"Aura Lee"

Taken from James Bastien's The Older Beginner Piano Course Level 2 (I repeated it and added the tiniest of cadences at the end).  As Bastien explains in the footnote, Elvis' "Love Me Tender" is a version of this song.

Manfred Mann's "Untie Me"

I recently listened to The Five Faces of Manfred Mann for the first time in over a year and was reminded of the Hohner Pianet part in "Untie Me."  I figured it out about two years ago, and I thought I'd post it.

The Pianet simply doubles selected portions of the piano part.  Throughout the song, there are a handful of single D notes in the lower register (nearly two octaves below middle C), and this phrase is at ~2:20:

Bach: Minuet in G minor, BWV Anh. 115

Bach: Minuet in G major, BWV Anh. 114

Purcell: Minuet in A minor, Z. 649

I got the notation from IMSLP.  It doesn't have fingerings, so I came up with my own, which probably aren't technically correct.

I did at least half a dozen takes to get a good (and consistent) andante tempo.  A couple days after I recorded this, I referenced the recording I have by Pieter-Jan Belder, and his tempo is closer to what I'd been playing originally, so maybe I needn't have bothered slowing it down.

Telemann: Minuet in G major

Earlier this year, I recorded a Telemann minuet and posted it on his birthday (March 14).  I learned this from The Older Beginner Piano Course, Level 2 by James Bastien.

Introduction

For more than a decade now, my favorite band has been the Zombies.  That's where I first heard about the Hohner Pianet.  About five years ago, I discovered that there was a Pianet sample available for the Nord keyboards, and after saving all of my money for a couple years, I finally got a Nord Electro 5, mostly so I could play Hohner Pianet (but also for the Mellotron samples and the ability to use drawbars to change the organ sounds).

Since acquiring my Nord and being able to play what is probably the closest I'll ever get to a real Hohner Pianet, I've done more research on the instrument and become more interested in it.  Two of the most significant things I've found in my research are this website devoted to the Pianet and the demonstration record (side 1, side 2), which I've listened to dozens of times.

Partially inspired by the demonstration record's description of the Pianet's sound as having "einen romantischen ja fast einen impressionistischen Charakter" ("a romantic almost impressionistic character") and by my own feeling that its sound is completely unique and superior to other electric pianos (despite lacking a sustain mechanism), I decided to start this project.  While the scope is still a bit nebulous, my main goal is to record classical keyboard pieces using the Pianet sample on my Nord Electro 5, almost as a continuation of the first side of the demonstration record, which includes pieces by Schumann and Haydn.  I'm certainly not the greatest keyboard player (aside from one semester of Beginning Piano in college, I'm self-taught), so recordings will probably be few and far between.

I'd also like to showcase Pianet parts from other songs, like the Lovin' Spoonful's "Summer in the City," the Buckinghams' "Hey Baby (They're Playing Our Song)," and the Beatles' "Tell Me What You See."  Eventually, I'm going to transcribe and translate the text from the demonstration record too.