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I downloaded sheet music for Journey's "Don't Stop Believing" and then noticed that neither the band itself nor tutorials I've seen play the song as written. The first chord for the left hand is written as a G# E B, but the band, etc. plays it B E B, and so on. What's with that? Thanks.

Sheet music is often wrong.

What he said. The sheet that I have (and fairly decent sheet it is, actually) for "Who's Crying Now" lists an Em7 as GM. I can see why they'd be confused in Am, but still.

Trust your ear.

Anybody know where to find the song written as played?

You can't, really. It's not written for piano. It's written for keyboard, bass and lead guitars, and voice. Any reduction for piano would be an arrangement. Don't know where you can get a good one, though. Most piano arrangements of good rock are pretty much big-note garbage, with the exception of Billy Joel and Elton John, and other people who's music is heavily piano-focused. Journey is heavily, heavily guitar-and-voice focused, so your best bet, although it's difficult, is to arrange it to your liking.

Sound advice. The first part of "Don't Stop Believing," as you know, is solo piano. No other instrument plays. So you'd think they'd get that right on the sheet music? The score shows four sharps (E or C sharp minor?), but that's not the key Journey's keyboardist plays in on the video of the live concert I saw (in Houston) on utube. Oh, well . . .

Brandon Lewis plays a very nice cover. This video will show you a lot of the notes.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZSXQrV4o58Y

If you are interested in continuing with the band's work, I can at least tell you that their music gets easier and easier to arrange for piano as you go on. The early stuff is extremely difficult to manage (the pre-Perry stuff is effectively impossible), but Cain became more pivotal in the writing process as time went on and he is much more pianistic than Rolie, who was kind of 24/7 Hammond.

By the time you move into "Frontiers" and "RoR," assuming you do, the arrangement will get much friendlier for piano. ("TBF" can almost entirely be done on piano+voice.)

Thanks. I checked out Brandon's arrangement. Players seem to agree on notes for the left hand, but not the right hand? Here's a lesson on the piece played on a nice Steinway. I think he plays some different notes with his right than Brandon does. Sounds more like the actual recording? Well, maybe it's that rich, beautiful Steinway sound???

http://www.youtube.com/watch?annotation_id=annotation_70687&v=3WpenHAOwBA&feature=iv

Sheet music can be wrong. So if you know the song really well try working the bass notes and melody out from listening to the original music on stereo.

I think the original is in the Key of E Major.