Planets by Emily Haines & The Soft Skeleton

I've played piano since I was a kid. I took some lessons, but eventually fell out of them and just kept playing on my own. Instead of practicing, I just perform for myself. Over time, the performances got better. I'm now comfortable sight-reading nearly anything that isn't "intensely classical." Since it was never fun to play arpeggios and scales, I'm not great at classical pieces. Show tunes? Yes. Jazz standards? Yes. Pop? Italian arias? New age? Movie soundtracks? Yes.

While I'm comfortable with piano, beginner music theory, and improvisation, I have always been dreadful at playing by ear. With written music in front of me, I'm at my best. Trying to transcribe a song and its chords? Oof.

But I dig Emily Haines & The Soft Skeleton so hard that I had motivation to get better. So I downloaded the amazing free music composition software MuseScore (definitely going to send them some cash) and got to work. My setup is a keyboard playing through earbuds, and YouTube/other music service playing through my big over-the-ear headphones. That way I can hear both at the same time. It didn't keep me from needing to rewind parts of the song a few dozen times, but I felt like the tools were smooth and I was the only bottleneck.

Anyways, I'm happy with what I made. Here's the original on Spotify and my arrangement. Happy playing!

Planets - PDF

Planets - MuseScore

Planets - MP3