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Writer's picturePaul Dietrich

Transcription: Tigran's "Someday My Prince Will Come"

Partially as an exercise to keep my ears sharp and partially because it has some really cool harmony that I wanted to figure out, I recently transcribed Tigran Hamasyan's solo piano version of "Someday My Prince Will Come," released on his 2010 album A Fable. Below there's a YouTube link to Tigran's version, and I've included the PDF of my transcription.






A couple of notes: I've never done a full piano transcription before and I'm not really a pianist, so forgive me if there are any weird notation things. Second, it goes without saying that there is some definite push and pull rhythmically, though Tigran's rhythm is SO GOOD that there's very little guessing necessary, even with no drums or bass (apart from his partially audible beatboxing). Also, there are some obvious places where I'm approximating harmony - I didn't feel it was necessary to mark all the extra notes (like, for example, the "pedal" E natural that lasts through the rubato chords at the end is not always accounted for) but it's pretty close. There are a few places where someone else might have called something an E6 instead of a C#mi7/E, but you know what? We'll survive.


It's interesting to note that, form-wise, I don't have a perfect way to describe what's happening. There's a definite head-in and head-out that is just a re-harmed version of the original 32-bar tune, but the "solo section" in the middle is a little bit more mysterious. The first two bars match up with Tigran's re-harm, but then it goes elsewhere, and while it has definite elements of the re-harm, it does not follow the form he established, and the solo lasts 56 bars (32 + 24) - 8 short of two full "choruses" - when the head comes back in at measure 89. I do not mean to suggest in any way that Tigran is wrong for playing it this way - I actually appreciate the unpredictability, and this is 100% not something I ever noticed about this tune until I wrote it down. He's just improvising in a way that they don't teach in jazz school.



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