Tutorial•10 min read
How to Make a Piano Cover of Any Song
A good piano cover starts with knowing what the song is actually doing. Here is how to find the chords and melody, arrange them for two hands, and make the song your own.
Explore Songscription's guides to music transcription, sheet music, MIDI, piano roll, and AI-powered music learning, plus product updates and company announcements from the Songscription team.
A good piano cover starts with knowing what the song is actually doing. Here is how to find the chords and melody, arrange them for two hands, and make the song your own.
Classical piano is one of the hardest things to transcribe well: dense voicing, pedal blur, and rubato all fight you. Here is how to get a clean score by ear or with AI, and what to expect.
Gospel piano is built on rich chords, fast passing notes, and a feel that is hard to pin down. Here is how to transcribe it without losing what makes it gospel, by ear or with AI.
Music transcription is the act of writing down music you can hear but do not have on paper. Here is what it means, the forms it takes, and how AI changed who can do it.
Tablature shows you where to put your fingers instead of which notes to play. It is the fastest way for guitarists to read music, with one big trade-off. Here is how it works.
Transposing a song means moving every note up or down by the same amount to land in a new key. Here is what that means, why musicians do it, and how to do it without rewriting everything.
The two numbers at the start of a piece tell you how to count it. Here is what the top and bottom mean, how 4/4, 3/4, and 6/8 actually feel, and how to find any song's time signature.
The sharps or flats at the start of a staff are a shortcut that tells you which key you are in. Here is how to read a key signature, identify the key, and use the circle of fifths.
A piano roll turns music into a simple picture: pitch goes up, time goes right, and each bar is a note you hold. Here is how to read one, even if you have never read sheet music.
AI music transcription listens to a recording and writes out the notes. Here is what actually happens between the audio going in and the sheet music coming out, in plain language, plus where the technology is strong and where it still struggles.
MIDI is one of the most useful things in music software and one of the most misunderstood. The short version: it is not audio, it is a set of instructions for which notes to play and how. Here is what that means and why it matters for transcription.
MusicXML is the file format that lets sheet music move between programs without being retyped. If you have ever wanted to open a score in MuseScore that started somewhere else, this is the format that makes it possible. Here is what it is and when to use it.
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