The best sheet music books - an analysis

Hello! I'd like to do a little write up here for the fellow musicians or enthusiasts by examining the better Queen sheet music books that are available. I've been collecting these for many years and it's a subject I have always felt passionate about. Good sheet music is a gift, bad sheet music is everywhere (especially online).

For Queen, the releases run the entire spectrum of bad to good. Fortunately, the good stuff is among the best sheet music I've ever found.

Most music books released contain simplified transcriptions. They provide chords (usually with guitar box diagrams), a vocal melody and a piano accompaniment. They are usually reduced down to be simplified and don't reflect what is actually played in the songs. (Side note: a very bad example of this would be the PVG (piano-vocal-guitar) book for Made In Heaven, which presents every song in the wrong key!).

I'm more interested in the good stuff, so I'm going to look at a selection of the books which provide authentic song transcriptions for multiple instruments.


"Off The Record" books (complete scores) by Barnes Music Engraving/IMP
Greatest Hits II (May 1992)
Classic Queen (Sep 1992)
Innuendo (Nov 1992)
Greatest Hits (Jan 1993)
Queen I (Jan 1995)

 


These books are absolute treasures. They contain complete scores for the albums, with detailed notation for vocals, guitars, piano, bass, keyboards, percussion and drums as well as any other instruments that may appear in the songs. The transcriptions have a good level of accuracy, if not perfect, and for the most part get things correct. Not only that, but great care is given to the presentation of these books; the music is very clear, well arranged on the page and doesn't take shortcuts by asking you to memorise sections or "repeat riff B-2 seven and half times". The music is just all there, easy to read and follow along with.

A nice aspect of the Greatest Hits II book is that the transcriptions are for the full album versions of the songs, not the single edits (the opposite of course being true for I Want To Break Free, where the single version would have been preferred). And one thing I really like about these publications is the presentation of guitar tablature. They used a system that is far easier to read than the standard used by other companies.

The most interesting release to me is the one for Queen I. The mere existence of this release suggests that there may have been a plan to create a book for each of Queen's albums. Sadly, this didn't happen. A real shame, because the transcriber(s) clearly put a lot into this one. Maybe they began Queen II and quickly realised what a difficult job it would be!

There's also a book for Innuendo here, but this is actually the weakest of the bunch. Compared to the other books, this one is not quite as thorough. That's not to say it's bad by any means, it just feels lesser. More compressed, more use of repeat marks, less attention to detail in an effort to save space.

I'm not joking when I say that these books taught me how to play guitar as a teenager. They are all out of print now but easy to find second hand (although possibly highly priced depending on availability).


Guitar tab books
A Night At The Opera (Hal Leonard - 1995)
Queen Rocks (Barnes/IMP - Apr 1998)
Brian May - Another World (Barnes/IMP - 1998)

 


ANATO was published by Hal Leonard and is a mixed bag, as with many of their transcriptions, but tends to land more on the side of good. They cram a lot in a small space and this makes things difficult to read, especially in more complex pieces like The Prophet's Song. But it's impressive at how much they chose to include. All the songs are arranged for guitar, so simplified piano lines or harp, etc. often are presented that way and rarely feel comfortable to play.

The actual guitar parts fare better and accuracy is good. I just find it exhausting to try and sort through (eg., fitting 8 guitar parts on three staves), and you'll be jumping around the pages a lot as parts are scattered. They also use rhythm slashes to try and save space, something I'm never a fan of. Still worthwhile for the detail that is there.

The books for Queen Rocks and Another World were created by the same company who made the Off The Record books, and they retain the same presentation quality. The difference is that these are reduced to only include lead vocals (with chords) and guitar with tablature. These aren't as detailed as the complete scores. For the songs unique to Queen Rocks they've focused on reducing the songs down to one or two guitar parts, so you might get only rhythm or only the lead parts at times. It's not a deal breaker, they do show you the most important parts that you'll want to play.

One very bizarre inclusion is that they just lifted the transcrption of I'm In Love With My Car straight out of the Hal Leonard ANATO book. So it's in a completely different style from every other song here and looks a mess compared to how neat the rest of the book is. Another World as a whole feels less complete but it also comes across as quite a unique little release that I'm glad exists.


The Platinum Collection - Complete Scores (Hal Leonard/Progressive Transcriptions - Dec 2022)

A more recent release, this is a very impressive publication. A big 1000 page book held in a strong cardboard slipcover, it contains complete scores for all the songs from Greatest Hits I, II and III (excluding live tracks and remixes from GH3).

The presentation here is somewhere in between the Barnes and older Hal Leonard styles. It condenses parts down and asks you to memorise repeated riffs, but remains quite easy to read and follow along with. The print size is good, you don't need a magnifying glass to see it all (looking at you, Beatles Complete Scores!).




But the biggest recommendation I can give is for the level of accuracy. It's spectacular. Comparing the songs to the already excellent GH1/GH2 Off The Record books, it's quite apparant how much more detail is here.

I actually got in contact with the transcription team to ask a few questions about the creation of the book, and found out that they used the isolated multitracks for their transcriptions, allowing them to pick out parts correctly. It doesn't sound like Queen Productions provided these for them, and they used the widely available stems that now litter the internet (so only songs from GH1 and GH2), however they did tell me that they had access to the original score notes for Barcelona.

If any more Queen books are released in this style, I would pick them up in a heartbeat. It's a shame that just about all new Queen publications are focused on the hits, the albums need to get a better look in.


Japanese releases


I also have a couple of publications imported from Japan. These do tend to include more interesting song selections and I'm quite fond of the complete score book for Made In Heaven (Sep 2000). Unfortunately I can't really recommend these because the music presented is of a poor quality. The transcriptions are often wildly off the mark, either simplifying or ignoring parts, or just being completely wrong. They also stick to a very rigid layout which doesn't allow for room to include the more complex parts of Queen songs.




I'm not entirely sure what the rules are here regarding posting images from inside the books, but I'll be happy to provide some samples if allowed.