Genesis - After the Ordeal - Piano Sheet Music + 2 PDFs & MIDI files

PDFs etc. can be obtained thru https://www.buymeacoffee.com/ElektrikHob
or the usual DropBox link if you've already donated.
Some useful gumpf; click on SHOW MORE (just below).
Effectively two videos for the price of one this time! (there are 2 PDFs and 2 MIDI files plus one audio file available)

It's scored, as usual, with Sibelius 7.5

The first ‘half’ is based on the original Selling England by the Pound studio track.

The piano audio was created in Presonus Studio One v4.5 using Modartt’s Pianoteq 7 Steingraeber Grand piano and processed thru Valhalla’s Vintage Verb.
Steve’s electric guitar part comes from the centre channel of the 5.1 DVD-Audio mixes, but his acoustic guitar wasn’t isolated so I’ve vaguely recreated it using MusicLab’s Real Guitar.

During the first section (with the acoustic guitar melody), the piano is pretty much what Tony played.
But I think I need to point something out in bars 25-32 and 56-63…
What I’ve written is what is played on the original by the piano during these bars but they sound more complicated than Tony’s usual style of playing especially 31-32 & 62-63.
I’m not 100% certain, but I’ve a strong belief that there was some overdubbing going on in these two lots of 8 bars…
I think what I’ve written for the left hand was actually played by Tony with both hands; the 1st bass note would be ‘octaved’ with his LH and the arpeggiated and block chords played with his RH. What I’ve written for the right hand would then have been overdubbed seperately.
Apart from the unusual complexity, the timing between the two parts also seems to tie in with my deduction.
Of course, I may be wrong and doing Tony a disservice…!
Whatever the reality, as written, it’s a little trickier to play than is usually the case with Tony’s parts.
I don’t believe they ever played it live (I’ve read in several different places that Tony was never really happy with this piece), so I can’t use a live version as a cross-reference but there is a wonderful YT video -    • Steve Hackett plays “After The Ordeal”   - of Steve Hackett and Roger King (Steve’s superb keyboard player for the last decade or so) performing, at (Steve’s?) home, the ‘acoustic’ section (before going into the Firth of Fifth intro & guitar solo).
More on that performance later…

The second section (with Steve’s electric guitar) is also based on what Tony plays on the piano but I’ve added a few bits as the original has organ and bass guitar as well to help fill out the harmonic content. For the final ‘repeat’ section I’ve scored a simple accompaniment rather than try to incorporate everything that’s going on though I have included Tony’s synth line at the end. You can play pretty much anything you like with those repeated 4 chords!

Did I mention the Steve Hackett/Roger King video?? 😉    • Steve Hackett plays “After The Ordeal”  

Well, the second ‘half’ of the video (starting at 4:12) contains what I believe is a pretty accurate transcription of what Roger plays though, of course, they only play the ‘acoustic’ section before going into FoF. It's very similar (not surprisingly of course) to Tony's rendition but I think Roger has cleverly dealt with what I call the 'overdubbed' bars so that the whole piece does sound like Tony might've played it like this live. Check out bar 9 (and similar) though; quite an interesting difference in arpeggiation... 🙂 Or how Roger slams the brakes on at the end of bar 13 whereas Tony takes a gentler approach 😂
The audio is taken directly from the YT video; hope Steve & Roger don't mind...

Nothing more to add except that when I play the piece myself I use a sort of hybrid of Tony’s and Roger’s parts with occasional references to Steve’s melodies when I can slot ’em in! 🙂

Have fun! 👍