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Comment by tommymachine | Hacker News Reader

The notes / rhythm in the particular score aren't accurate to the recording, except for the lyrics. Supposing if you played it as written there, it wouldn't be so recognizable. Personally, I don't much fancy calling something so inaccurate a 'score'. More like, a 'rough suggestion' or something. A score is supposed to be like a thing that someone like Hans Zimmer would write for an orchestra. Pop songs typically don't have scores involved in their production anyways, which may be partially responsible for the inaccuracy. But the real responsible party is the person who transcribed it wrong!

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Well, take any jazz standard. As you say, scores in jazz are at most a rough guide, not transcription of how the music should be played. Yet, if you take a score and make a MIDI player play it as it is written, any jazz fan will recognize the tune instantly.

For instance, take

http://i17.tinypic.com/4uneoft.jpg

Remove the title, add a mistake or two in the score, and give it to some jazz fan who can read music, he'll recognize the tune instantly, yet nobody ever played it this way, so blandly.

They'll recognize the chords instantly, without even having to glance at the printed notes. In practice, these things are usually called "charts" or lead sheets (if they have a melody) because they chart out the changes, which you solo over. They usually are found in "fake books", where it's assumed that the melody transcription is relatively awful, but it's close enough that a decent musician can quickly figure out the actual tune from it (assuming they've heard it before).

You'll almost never hear any seasoned jazz players refer to a chart like this as a "score", unless they have a very very classical background, or are sort of making a joke about the quality of a particular lead sheet. Scores are for orchestras and films and things like that. It's strange to see people keep referring to these sh*tty transcriptions as 'scores'.

It's like calling Kraft Mac 'n' cheese "pasta". Like, ok maybe technically it could qualify as a pasta, but you don't really refer to it as that in practice.

In fact, they may find it easier to recognize that tune from this transcription, than from some of the actual recordings: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5cZG2WnXPgk

I agree the transcription is awful, but would you say it's unrecognisable?

Yes.

What about folks that get words in songs wrong? Quite a few folks would know exactly what song I meant when I said the one with the verse "There's a bathroom on the right" even though that is wrong to the point of idiocy.

That is to say, I think you don't give people good enough credit if you think a bad transcription will preclude many from being able to recognize something.

A few misheard lyrics here or there is quite different from 9 / 10 notes having a different rhythm, as in the article's example.

You'd be surprised. There is a reason most people can tell, just from the lyrics, what songs a parody is based on.

Similarly, a novice butchering a song on guitar is likely completely wrong, but people will still recognize it if the general shape of the song is preserved. Heck, most novice guitars probably are not tuned properly.

Most guitars aren't in tune period [1].

1. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D8EjCTb88oA

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