Genesis - Firth of Fifth - Piano Sheet Music + PDF

Some useful gumpf; click on SHOW MORE (just below).

And here we are, full circle! My first Genesis vid was the FoF intro and now, finally, I've gotten around to completing the whole piece :)

The main thing to be aware of is that apart from the intro and the gentle bit before the (build up to the) keyboard solo, FoF was definitely NOT written in a way such that it could be played relatively easily as a piano piece (unlike, say, Mad Man Moon, Anyway, The Lamia etc.) :)

A caveat though: I don't play the piece EXACTLY as I've scored it out.
What I've done is to simplify what I play as much as possible without, hopefully, taking away the essence of my own style of playing and the original beauty of the song.
Feel free to adjust how you play it to suit your own style :)

The verses. I'm sure many of you will spot that the melody of the score matches the playback only for the first verse ("The path is clear") but not for the other 2 full verses ("He rides majestic" & "Now as the river") simply because I use repeat bars for these 3 verses.
However, the audio is pretty accurate so you can hopefully hear how my accompaniment interweaves with the original vocal line.

Bars 42-48. It took quite a while to come up with something that I feel really combines the vocal, guitars & Mellotron.
In particular, bars 47 & 48 may seem a little unusual, but the chords implied by my notes (and written above) are what Tony plays on the Mellotron (Esus2 contains the same notes as Bsus4) and I like the slight harmonic tension that these chords have with the arpeggiated guitar :)

Bars 73-77. In bar 74, hopefully what I've written makes sense… :)
As for the left hand, I've done a combination of (sort of) how the piano is played on the original with the main bass notes just to give it some 'bottom-end'.

The Keyboard solo. When I play the piece live, most of the time I'll just repeat the piano intro (with the last 2 bars altered obviously) as it's such a great solo piano part.
But if I want a bit more aggression, then I'll use what I've scored here. It's meant to give some indication of the power of Mike's bass alongside Tony's solo.

The Guitar solo. For me, it's always been really difficult to make this section sound good just on piano!
I've tried to incorporate the feel of Mike's bass lines with Steve's melody and the chords as played by Tony on organ & Mellotron.
However, this section as I've written it (particularly bars 103-112, 118-121 & 133-136) is really quite tricky to play because of all the rhythmical interplay between right & left hand!
If it all seems a bit much, try simplifying the left hand; I've given an example in bars 106-108.
It's really Steve's melody that needs to shine :)

The outro. I've based it on the way the band ended the song on Seconds Out.

There are no sustain pedal markings, dynamics, changes of tempo etc. as I hate the way they clutter up the score!
Use your own discretion for all of the above :)

It's scored and played back using Sibelius 7.5 with Modartt's Pianoteq 6.1.1 virtual piano plug-in although I've no idea why Sibelius decided to output the first screen as 3 lines of music… bizarre!

[ElektrikHob]

* * * possible correction - bar 12; the final triplet can be played as just one note (the top E) * * *
I have a live version where Tony does indeed play that bit as a triplet, but on the original studio version, it IS one note...
I've been playing it as 3 triplets since I was 14 so it's hard to get out of the habit but it's definitely easier as a single note if you have smaller hands :)
I don't know how many of you do this but, in case you don't, can I politely suggest that you click on the SHOW MORE button above the comments section (same for all my vids) :)
It gives some info as to what my thought process was in creating the vid and, far more importantly, the link to the PDF file that I hint at in the title (in case you're using a laptop or smaller device and the link isn't visible by default).

[haroldtrujillo]

Learned this for a wedding in 1981 (the bride wanted it for the recessional). Took me three weeks to figure it out. Didn't have the internet to help me out. Not bragging but this was a chore to learn with the different time signatures and odd key signatures. Wish I had this back then. Still a classic piece of music. Tony Banks is a great composer (Mad Man Moon is anothe favorite). Long live the classic Genesis!

[darrellhambley]

In the winter of '74 I would listen to this in my dorm room, writing down every note while moving the needle back again and again on the vinyl, then going to the music practice rooms across campus to play it. repeat, repeat, until I had it. Unaware to me, it was in Bb and I assumed key of C when I transcribed. Didn't find this out until I saw your video here!

[ElektrikHob]

Many thanks to everyone who's commented and that goes for my other vids too; it's nice to know my efforts seem to be appreciated :)
I'll be taking a bit of a break for a while, but there're still quite a few Genesis tracks in my back-catalogue and I'm sure my transcriptions will wend their way here eventually... :)

[danielcropp]

God, the you want to call it is so wildly creative and innovative. I find it hard to believe that this exists and is real, but it is. Boy, what a world!

[bobdmith]

Bravo, and Bravo!!! And thank you for scoring this so well done. 20+ years ago I worked out the intro but lost it from memory. It really is a testimony to the compositional skills of Tony Banks that more than a generation later that very talented musicians (like you!) are studying his work with great intensity and passion. Thank you Mr. Hod, and thank you Mr. Banks.

[positivecommenter]

You. Are. Absolutely. Incredible. Thank you so freaking You are such a blessing. I hope you are doing great.😊

[MisterJSF]

I was going to make my own transcription of this great song and I found your video ! Thanks a lot that's a ggod work and you're saving my time ! 😃🎹👍

[znman]

Thank you very much. i'm flute player and i was looking for the Gabriel's flute part. You have make an incredible work here. Thanks a lot.

[miks]

A W E S O M E work on one of the most iconic musical compositions ever

[keymusic]

Wow. Talk about accuracy and attention to detail! Excellent

[penponds]

An absolutely amazing contribution! You’ve opened up one the greatest masterpieces for us Genesis diehards who don’t know when they’re beaten.
I’ll be pressing my Arturia V Collection of synth VSTs into service this Xmas to start on this. FANTASTIC!

[grazmor]

Thank you. I want suggest this song to my young nephew that don't knows Genesis . Very grateful

[colefitzpatrick]

Holy shit I've been working on this for months and still it's kicking my ass. But I'm not wont to stop trying anytime soon!

[daonfpe]

SUPERB! Thanks for posting this! Wondering about those 22 who didn’t approve! It’s not everybody that takes the time to publish the piano sheet music for for Firth Of Fifth!

[lelioleone.]

GRAZIE GRAZIE GRAZIE PER IL PDF!!! GRANDE MAESTRO MASSIMO BUCCI!!!

[barrygroeneveld]

From 5:41 you play Steve Hacket's beautiful guitar solo with a piano sound... and actually it sounds great! Excellent job, well done!

[dsslimone]

Excellent works I used to play but drifted away when other things got in the way. This is an inspiration to get back to playing. Thanks for a full transcript. 👏👏

[brucekornfeld]

I'm blown away at this! I'm just now getting "back" into listening to old Genesis and playing piano myself. I really want to learn this - so I googled and found you pretty quickly. I haven't even sat down at the piano yet but I can tell you put a LOT of time into figuring out exactly what Tony was playing and transcribing it for us. Thanks!

[RogerBarraud]

For such a long piece, it's amazing how quickly it goes by...

...time flies when you're having fun, eh?

:-)

<3