transcribing, need tips

[nicklaus]

Hi!
I'm nicklaus from argentina, I'm new here.
I've been playing guitar for three years now, and have been a jazz lover since the first time I heard coltrane's phrasing in A Love Supreme (my first encounter with jazz music).

I was wondering if you could give me some advice on transcribing, since I have zero experience there.

thanks!

[JonR]

Hi Nicklaus and welcome. IMO, your first step should be to download Transcribe:
Seventh String Software - the home of Transcribe!
It's free for a month (no limitations on use), and cheap to register after that if you want.
There are plenty of tips on transcription in general on that site, and the Help file is good too. (I have no connection with the designers, btw - just a happy user for many years now.)

The way I work is to get melodies and bass lines down, in that order. (I notate them as I go.) Chords can be hard to hear, and the bass always gives good clues, usually playing the root on beat 1. You can raise the octave in Transcribe to hear the bass more clearly. And of course it will slow down to help you hear fast passages. If you select a short portion of the track (eg one bar or even one beat), it displays a series of peaks against a keyboard, most of which should be chord tones. (If you don't know the notes on a keyboard, a right-click will give you note names and guitar fret positions.) The program will also guess the chord for you, but I wouldn't trust it totally. Some of the frequency peaks will be harmonics or percussion sounds, not relevant to the chord, and will confuse the program - typically it suggests a chord more complicated than what's there.
But mainly, use the program like a microscope to help you hear, and make your own decisions.

As a beginner to it, I suggest starting with simple tunes. DON'T try to transcribe any of A Love Supreme! Even start with some simple rock or folk recordings, just to check out the program and get used to the tasks involved. Clean sounds are a lot easier (for the program as well as for you) than distorted sounds or very dense instrumental textures.

I'd be happy to offer any specific advice - on individual tunes, or on using Transcribe.

[JakeAcci]

Great advice from JonR, also want to point out that even something like Audacity is a huge leg up as you can highlight specific selections rather than hitting rewind all the time.

I'll highlight individual notes if I really want to "get it right" but will try to hear longer phrases if I'm working on, well, hearing.

[Bill C]

as JonR said, get Transcribe! It is optimised for the task.

the excellent Fake Book index is also on the same website

[JonR]

Originally Posted by JakeAcci

Great advice from JonR, also want to point out that even something like Audacity is a huge leg up as you can highlight specific selections rather than hitting rewind all the time.

I use Audacity too, but only for editing (and recording of various kinds).
For transcription tasks, anything Audacity can do, Transcribe will do better, more intuitively. (It will loop selections if you want. And Audacity won't translate the sound into frequency peaks against pitches. You can slow tempo and raise octave with Audacity, but it requires a few seconds processing time; Transcribe is immediate.)

Of course you don't need to register Audacity, so that's a saving - and as I say, it's an amazingly useful piece of software for all kinds of other audio work. I have Cubase too (entry level), but Audacity is much more immediate and simple to use, multitracking, adding FX etc, and I don't miss whatever fancier things Cubase is capable of.
Transcribe plus Audacity - killer combination! (Plus some notation software, of course...)

[JakeAcci]

Oh sorry I should have clarified: The only reason I mention audacity is that it's completely free! Otherwise, of course transcribe has the upper hand for transcribing, heh, no doubt.

[M-ster]

I think there are other options, and some of them less expensive or free-ware, but I also use Transcribe! and would recommend it. It does what it purports to do, and it does it well.

[nicklaus]

thanks a lot for taking the time to make responses!
I'll give these softwares a try!

[FatJeff]

Originally Posted by nicklaus

Hi!
I'm nicklaus from argentina, I'm new here.
I've been playing guitar for three years now, and have been a jazz lover since the first time I heard coltrane's phrasing in A Love Supreme (my first encounter with jazz music).

I was wondering if you could give me some advice on transcribing, since I have zero experience there.

thanks!

Do you want to transcribe just solos, or whole songs? The method I use is slightly different in the two cases.

[Foulds Jazz Guitars]

Originally Posted by JonR

Hi Nicklaus and welcome. IMO, your first step should be to download Transcribe:
Seventh String Software - the home of Transcribe!
It's free for a month (no limitations on use), and cheap to register after that if you want.
There are plenty of tips on transcription in general on that site, and the Help file is good too. (I have no connection with the designers, btw - just a happy user for many years now.)

I would strongly second that as someone who has transcribed a great deal over the years. I did a little 'how to' guide here; check it out.

[JonR]

Originally Posted by Foulds Jazz Guitars

I would strongly second that as someone who has transcribed a great deal over the years. I did a little 'how to' guide here; check it out.

Nice guide! (I use Sibelius too.)

The only thing I'd do differently is only mark the measures (M), not every beat. Then I go back and right click the first one, go to "Edit this Marker" and (if it's 4/4 time) enter 4 in the subdivisions box. Then every subsequent beat gets 4 exactly spaced beat markers added. If you find a measure marker is in the wrong place, you can shift it (click and grab) and the beat markers will line up accordingly. This is really handy for music with a lot of 16th notes, so I can be sure of rhythmic placement.

The only downside is when you have music with occasional odd measures, eg a 2/4 or 3/4 bar in the middle of a 4/4 tune. Those also get divided into 4, and you need to edit those specific bars. The program needs an option there to choose "maintain beat length" or something, so if it spots a couple of measure markers closer to 2 or 3 beats, it divides accordingly. And also one to let you choose "divide all subsequent bars" (as it does automatically) or "just this bar". Maybe I'll email them to suggest it...

Of course, there is some music (maybe short excerpts) where you can't be absolutely sure of where the measure begins to start with, and in those cases I'd enter the beats only.

[nicklaus]

wow! thanks a lot for your responses!
Seventh String Software - the home of Transcribe! is a very well written article!
I'll do as you say. tnank you thank you!

[FatJeff]

I've posted this elsewhere, but it is my opinion that it is premature to start writing anything down (on paper, in Sibeluis, or elsewhere) until one has completely internalized the part to be transcribed. In the case of a song in general, where you're trying to get a leadsheet down, that means being able to sing the melody and the roots of the chord progression, and having subsequently done an armchair harmonic analysis. In the case of a solo, that means being able to sing along with the solo verbatim, including all nuances. If you skip these steps, it is very unlikely that you will retain the song.

[JonR]

Originally Posted by FatJeff

I've posted this elsewhere, but it is my opinion that it is premature to start writing anything down (on paper, in Sibeluis, or elsewhere) until one has completely internalized the part to be transcribed. In the case of a song in general, where you're trying to get a leadsheet down, that means being able to sing the melody and the roots of the chord progression, and having subsequently done an armchair harmonic analysis. In the case of a solo, that means being able to sing along with the solo verbatim, including all nuances. If you skip these steps, it is very unlikely that you will retain the song.

IMO, it doesn't matter what order you do this in.
I do agree, of course, that - in jazz at least - one needs to be able to play without consulting notation of any kind. That's the end goal. And it can be tempting, after one has written something out, to believe that the job is done! We need to resist that temptation.
But writing it down first can help with the internalisation process. I find the visualising involved in notation helps me organise the aural information. It's a useful reference while I'm learning; as is any Real Book chart.

Seems to me, in fact, that if you can completely internalise the piece first, by ear, without writing anything down - then why write it down at all? (Unless you're going to give it to someone else, of course.)

(I can see that the emphasis in my earlier posts is all on the writing and reliance on the software, but that's due to the topic. One has to keep one's ears open, feel a tune or solo and sing it to oneself, as you say. I wouldn't want to advocate burying one's head in manuscript or a computer monitor! The music doesn't live in the dots...)

[FatJeff]

Originally Posted by JonR

IMO, it doesn't matter what order you do this in.
I do agree, of course, that - in jazz at least - one needs to be able to play without consulting notation of any kind. That's the end goal. And it can be tempting, after one has written something out, to believe that the job is done! We need to resist that temptation.
But writing it down first can help with the internalisation process. I find the visualising involved in notation helps me organise the aural information. It's a useful reference while I'm learning; as is any Real Book chart.

Seems to me, in fact, that if you can completely internalise the piece first, by ear, without writing anything down - then why write it down at all? (Unless you're going to give it to someone else, of course.)

I write it down strictly as a matter of prompting my memory, when I revisit a piece a year or so later; and of course, to give to others.

I personally prefer to do the internalization up front, and write later, but whatever works for you is what you should be doing.

Maybe all this fancy computer program BS defeats the purpose...I can still play Little Wing, or Over The Hills And Far Away, which I figured out when I was 14 from vinyl (chords, solos, and all). I never wrote any of that down, and didn't have slower-downers. Not that those songs are nearly as fast as a Bird solo, but they were challenging for me at the time.

We had a master class last year with <I-forget-his-name-but-a-prominent-sax-player> and he was showing us how he works out solos. He had this insane Coltrane solo he was trying to get down, and damned if he wasn't able to get it nailed in a few minutes by playing it back at full speed, over and over, and just keeping at it until he had it. Of curse, this guy had the chops to keep up with Coltrane, but I think it might point out that it's certainly possible, if not preferable. And maybe the very act of not relying on aids (loopers and slower downers) improves your chops to the point where you can play those passages just by hearing them.

[Kman]

Just do a little every day because you have to internalize it and get it under your fingers. Don't cram, 1/2 per day is ideal. Also, try and play along with the recording to get the phrasing down, even at slower speed if necessary. Lastly, after you learn it try to write it down because you might forget what you learned and it's nice to see your hard work on paper, plus you learn even more by writing it down.

[JonR]

Originally Posted by FatJeff

I write it down strictly as a matter of prompting my memory, when I revisit a piece a year or so later; and of course, to give to others.

I personally prefer to do the internalization up front, and write later, but whatever works for you is what you should be doing.

Maybe all this fancy computer program BS defeats the purpose...I can still play Little Wing, or Over The Hills And Far Away, which I figured out when I was 14 from vinyl (chords, solos, and all). I never wrote any of that down, and didn't have slower-downers. Not that those songs are nearly as fast as a Bird solo, but they were challenging for me at the time.

We had a master class last year with <I-forget-his-name-but-a-prominent-sax-player> and he was showing us how he works out solos. He had this insane Coltrane solo he was trying to get down, and damned if he wasn't able to get it nailed in a few minutes by playing it back at full speed, over and over, and just keeping at it until he had it. Of curse, this guy had the chops to keep up with Coltrane, but I think it might point out that it's certainly possible, if not preferable. And maybe the very act of not relying on aids (loopers and slower downers) improves your chops to the point where you can play those passages just by hearing them.

All good points. It is easy to rely on slowdowners. On the other hand, we don't all have ears (at least to begin with) like that sax tutor. I suspect I could learn stuff at full speed, with enough repetition. But with many things (fast solos anyway), the time I'd need to spend on it would be out of all proportion to the importance of the piece.
I'm sure my ears would improve (a little) in the process, but I would still make mistakes. Not all of those matter of course. Getting the vibe and the rhythm is at least as important as nailing every precise pitch. But I've found in the past that my ear is easily misled. I can think I hear something which isn't there, because a phrase or chord change sounds very similar to something I already know. So I think I've got it when I haven't. I might hear something is not quite right when playing it, but I wouldn't know exactly what the difference was, if the phrase makes musical sense in its "wrong" version. (Not without going in and slowing it down, that is.) But I may remain oblivious of the mistake, and base further strategies on it.
Then again, one can argue that these little mistakes - hearing what we want to hear - is part of the natural process of a vernacular genre getting passed on by ear; part of the personal contribution we make to it.

A lot of the reason I DO want to get things absolutely note-perfect is not actually for my own playing reasons. It's for teaching purposes. I don't want to pass on false information, or a lazy approximation. And I don't have time to get it perfect without the aid of technology.
It just so happens that this microscopic focus on the nuts and bolts - the DNA if you like - of pieces of music has given me a lot more understanding than I would have gained otherwise. I hear things, perhaps from other instruments, that would pass me by at full speed. (And before there was software I used to use a 2-speed tape deck.) I like the idea that I know precisely - without too much effort - what a certain player played. I then build my own interpretation on that. So when I play I don't copy, I do it my way, but I have the confidence that I know where I'm starting from.
None of this is denying or sidelining the importance of the ear; it's just giving the ear a little assistance. (Eg, Transcribe does offer suggestions for chord names in a particular selection; but only a fool would go by those and not play by ear and check.)

Another side to it is that if someone finds it too difficult to learn by ear from the start, they may just not bother, and rely on notation, Real Books etc, (even internet tab!!! ) - other people's ears - to get all their information. Transcribe, in making it easier to introduce oneself to the craft of transcription, means the crucial act of hearing it for oneself becomes part of one's normal musical activity.
IOW, better to do it wholly by ear (at full speed) if you can. But if you can't, better to use Transcribe than not transcribe at all!

[Foulds Jazz Guitars]

There's some good points made by all. I tend to write them down purely on the basis that I will no doubt get interrupted during the process and get sidetracked so yes, in a perfect world to do it by memory is the best ultimately but reality forces me down the other route!