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There's so much happening here. I sense two voices on G staff, one of which has a mixture of notes tied to chords and I'm unsure how should I approach this or if this score is properly written

note with chord

Thank you

Alwin Kesler
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  • It's properly written and playable, although depending on your hand size the stretch might be awkward. What don't you understand? – PiedPiper Feb 07 '24 at 00:52
  • I wasn't sure how ties works in these scenarios. Aaron answer was straight forward useful but Laurence has a greater point once I understood tied notes should be considered as voices aswell. Thank you for caring – Alwin Kesler Feb 07 '24 at 14:16
  • I have another answer written (currently hidden) on how to approach this piano (?) passage, but first I need to know the key signature of this passage and the clef of the 2nd staff. – GratefulDisciple Feb 07 '24 at 14:25
  • @GratefulDisciple, its Reflections of Passion by Yanni. Written on D major – Alwin Kesler Feb 07 '24 at 14:31
  • @AlwinKesler Thanks, identifying the piece makes a crucial difference; my answer was more in terms of playing a classical piece written originally for piano, so doesn't apply to your question. I listened to the song and see a sample piano reduction score and another piano reduction score that you seems to be using. You can hear your passage at minute 1:15. – GratefulDisciple Feb 07 '24 at 15:16
  • @GratefulDisciple thank you! for taking time into this and helping us all with proper understanding – Alwin Kesler Feb 07 '24 at 15:24
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    When you hear the original song (not for solo piano, but has artificial string backing), you can hear that on the right hand there is just 2 voices: top B-flat fades away is in the string, and 2 the sixteenth notes form a single voice and the third measure is "wrong" (in the original recording, the E in the middle of the Em7 doesn't resolve to D). So if you want to render the original faithfully, just drop that D in the 3rd measure. You would play the 2nd voice (both lower notes) accented and let both notes of the 2nd voice fades away naturally. – GratefulDisciple Feb 07 '24 at 15:25

2 Answers2

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Yes, there's a lot going on! We COULD notate it strictly as three voices (one of which splits into two notes at times). In my example below, A plus B plus C could be notated as D.

But piano notation is often rather lax about strictly maintaining 'voices', and rightly so! You wouldn't REALLY prefer D, would you?

I think it's perfectly clear where a note is played and where one is held over with a tie. The original notation is quite 'correct'.

enter image description here

Laurence
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The highest note enters in the first measure. It holds into the second measure where it’s joined by the middle and lower pitches. In the third measure, the top and bottom notes hold, and the middle note moves a step lower.

Aaron
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