 which is ludicrously fast. I could only get it down to 56, still too fast.

I've written to Musisnotes about these issues but they don't seem to like replying. Anyway apart from this and that the cost is $5 per piece which ends up being rather pricey, I'm impressed by the concept. So thanks again.

Upgrade on my last post. Musicnotes have replied and were very helpful. I'd recommend them to anyone, except currently to Mac users.