A great example of interference by a record company to make a song sell. When I was first asked to play this and determined that I needed to transcribe it, I found the source track (single version) to be hopelessly un-tunable. The notes were somewhere in the quartertone zone and couldn’t be played with my tuning slide anywhere near a “normal” position. As I dug deeper I discovered that all instances of the single version on YouTube were like this.

When I played the longer album version of the song I found it to be the exact same recording, but at a slower tempo and a playable key of A minor. I’m sure this isn’t unique; a record company increasing the speed of a song (tempo and key) in order to find that $$$ sweet spot.

This is a note-for-note transcription of the trumpet part as played on the original Simply Red album version. Good luck, if you ever need to play along with the single version!

Resources:

• Simply Red – Holding Back The Years Bandhub collab video.
• Simply Red – Holding Back The Years trumpet chart.

Transcribed by me and free for you to use.

What do you think? Please leave a comment and let me know.