Here I thought I had a decent collection of fakebooks, but I don't have an arrangement of "Imagine". I have some books of Beatles tunes, but they only have Beatles tunes, not Paul McCartney or John Lennon alone tunes.
So, I grabbed a recording of "Imagine" off of Youtube. A tip: look for the "lyrics" Youtube videos of a song because those seem to be the album cut, rather than the official video with a bunch of extra stuff in it.
From what I can hear, the tune is in C and pretty much goes between C and F, and then Ami Dmi, and then later on has G and E7s in it that sound a bit strange. I will figure it out from that and then work up an arrangement. I may not get all the chords right as per whatever you folks have for sheet music, but I think I can get it to sound right. I will figure out the melody and write up my typical block style arrangement to work from. This may take a bit longer than having everything figured out for me by some publisher. Oh well. Music is a HEARING art, so shame on me if I can't get it this way.
If I am way off base and it is in some other key and my chord guesses are wrong, please let me know sooner than later. I am not asking anybody to give me the sheet music or to write out the chords and lyrics. What I said here really does sound right to me, so I think I am pretty close. But if not, can some kind soul set me straight?
Just tell me what key it is really in and maybe I can go from there. The only reason I have to doubt my initial guess is that I am hearing some chords that go out of key, such as the E7. But the rest of it seems to be in C.
Edit: I have the melody pretty much figured out and it seems straightforward. Much of it is G to B and then down to A (all in the octave above middle C) for the first part, and the rest of it is within a limited range too. The highest note I have found so far is G in the 2nd octave above middle C, and the lowest is G in the octave above middle C, so a relatively narrow range. I believe now that I have the key and chords right, though those E7s still seem a bit strange to me. The rest of it seems fine though. I don't yet know if I will transpose it to another key. I could play the whole thing in first position with what I have heard so far, but then there would not be room for any variation to make it more interesting.
Any comments from those fortunate enough to have sheet music?
I have other stuff to do tonight, so I will try to get back to this sometime tomorrow.
Tony