Doctor Who theme, player piano

I made this arrangement 20 years ago for computer-controlled piano, but this is the first time I've been able to hear it on an actual computer-controlled piano instead of a MIDI synthesizer.

Back around 1989, a friend sent me a four-hand piano arrangement of the 1980 version of the Doctor Who theme. It was by a couple of guys whose surnames were Balga and Hosek, as I recall. However, it was lacking in some areas, and they had misheard the chords as being dissonant (probably mistaking the grating sawtooth waveform of the original as being dissonance). So I essentially re-transcribed the entire piece from the recording, fixing rhythmic differences, the chords, adding notes that they had missed, and adding the "twinklies" as I call them. They're not exactly the same as in the original recording (back then I had no means to slow down the original recording to aid in transcription), but at least they're there now.

Some of their original arrangement is still present (e.g. the "echo" of the melody and some grace notes), so I can't take full credit, though it's mostly mine.

Anyway, with all the changes I made, it really was no longer a four-hand piano arrangement, though I suppose two people technically could play it if they really worked at it. The dynamics of the "twinklies" coming in and out while passing through other notes also makes it probably incapable of being done on a reproducing piano roll (admittedly I don't know exactly how their dynamics systems work), thus I don't call this a piano-roll arrangement; I've always thought of it as an arrangement for computer-controlled piano (though I think on my web site I do list it as four-hand).

You can download this as a MIDI file here:
http://www.armory.com/~keeper/1/DrWhoPR.mid

Category:

Music

Tags:

• drwho
• piano
• pianodisc
• doctor who
• dr. who

[channing28270]

Is this on a Compact Disc? have you ever played the Compact Disc in a Jam Box?

[Keeper1st]

@channing28270 It's a MIDI file. It was on a floppy disk.

[EmeraldVideosNL]

wow, creepy to see a piano play itself o.O really nice piece. not something an actuall person would be able to play, with the keys used so far apart.

[Keeper1st]

@EmeraldVideosNL Self-playing pianos have been around for more than 100 years, so it shouldn't really be creepy anymore. Indeed this arrangement was not intended to be playable by humans. That's a big part of the appeal of player pianos; all the best arrangements are made specifically for the player piano and are not humanly playable.

[psion0027]

duh guys hes using his sonic screw driver to make the piano play itself its obvius

[Keeper1st]

@2Jeff4Gordon How strange. One would think that a grandmother would be familiar with player pianos.

[EmeraldVideosNL]

@Keeper1st Really that long? I had no idea XD

It's just a pity all those best arrangements can never be played by humans. But still, pretty awesome these pianos make it possible to hear this :)

[Keeper1st]

@JJJocarra This arrangement was inspired by an attempted four-hand arrangement (which had some really bad harmonies in it), so a four-hand version could be made from this, probably, if you use the MIDI file as a guide. The MIDI file is not aligned to the MIDI clock properly as a result of converting it from the Amiga DMCS format into a MIDI file, but when you know the rhythm of the tune already it probably wouldn't be too difficult to write down.

[JJJocarra]

@Keeper1st Yeah, heh, I could tell by watching/listening it wasn't going to be playable by one person ;P Would have been fun to have a four hands-one piano arrangement, though! But that's fine, thanks anyway!

[Keeper1st]

@JJJocarra I never scored this arrangement because it isn't meant to be humanly playable. It could be orchestrated, I suppose.

[JJJocarra]

Do you happen to have the sheet music available for this?

[cheesecake22511]

if i were in my bed and my piano started playing it's self like that i'd be terrified. but still this is very good!