: Why is there two notes in a row with more beats than the measure? I'm relatively new to the piano and learning Pure Imagination. Here a part from early into the piece: In the 4th bar, there are 2 Ab's in a row and I'm

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The notation shows musical intent: if you had an instrument that could play two A's at the same pitch, you'd hold the first A, and then add the second one. But a piano can't do it, so you have to interrupt the first A and begin the second one, while representing the intent that the first A is "held". Since you use the pedal, you have the leeway to release the A early. Otherwise, you'd probably be aiming to make the interruption as short as possible while still getting the full attack for the second A.

You could also invert the chord a bit, and separate it between hands differently: change the first A4 to A3, and play it in the left hand.

X: 1
M: 4/4
L: 1/4
%%score (T1 T2 T3 T4) (B1 B2)
V: T1 clef=treble
V: T2 clef=treble
V: T3 clef=treble
V: T4 clef=treble
V: B1 clef=bass
V: B2 clef=bass
K:Db
[V:T1] E4|
[V:T2] F4|
[V:T3] cA3|
[V:T4] x2B,D
[V:B1] D,4|
[V:B2] A,4|

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Personally, I would play the Ab twice (once for the chord, once for the dotted minim/half note) but then hold it down after playing it for the second time. The second Ab has its stem upwards which signifies that it's a different voice - and from what I can see, it's part of the melody of the piece, so it's a pretty important note.

Different voices need to each have their notes' lengths add up to one bar. So, this is okay.

Because each voice adds up to 4 crotchets/quarter notes in that bar (you can tell which voice is which by looking at the different directions of the stems).

However, this isn't:

You'd need to add a rest before that note to make it okay:

This applies to situations where the notes cross over:

It's not obvious what to do, but in the context given, playing the Ab twice is probably the best thing to do.

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This is one of those piano/vocal/guitar arrangements. They're written to be as flexible as possible. The piano part includes the melody in case you want to play it as a piano solo (which it sounds like you do), but also leaves the melody separate so that you can easily omit it if you were accompanying a singer. Then there are chords for a guitarist to strum along too.

That's what's going on. There's actually three layers for some reason:

The whole notes
The notes with stems up: C and Ab
The notes with stems down: Bb and Db

In my opinion the latter two should be combined into one layer, so you'd have the whole notes plus a layer of 4 quarter notes. I can't figure out why it's split like that.

But at any rate, the idea is that there's an accompaniment and a melody separately, and they happen to overlap. They give you all the info you could need, and it's your task to figure out what you want to actually play.