I was just wondering if anyone knew where I might be able to find tabs for the cello accompaniment to “Air on a G String”? My wife is currently learning this for the violin and I thought it’d be great if I could eventually accompany her for the piece
The trouble is, whenever I try a Google or YouTube search I keep getting presented with people playing the entire piece on the bass - when all I want is the cello part. I’ve had a go at converting from the sheet music, but my theory isn’t great so it’d be nice to find some good quality tabs for use/comparison.
I know you have the score, but here’s the notation for just the 2 cellos. No tab that I could find. Sorry. You’ll probably want to play the lower part.
I love where your intentions are at for this!
Sorry I don’t have a tab for it.
I like seeing the score, and immediately see how challenging this would be.
That damn tenor clef kills me every time.
It will be tough thing to read, and a very tough thing to play.
Absolutely doable and musically satisfying, but challenging.
I hope you can find a tab for the cello part, and I’m sorry I can’t make one. This is a noble venture.
Do you have an Ultimate Guitar account. Their ‘official’ one has tab for two violins, viola and cello. But I think you need an account to access the ‘official’ tabs. There are many others but they are mostly guitar tabs.
I checked around on the interwebs for something that would work for you. I didn’t come across any tablature, but I did come across a harmonized bass part—two of them actually—in standard notation. Seeing that they were each only 38 bars long, I took the simpler of the two and whipped in into Sibelius First, music composition software that is kind enough to provide tablature for you if you so choose. I chose.
The original piece is in D Major, but come to find out that many versions are transposed to G Major, so that the violinist can play the piece on their instrument’s G string…hence the name Air on the G String. A quick glance at the key signature shows that my version, too, is notated in G Major.
The original notation had some fairly wicked position shifts that would have had you quickly darting up the neck and then back down just as quickly, so I went through and smoothed some of those out in the interests of keeping your hands somewhat less active. I didn’t smooth all of them out, however, to retain some harmonic complexity. If you like, you can modify to your heart’s content should it suit you.
Ah, it turns out my wife is learning the D-Major score for violin … but I’ll have a play with the G-Major version anyway- I might be able to convince her to switch over
Your timing on all of this, Phil, was most fortuitous. At present I’m working my way through the self-study course Alfred’s Essentials of Music Theory (which I’m finding excellent by the way and would recommend highly) and doing things like this plays right into the lessons there. That, and it’s an excellent way to work on one’s music reading and even ear training, as Sibelius sounds out notes as you input them or move them around. I also want to get more conversant with Sibelius itself, and this helps with that too.
Since I brought up moving notes around, please be aware that in this iteration I did a lot of that. Transposing up to D Major slathered parts of the piece with lots of high ledger lines that would have had you racing up to the 14th fret of the G string at times, and transposing down or even to “nearest neighbor” would have given you notes below the open E on a four-string bass.
So, I took some liberties, above and beyond the ones I’d already taken in the G Major version. That’s why I changed the composer field, to extend apologies to Johann.
What liberties? I compressed things to keep your hand in the same neck real estate most of the time rather than have it jump around like an excited ferret. So a lot of what Bach wrote as octaves, I turned into repeated notes. I also didn’t trouble myself about keeping notes in the same octave as the original. I wound up with what resembles a fairly simple walking bass line for one of the most beautiful pieces of music ever written, albeit one that allows you to stay in the money notes while your wife bows out that soothing melody line.
I took one final liberty on the closing note of the piece. Bach notated it as a single note, but I “fixed” that for him and made the ending far more awesome by adding the octave above it. Immediately after playing it you should raise your plucking hand into the air, make a fist, and pump it repeatedly skyward while staring directly into the light fixture. Your wife will love it, trust me.
Oh man, that is beyond awesome! It’s a shame I can only give it 1 like
I was taking what I would imagine is a n00b approach to the conversion and following the notes literally- so I was struggling with walking up the neck with octave intervals!
I’m very glad I got lucky and caught you working on a music theory course. I very much appreciate the support and work you’ve put in, and will look forward to working on this (and getting the fist pump in at the end )
Ha! That’d explain why I was struggling with trying to convert it myself … must learn more music theory … (along with learning to actually play the bass as well )
I’m glad you like it, and I hope it works for you. Again, because it’s not a transposition so much as a reworking, and because I am far from an expert at this, there are no warranties expressed or implied.
Thinking about this after the fact I realize that I could have used half notes in many of the measures and it may have sounded better. A measure of E-E-D-D, say, could just be E-D. Played legato that may have flowed better under the violin line. Try it that way if you’re so inclined.
The fist pumping is critically important, so I’m glad you’re going to incorporate that. If it causes your wife to look at you with an expression like a dog gets when it hears a funny sound, no worries. That’s normal. Just drop your gaze to the floor, slouch so the bass hangs low, and immediately launch into Lemmy’s bass line from “Ace of Spades.”
)
