Musical question

I liked an instrumental song that was on the radio long ago, I'm thinking the 70s, whose name I can't recall.  I've heard that there are apps now that will let you hum a tune into your phone and get an i.d.  Pretty cool app, but either this song isn't in my memory or I couldn't produce it faithfully enough with a hum.  Then I found an app that will let me hum a tune into my laptop and see it rendered into musical notation.  Now, that is extremely handy!  It does a pretty good job of dealing with the time signatures, but it has a hard time understand where the measures are supposed to start.  Also, this song had some tricky little ornaments that I couldn't sing quickly and accurately enough.  Not daunted, I found a third site with some interactive software that let me type in notes on a staff and fiddle with the lengths of each note.  Then I could hit play and hear how it worked out.  I think you guys can go to this site and hit "play" at the bottom left and hear it, too, so I'm hoping someone will recognize it and remember the title or the artist.

16 comments:

Anonymous said...

It's familiar, but dang if I can recall the title or artist. Grrr.

LittleRed1

Texan99 said...

I remember its being called "Tubular Bells," but that's the music used in the Exorcist, which doesn't sound like this. I even flipped through a long version of the movie score without hearing anything like this. I think a narrator would announce at the beginning of each verse what instrument would play next, like "glockenspiel," or "carillion."

Grim said...

You know what it sounds like to me? The finale of Once Upon A Time In The West.

Could it be a Morricone tune? He was big in the 70s.

Texan99 said...

I added some chords and percussion to make it more recognizable.

Tom said...

No idea what the song is, though it sounds vaguely familiar. However, that's an impressive array of apps. Cool stuff.

Texan99 said...

Grim's right, it does kind of remind me of spaghetti westerns. I don't think it's Morricone, though, after browsing his music on iTunes. I do think the narrator that kept introducing the new instrument at each verse was a Brit.

DL Sly said...

Can you take out the chord notes? I can almost get the tune past what you've gotten figured out, but the chords are *disturbing to the Force*, iykwim.
If you do, email me the link so you don't have to re-do the post.

Texan99 said...

http://www.noteflight.com/scores/view/f1ff6f2c25dbeb6f3f4929d74fcae5c200583226

This is a second version with the tune only, bearing in mind that what I'm reconstructing as the tune is probably something I've picked out of the chords as I remember them.

DL Sly said...

Ok, after going to the link, it said I had to log-in or sign up to view the score. So, since it wasn't a big sign up thing, I signed up. Then I get a message that says I don't have permission to view this score.
Whatta tease!
*snort*
*snerk*
heh
0>;~]

Texan99 said...

Oh, I think I forgot to check off the boxes that made it available. I'll go fix that.

Texan99 said...

Yep, all fixed now.

Anonymous said...

Funny story about "Tubular Bells." I had a professor at Flat State who always taught a big freshman Western Civ or World Civ class, and would meet with each student individually to discuss their first papers. So you'd have fifteen or twenty students lined up in the hall waiting for their appointment time to roll around. And wafting out of the prof's office came "Tubular Bells," and other music from that album. A few of the older students, and those into horror flicks, got it, as did the older grad students. Most of the freshmen just wondered what the funky music was, and why the faculty passing in the hall all had faintly evil grins.

LittleRed1

DL Sly said...

Are you sure of your 16th and 32nd notes in the 3rd and 5th bars? Because my memory keeps almost hearing the tune without them....iykwim. Also, I slowed your play speed down to 45; it seems more *right*.

Texan99 said...

Could have been slower, it's true. Can't be sure about the ornaments. That's what I remember, but it's been decades. Sometimes I remember ornaments in a song, but it turns out really a mental translation of some complicated business that may have been going on in the accompaniment.

Texan99 said...

I like that song, Gerry Rafferty, right? It's so satisfying to find a song you didn't know the name of.

I'm nearly certain this song is the 1974 radio hit "Tubular Bells" by Mike Oldfield. The problem is that there seems to have been a single produced in 1974 that's not anything like the various tracks on the album "Tubular Bells," which included the iconic theme music for "The Exorcist." All the tracks I've been able to find on sites like iTunes and Amazon and YouTube are tracks from the album, not the hit single.

Well, sometimes if you wait a few months or years, something old and obscure suddenly shows up online, when someone digs it out and bothers to upload it.

Grim said...

Tex:

Try Spotify. They look to have at least two versions that you could listen to for free.