In a recent article, I shared that I post art and music on Instagram. I find that writing sheet music and playing it is quite the contemplative experience. In this series of articles, I’d like to record my thoughts on these music pieces.
Il Tramonto or The Sunset is one of Ennio Morricone’s legendary compositions. It featured in The Good, The Bad, and The Ugly (1966) and later in Kill Bill Vol. 2 (2004).
It is an enchanting track. There is a beautiful yet haunting melancholy at the heart of this tune. It is a quiet reflection on wistful regret and a jovial embrace of uncertainty. The pure clarity of the first two-thirds of the track is perfectly contrasted by the discord towards the end. And for these reasons, of the two movies mentioned above, I think it fit the scene in Kill Bill better.
Since my return to playing music, I try playing by-ear. In other words, I try to guess the key and notes by listening to a track and then write down the sheet music. I wrote about this in an earlier article, but in short, this is because I believe that only by trying to play-by-ear can I learn how to associate notations with their actual sounds. I believe this will make me a better music player and composer.
With that said, however, this track proved difficult. It sounds deceptively simple and I probably could have translated the melody into sheet music. But the chords are so important to this song and I just could not figure them out. Unfortunately, I had to look up YouTube for help. And I found it in this video.
Using that video as reference, I wrote down the sheet music as shown in the images below. I removed some of the lower notes and tweaked the length of a few notes in the melody.
What do you think? Is it close enough? You can find my humble rendition of this piece here.