i know that it's this site's bread and butter, so please nobody get pissed and start flaming me for this question, but i never did get why people "butcher" already amazing songs. anime/game tunes especially. i really want to learn songs from Final Fantasy 7-12, Kingdom Hearts 1/2, and several other shows/games, but every time i search online for sheets for it(not wanting to blow 30-60 bucks on a book from the store so i can learn the 1 or 2 songs i love from KH2), i get nothing but sites and vids that are either overly simplified or overly complicated transcriptions of the real song some guy thought he wrote better. and i used to think it was for legal reasons, but isn't it just as or almost as illegal to rewrite already published and copyrighted songs and put em up online? if so then why bother. do what people all over ther internet do with pretty much everything else and have the first guy to buy the sheet book post it on a few sites, i mean that's what they do with songs/tv shows/movies/older video games/and most software. and i hate to burst all the "artist's" bubbles, but most if not all of you will NEVER top the versions of most game and anime tunes that were originally written by the original song composer. the only exception to that would be if they never release a version of that song that can be translated well on a certain instrument, which does happen semi-often. but that's not the case more then half the time. most of the time it's rewrites of an already exclusively piano song for piano, or something similar. sorry for the relatively long rant, but it's just been bugging me for a while. and oddly enough, nobody else on the internet seems to have asked this. spent long amounts of time googling and yahooing this question in any form i could come up with, and nothing. so apologies in advance if i offended anyone, but i'm just curious.^^

thats like asking why do people put videos up on youtube or w.e of themselves playing any song? yes the song might get butchered in the process, but why the hell not?
for me transcribing songs/learning to play songs i like is just a massive hobby of mine among other things. so one factor may just be sheer enjoyment/pleasure out of doing it and we share em here because alot of people are looking for them. or something like that

PS i was half asleep when i posted this so cut me some slack XD and if anything sounded harsh sorry i didnt mean it to

lol, it's cool. and i get why you do it for yourself. my question's more about why people ONLY transcribe. i can find NO legit sheets online, yet i can easily find 5-10 rewrites. but i definately get why you make your own versions as a hobby, i just can't write music that well or improv on piano so i'd rather learn the exact version i heard on Advent Children or something, as opposed to someone else's rendition of it. then i again, i am rather obsessive when it comes to accuracy:P

So you're basically asking why all the transcriptions you find are different from what you expect them to be?

The major reason is different instrumentation. If you want to arrange a pop song for piano, it's obviously not possible to match the original in how it sounds, because it's a different instrument. People are more willing to rearrange a song for a solo instrument because then anyone wishing to play it doesn't have to go out and find other musicians to collaborate with.

If it's the case where the transcription follows the original instrumentation, then differences are probably simply mistakes made by the transcriber or practicality reasons (a lot of songs these days are synthesized with sound samples, so the original composer doesn't really have to take playability into consideration, while the transcriber often does). In some cases, the difficulty to transcribe exactly, and difficulty in playing the original might have been a factor in why one would want to deviate.

To be honest, I don't really understand your stance at all, first you ask why people change the songs around, and in the last post you ask why people only transcribe. Do you actually want changes or not? (FYI to transcribe in a technical sense is to notate a song note for note, without any deviation).

Anyways, I don't think any transcriber would actually go about changing a song out of arrogance. Different versions satisfy different needs. It would certainly be more helpful if you provided an example of this 'butchering'.

i fully understand your point and sorry if i used the term transcribe in the wrong context. but i meant more along the lines of, and this is just one example, when i found a piece of sheet music for tifa's theme from advent children. i learned about half of it, then just sucked it up and bought the sheet book from squaresound.com. after learning the "real" version, i noticed the first sheet i learned from was the exact same song but with every couple of notes altered from the legit sheet. it's stuff like that i don't get. i understand, as i said earlier, why people do it for different instruments then a song was written for or to collaborate to make an original rendition of a song. i would just like to find a sheet online once in a while that sounds to the last detail like the original i heard in the first place and fell in love with. passion from kingdom hearts 2 is another great example. there are like 5 or 6 custom versions of the song, but i've yet to find that sounded close enough to the real song that i wanted to spend weeks/months learning it(i'm self taught so takes me a bit to learn a song from sheet music, can't site read). they all sound nice, but most are way to tough for me and sound a bit over-complicated then they have to be, or are almost one handed they're so over-simplified. this topic post was more of a curiosity as to why nobody online seems to want or be as anal as me about precision. but once again, sorry if i sounded like i'm against original scores, just would like an exact copy from the game sheet to show up once in a while.

I think I see what you mean, but there's probably a bit of misunderstanding here.

In most cases, transcribers don't have anything but the original song to work with. All they can do is listen to it over and over again, and write down what they think is the correct score. It's not like the sheet music is already available to them and all they have to do is copy it over. The differences you're noticing are probably just unfortunate errors in the transcription, by no one's intention. If you have insight/experience to share on how to manage perfect precision in transcribing, we're all ears. :)

Finally, transcribers cater to musicians of different skill levels, what you find too difficult/easy may be perfect for someone else. The best way to solve this problem is to mention in your requests what difficulty you would like, and possibly provide examples of sheet music you're comfortable playing.

yeah, understandable. i do get why people try to write songs into sheet music by ear as accurately as they can, and that it doesn't usually come out exact. i was just surprised that nobody that went and bought the book/s bothered to copy it for others online, yet so many were willing to spend hours transcribing and posting em online, even taking requests. this was mostly just a frustrated post written after hours and hours searching online for what i hoped would be an exact copy of sheet music from a square book. i guess there's no solid answer to why nobody seems to copy sheet music from the book they bought on to a site, besides maybe the sites get shut down way too fast or they're just lazy. but thanks for being patient with me and not just flaming me for asking a stupid question like most forums would. and i'll probably try what you said Gotanks and request a moderate difficulty version of passion and the like. that or just suck it up and spend the $30 to learn one song the "legit" way:P

Or maybe they don't want to share something they bought with someone else that practically would get it for free giving no benefit to the person that bought it. Or maybe they are so good that want others to buy the sheet music and benefit the publishers. Or the more obvious of all, they don't care. Though I have saw A LOT (But a lot!) of scanned sheet music books.

Edit: Use space bar.

I think some people are glory hogs and get bored with the original arrangement because it's not fast enough (eg. doesn't have enough notes).

The simplified versions are usually for those vg music fans who either haven't yet gotten to the skill level requires to play the original version or are loo lazy to work to play the original version and make an easier version.

Also it depends on instrumentation. final fantasy range from piano solos to large scale orchestral works to rock music. and KH is heavily piano and string based. Many people do not play these instruments. Especially for those who do not play piano many pieces have to get simplified.

As to your grievance for passion, I searched google and youtube and it seems to be a piece for voice, synthesizer, electric guitar, and drums. It would be pretty hard to play all three at the same time. I assume you play piano (or electric keyboard) so it would be pretty hard to get too close to the original without either simplifying or expanding it.

If you've heard the FF7 piano collection battle themes then you know. What I'm talking about. The piano's inability to crescendo or add shape to a long notes (or provide drum beats while playing a melody at the same time) makes it necessary to add more notes to create excitement in fast pieces and lyrical-ness in slow pieces.

P.S. All the great fan piano arrangements for video game music I've seen are from random japanese websites my brother found online. If you can read japanese, you "might" find more of what you are looking for.

I'll just talk about piano solo recordings being transcribed for piano since I want to compare apples to apples. Remember that not all official sheet music is from the original composer himself/herself. They can be arranged by someone else. Not only that I find a lot of the official arrangements dumbed-down. I believe they're targeting amateur to novice pianists. Not only that, Placebo effect? Some people think the legit versions are accurate just because it's legit without ever having to examine and compare it to the original song.

I've looked at some official Legend of Zelda sheet music published by Doremi. From what I've seen, they're dumbed-down and I've caught several errors.

All I have to say is trust your ears. Give me any sheet music and I can examine the original song and tell you which is more accurate (not 100% guarantee though).

If you're transcribing a song that has multiple instruments for just the piano, then that's basically comparing oranges to apples. It doesn't work and you'll get different answers (different arrangements). Since you said you're obsessed with accuracy (so am I), what you're probably looking for are "transcriptions." Not arrangements and this includes the legit versions. If you're a pianist, what you want is a transcription of a song that only has piano in it.

I can't speak for others but I transcribe songs to express my version of a song that does not have an official score (most jpop music). Most popular game music all have official piano scores, so why people remake those are too many reasons to list. Nonetheless, there are differences between transcriptions, some are easy, some are hard. Some sound great and others not so much. They can make a near exact copy to a totally remixed version. Maybe you'll find a transcribed version you actually like better than the original some day.

Why Transcribe?
Because I can.

thats like asking why do people put videos up on youtube or w.e of themselves playing any song? yes the song might get butchered in the process, but why the hell not?
for me transcribing songs/learning to play songs i like is just a massive hobby of mine among other things. so one factor may just be sheer enjoyment/pleasure out of doing it and we share em here because alot of people are looking for them. or something like that

PS i was half asleep when i posted this so cut me some slack XD and if anything sounded harsh sorry i didnt mean it to

Exactly.
Personally, I do it because i enjoy doing it.

Why Transcribe?
Because I can.

Word. XD

And the fact that there just aren't sheets for most of the songs out there.

Why do I transcribe? For the fun of it, so that I can actually use all that knowledge of music theory instead of just letting it waste away into nothingness. Oh, and I transcribe because people ask me to. =D