[LAU] MIDI pedigree

I am currently considering setting "(Don't Fear) the Reaper" from Blue Öyster Cult for accordion orchestra, and particularly because of the complexity of the rather layered arrangement, that implies a lot of transcription effort. I took a look at guitar tab sites and got quite a few bits out for the guitar parts, but there is a lot of stuff missing of course and need for writing stuff down. So I dug around on the web to look for MIDI files and found a few ones that were pretty solid (actually, astonishing in itself). A few MIDI files clock in around 70kB and are likely obvious variations of the same source. But I also found something in the 20kB range. Now here is the thing: all of them, as accurate and detailed as they appear otherwise, get the central guitar riff wrong. The second bar of the central riff is a (broken) straight G major chord, g b d g. The guitar tabs have it. The original single version has it (haven't found other versions). Tutorials have it. But the Midi files invariably have g c d g. All of them, the simple and more complex ones. So I have two working theories: there is some other version of "(Don't Fear) the Reaper". The other is that all MIDI files have a common ancestor that got it wrong and never looked twice, in spite of very meticulously transcribing all the solos. -- David Kastrup