Piano Sheets > Miles Davis Sheet Music > Half Nelson (ver. 1) Piano Sheet

Half Nelson (ver. 1) by Miles Davis - Piano Sheets and Free Sheet Music

  
About the Song
Sheet Music - Purpose and use Sheet music can be used as a record of, a guide to, or a means to perform, a piece of music. Although it does not take the place of the sound of a performed work, sheet music can be studied to create a performance and to elucidate aspects of the music that may not be obvious from mere listening. Authoritative musical information about a piece can be gained by studying the written sketches and early versions of compositions that the composer might have retained, as well as the final autograph score and personal markings on proofs and printed scores. Comprehending sheet music requires a special form of literacy: the ability to read musical notation. Nevertheless, an ability to read or write music is not a requirement to compose music. Many composers have been capable of producing music in printed form without the capacity themselves to read or write in musical notation—as long as an amanuensis of some sort is available. Examples include the blind 18th-century composer John Stanley and the 20th-century composers and lyricists Lionel Bart, Irving Berlin and Paul McCartney. The skill of sight reading is the ability of a musician to perform an unfamiliar work of music upon viewing the sheet music for the first time. Sight reading ability is expected of professional musicians and serious amateurs who play classical music and related forms. An even more refined skill is the ability to look at a new piece of music and hear most or all of the sounds (melodies, harmonies, timbres, etc.) in one's head without having to play the piece. With the exception of solo performances, where memorization is expected, classical musicians ordinarily have the sheet music at hand when performing. In jazz music, which is mostly improvised, sheet music—called a lead sheet in this context—is used to give basic indications of melodies, chord changes, and arrangements. Handwritten or printed music is less important in other traditions of musical practice, however. Although much popular music is published in notation of some sort, it is quite common for people to learn a piece by ear. This is also the case in most forms of western folk music, where songs and dances are passed down by oral—and aural—tradition. Music of other cultures, both folk and classical, is often transmitted orally, though some non-western cultures developed their own forms of musical notation and sheet music as well. Although sheet music is often thought of as being a platform for new music and an aid to composition (i.e., the composer writes the music down), it can also serve as a visual record of music that already exists. Scholars and others have made transcriptions of western and non-western musics so as to render them in readable form for study, analysis, and re-creative performance. This has been done not only with folk or traditional music (e.g., Bartók's volumes of Magyar and Romanian folk music), but also with sound recordings of improvisations by musicians (e.g., jazz piano) and performances that may only partially be based on notation. An exhaustive example of the latter in recent times is the collection The Beatles: Complete Scores (London: Wise Publications, c1993), which seeks to transcribe into staves and tablature all the songs as recorded by the Beatles in instrumental and vocal detail. (More...)    Download this sheet!
About the Artist
Miles Dewey Davis III (May 26, 1926 – September 28, 1991) was an American jazz trumpeter, bandleader, and composer. Widely considered one of the most influential musicians of the 20th century, Davis was at the forefront of almost every major development in jazz from World War II to the 1990s: he played on various early bebop records and recorded one of the first cool jazz records; he was partially responsible for the development of hard bop and modal jazz, and both jazz-funk and jazz fusion arose from his work with other musicians in the late 1960s and early 1970s; and his final album blended jazz and rap. Many leading jazz musicians made their names in Davis' groups, including: Joe Zawinul, Chick Corea and Herbie Hancock, saxophonists John Coltrane, Julian "Cannonball" Adderley, Gerry Mulligan, Wayne Shorter, George Coleman, pianist Keith Jarrett, and Kenny Garrett, drummer Tony Williams and guitarist John McLaughlin. As a trumpeter, Davis had a pure, round sound but also an unusual freedom of articulation and pitch. He was known for favoring a low register and for a minimalist playing style, but was also capable of highly complex and technically demanding trumpet work. This said, Davis was never a virtuoso of his instrument, and, on the ground of sheer technique, he was inferior to many prominent trumpet players of his era. He made up for these shortcomings by concentrating on the melodic quality and lyricism of his performances, to the point of becoming known as a specialist in ballads, a province where trumpet players were seldom found, up to that point. Above all, Davis - at least in his best years - displayed an unparalleled capability of selecting musicians for his groups and of directing them, a strong sense of where he wanted to take his music, and a great tenacity in pursuing his artistic objectives. To this he added an instinctive ability of self promotion that kept him in the eye of the public and of the musical media most of the time. While he professed disdain for the musical critics, his life, attitudes and style (down to the cars he drove and the stylish dresses he used) helped him in building an iconic status, and eventually made him one of the very few jazz superstars in the rock dominated decades of the 1970s and 80s. He had, however, already achieved stardom at the end of the 1950s, one of the few jazz musicians that was addressed, in print and elsewhere, on a first name only basis.[1] In the last two decades of his career, when his production was heavily influenced by rock and other styles of popular music, Davis gradually distanced himself from being called a jazz musician, even refusing, after his return in 1980, quite strongly the term "jazz music" (as other musicians had done before him), in favor of terms like "black music".[2] During the same period, most of the jazz audience distanced itself from Davis, sometimes on the ground that his music was no longer jazz, but most often on the grounds of its perceived commercialism.[3] The first decade of the XXI century saw a very favourable critical reevaluation of Davis' so called electric years (1970-1991), often reversing previous unfavorable opinions. Since several of these judgement reversals came on the heels of the release of previously unpublished archive material, very often labeled with superlatives such as "legendary", the neutrality of these new critical appraisals is hard to assess. On March 13, 2006, recognising his role in the development of rock, Davis was posthumously inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. He had already been inducted into the St. Louis Walk of Fame, Big Band and Jazz Hall of Fame, and Down Beat's Jazz Hall of Fame.
Random article
Sheet Music - Purpose and use Sheet music can be used as a record of, a guide to, or a means to perform, a piece of music. Although it does not take the place of the sound of a performed work, sheet music can be studied to create a performance and to elucidate aspects of the music that may not be obvious from mere listening. Authoritative musical information about a piece can be gained by studying the written sketches and early versions of compositions that the composer might have retained, as well as the final autograph score and personal markings on proofs and printed scores. Comprehending sheet music requires a special form of literacy: the ability to read musical notation. Nevertheless, an ability to read or write music is not a requirement to compose music. Many composers have been capable of producing music in printed form without the capacity themselves to read or write in musical notation—as long as an amanuensis of some sort is available. Examples include the blind 18th-century composer John Stanley and the 20th-century composers and lyricists Lionel Bart, Irving Berlin and Paul McCartney. The skill of sight reading is the ability of a musician to perform an unfamiliar work of music upon viewing the sheet music for the first time. Sight reading ability is expected of professional musicians and serious amateurs who play classical music and related forms. An even more refined skill is the ability to look at a new piece of music and hear most or all of the sounds (melodies, harmonies, timbres, etc.) in one's head without having to play the piece. With the exception of solo performances, where memorization is expected, classical musicians ordinarily have the sheet music at hand when performing. In jazz music, which is mostly improvised, sheet music—called a lead sheet in this context—is used to give basic indications of melodies, chord changes, and arrangements. Handwritten or printed music is less important in other traditions of musical practice, however. Although much popular music is published in notation of some sort, it is quite common for people to learn a piece by ear. This is also the case in most forms of western folk music, where songs and dances are passed down by oral—and aural—tradition. Music of other cultures, both folk and classical, is often transmitted orally, though some non-western cultures developed their own forms of musical notation and sheet music as well. Although sheet music is often thought of as being a platform for new music and an aid to composition (i.e., the composer writes the music down), it can also serve as a visual record of music that already exists. Scholars and others have made transcriptions of western and non-western musics so as to render them in readable form for study, analysis, and re-creative performance. This has been done not only with folk or traditional music (e.g., Bartók's volumes of Magyar and Romanian folk music), but also with sound recordings of improvisations by musicians (e.g., jazz piano) and performances that may only partially be based on notation. An exhaustive example of the latter in recent times is the collection The Beatles: Complete Scores (London: Wise Publications, c1993), which seeks to transcribe into staves and tablature all the songs as recorded by the Beatles in instrumental and vocal detail. (More...)