Rating: 
Summary: Worth every penny.....
Review: This is one of the best books on Beatle music that I have ever seen. In fact, I've been using it for the past several months uninterrupted...and having a blast! While it's not a 100% accurate (I have never found any music transcription book free of error), it clearly is a most highly commendable book and worth every penny! Nothing short of fantastic! My only quibbles are as follows:1. Claims to have all Beatle songs, but doesn't have Free as a Bird (one of my favs) and Real Love (I don't really miss this one anyways). 2. The type they used is too small (something like 8 pt or smaller) and often too difficult to read, especially for old duffers like me. A larger type would have been much nicer, but then it would turn this very heavy book into a massively heavy book. 3. Some of the notation was confusing to me, like the shorthand they used for repeating the notes from previous bar into the next bar rather than typing out the notes again. I was able to figure this out, but it would have been nicer to include a more complete musical notation legend at the beginning of the book. But these are minor complaints...I really have nothing but praise for the book. So, if you'll excuse me, I'm going back to my piano to play Lady Madonna.....
Rating:
Summary: Well worth the money
Review: Cheap price for hours and hours of enjoyment and music education. These guys were really good!
Rating: 
Summary: The Best Deal In Music Publishing!!!
Review: The Beatles Complete Scores is without doubt the best deal
in Music Publishing. I've read some reviews of this book, that claimed that some songs were incomplete. I think this is due to the misunderstanding of the notation system used in this book.
It is very similar to the type of system used in the UK based "Off The Record" series of Score books. When a part is played a second time, the repeated part is shown in parenthesis.
It helps if you can read music; so that you understand this while following the tab. Due to space restrictions, obviously there may be a few licks left out on some songs during a 3rd repeat, but at least you do get a complete transcription. They've fit in as much as they possibly could (which is why the parenthesis system was used - it saves on using additional pages to show what's played when a certain section is repeated.) The accuracy isn't perfect, but it's quite good for the most part.
Of course the best guitar transcriptions available are the ones from the guitar magazines and the Hal Leonard Recorded Version series books by the top American transcribers. If you keep in mind that this book was transcribed back in about '88, then these were quite good for the time (not to mention the amount of detail that is given.) Every instrument is transcribed for each track, along with tablature for both the Guitar & Bass. I don't think there's a better deal around for the money. Transcribing is not a perfect art; I've seen many books show Revolution transcribed in both the key of Bb and B; while I'm almost positive that it was recorded in A, but with the master tape sped up, making it sound between Bb and B. Makes sense when Revolution 1 is in A itself.
This book shows it in Bb. The most accurate transcription of that song for guitar and bass is from Guitar World magazine, transcribed by Andy Aledort (showing it in A, and mentioning as I have above as to why it sounds between Bb and B.) I just mentioned this to point out that no transcribed books are perfect; but overall for a book of complete scores, this one is pretty good; especially if you think how much it must have cost the publishers to transcribe all of these songs for all instruments as well as the typesetting.
Rating:
Summary: Completely Wonderfull
Review: This book is the best 50 bucks ive ever spent, really good for guitar and messing around with piano. I own every cd by the beatles and love every song so this book is just great. Sure the print is small but its damn good. Ive only found like 2 mistakes. Wonderfull, glad i bought it.
Rating:
Summary: Great book for the aspiring Beatle!
Review: This book is great--it has all of the guitar parts and bass and drums and even the orchestras! The problems with the book, however, can get frustrating: the book is kind of big to put on a stand, the music is kind of small and hard to read from far away, there are a few mistakes in lyrics (not a whole lot, but a few), and many times they do not put in the differences in instrumentation between verses (for example, bass lines in the two verses of 'She Came In Through the Bathroom Window' are written as the same line). But the up side of the book, having pretty much the exact transcription of every Beatles song, greatly outweighs the down sides. This book is a great alternative to searching for hours on the internet for often unreliable guitar chords for Beatles songs. Get it--you wont be disappointed.
Rating:
Summary: Comprehensive but not perfect
Review: This is good to have for practicing the guitar. One great song after another, and the songs are at various skill levels. No matter where you're at in your development, there is a song for you to play. It is obvious that the folks who prepared this book spent an extraordinary amount of time transcribing the songs. But, the book ain't perfect. First off, the text is quite small, and people with vision problems may have to really squint to read the musical notation. Even I have to sometimes stop what I am doing and scrutinize the notation. Second, the authors provide notation for every instrument featured on every Beatles song. So for example, there is transcription for mellotron, organ, flute and whatever. The book also provides guitar tab for people who can't read music. These extra notations mean there are less measures per page, and thus more page turning when you are playing a song. I know of no other book that includes every Beatles song. So this is the one to get.
Rating:
Summary: great!
Review: this is an excellent! it includes about every song ever done by the beatles! it's great because it has the music for all the songs as they did them! it's also a great refrence for lyrics. definitely buy this!
Rating:
Summary: The Beatles Complete Scores
Review: This book is probably the best buy I have ever made. It was in Austin, TX in March 1995, I was almost 40. I did not believe that that was possible. I cannot play by ear, and by the time I bought the book I had had quite a lot of different Beatles music books. They all were given to my friends right away, as this one is really "complete". It does have several typos, but they do not make it less worthy.
I would recommend this book to anyone who is interested in The Beatles music, no matter whether one is a beginner, or a proficient musician.
Rating: 
Summary: Helpful, but disappointing, too! Caveat emptor!
Review: It is great to have all the songs The Beatles recorded from Please, Please Me to Let It Be in one handy volume. It is also useful to have the book set up with scores of vocal, guitar, piano, bass, drums, etc. When I first saw this book I was intrigued to see that it even includes Revolution #9! However it does not include the full versions of some songs, and does not include songs The Beatles recorded before Please, Please Me or songs they wrote for other artists. The book has many inaccuracies, and must have been done very quickly. There are mistakes with the English language and in piano notation, which leads me to think that the Japanese gents who transcribed it must be guitarists. [The English mistakes include wrong spelling and confusing the letters L and R. Did you enjoy the episodes of Get Smart with the evil Dr Claw/Craw? You will love this book!] More evidence that the writers were not pianists: you can't fit the book on a piano stand! And the piano music is often written an octave too low, with heaps of leger lines below the treble stave unnecessarily. Some songs are quite accurate, while others are pretty poor. The "transcription" of Revolution #9 is a joke. Very little time would have been spent on making a score of this song. It is interesting to compare the book with other transcriptions of The Beatles music, and with other transcriptions of popular music. Milton Okun's earlier 2 volume set The Compleat Beatles is often closer to the original recordings than the one being reviewed. Although he transcribed the music in 2 staves for piano [like the Reader's Digest songbooks], he has often given a more reliable guide to playing the music. The Beatles Keyboard Book, also published by Hal Leonard, is often more accurate, but it is only intended to be a transcription of vocal and piano parts. And it only includes 23 songs, some of which did not have piano parts, originally! If you want to see how far short this book is from being complete, check out the Queen Greatest Hits Off the Record books. The Barnes Engraving people did a first class job in transcribing much more complex music. [I suspect they had access to the original multi-track tapes]. In the Queen scores, you will find every instrument accurately labelled in the score. The Beatles Complete Scores sometimes also has each instrument identified, but often not. If you listen to pieces such as Eleanor Rigby or Yesterday, you will find that the string parts are only an approximation. And these are not difficult parts! In following the Queen scores, it is hard to find an error. They are not absolutely perfect, but are much closer to it than this book is. The book is printed in a jazz font, and is hard to read. The text is very small, and cannot be read and played from a music stand: it needs to be enlarged to be useful. The book is worth having, if you take my negative comments into consideration. [I also find some buskers books, however inaccurate they are, useful as a starting point. The many wrong notes help you to find the right ones!] Cautiously recommended.
Rating:
Summary: Not A Half Bad Attempt At An Exhausting Task !!!
Review: Let Me first Stress That I am Not just a Beatlemaniac but I also Played John In the Off/Broadway production of Beatlemania. I thought The Book needed work. It was written years ago and with the technology we have today, we can do better. Ok.... Let's get started !!! There were alot of mistakes !!! Especially in the repetitons ( This is when a verse or versus repeat ). Notes are misplaced, guitar chord positions are sometimes incorrect as are the notes for some of the solos. Words are mispelled. Sometimes guitar chords are missing all-together and last but not least There are songs missing. When I hear the word 'Complete ' It should entail Everything. A good example of this is ' Cry For A Shadow ' or ' I'll Be On My Way ' Cry For A Shadow is, by the way, the first Beatles original to Ever grace a record. If you are looking for any of the Beatles Early original material - You Will Not find it in this book. There are many others as well. Such as : Hello Little Girl, You'll Be Mine, In Spite of All The Danger, Like Dreamers Do, If You've Got Trouble, That Means Alot, Not guilty As well as Cover songs They did (Example ' Aint she Sweet', ' My Bonnie ', ' Some Other Guy ', ' Soldier of Love ', 'Besame Mucho', Hippy Hippy Shake ' and ' You'd Better Leave My Kitten Alone ' ) and Songs Written for other Artists such as Bily J. Kramer, Peter and Gordon, Mary Hopkins and Badfinger. Remember the Song Which was written for The Beatles Called : 'How Do You Do It ' which was recorded by them but never released and then given to Jerry and The Pacemakers because The Beatles didn't like it and opted for 'Please Please Me ' refurbished. Sorry, but the word Complete means Complete. I haven't really bitched about it because I know all of these songs inside/out. I'm mentioning it to those individuals who are searching for these songs, some of which do not exist on paper yet. I Think with the technology we have today, We can make the proper corrections and include the lost songs to make it Complete. One more thing I'd really like to add is the size of the book, although it is legible ( sometimes with the help of a magnifying glass ) it really should be in a larger format such as an 11 by 17 inch book. I'd gladly pay the extra money for it. There is simply way to much information to squeeze into a book this size which may have added to the amount of typos. With all this said I think It's not bad. However, it is not complete or completely accurate by a long shot !!! I do recommend it to anyone interested in playing The Beatles Music. This is about as close as you will get at this point in time to one book with this much info in it until They come out with a second and obviously much larger addition with all the songs in it. I really hope and think they will do this very Soon.
| 
