Hi everyone,
Has anyone used a professional transcription service before?
Any recommendations?
Cheers
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Levi Clay has done much of our stuff and is great!
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Thank you Troy, hope you are well
Cheers!
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So I contacted Levi and no response so in my impatience I contacted this company called “my sheet music transcriptions” and they have excellent ratings so I thought what the hell.
Anyway the tab came back pretty quick but with errors, should I be expecting 100% accuracy from a transcription service? I’ve responded to them saying I’ve found errors in bar 4 etc but not directly pointed out the errors as I’ve paid them to do this.
Anyway lesson learnt, I wonder if they will offer me a refund or if I will end up in a loop of finding more errors as I work through the tab.
Even with Levi Clay I notice some of his videos don’t go into specifics like picking motions or fingerings. So you should ask before paying for any service. Not saying he doesn’t do this, but I would say if you are going with an unknown source ask to at least see some previous works for free a few measures so you can see what kind of quality they offer.
To what degree are the errors? I’ve seen 2 editions of transcriptions from 2 different respected pros, on the same song, and there are differences. I’ve seen 2 different editions of the same transcription from the same transcriber and there were differences! We regularly get posts on here where competent (and beyond competent) forum members post tabs with different interpretations. I get that a blatantly wrong note is wrong, but to a degree it’s subjective.
For a fast turnaround, low cost transcription service, you should not expect 100% accuracy for anything really complex technically. Honestly 100% is not a reasonable expectation for even high skill pro transcribers. @joebegly makes a good point that there’s a level of subjective interpretation of what a person is hearing and how they think it’s played on the instrument. Different people (even with skilled/trained ears) will hear different things, especially in a mix of a full production/recording or a noisy live environment. Even when we might agree on the sounds, we might disagree on the way to notate the sound, especially around rhythmic, timing, and phrasing subtleties.
Most professional publications and magazines I often find minor note accuracy errors in (like 95% of people would never notice), or “opinion-based” things like I know certain artists may do different things technically or use different fingerings/positions than shown in tab. Most transcribers are music generalists with good ears, but they might not specialize in that kind of artist-technique specific accuracy. My transcriptions are probably not even 100% accurate, I settle for like 98-99%, and I think I’m pretty good.
That said, if there are many obvious errors in the work product you paid for, it’s probably reasonable they should offer a round of revision to try to fix them before you ask for a refund.
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Thanks for the responses.
The errors I’ve noticed are clearly missing notes, the piece I asked to be transcribed is an acoustic piece which I supplied a video for.
In the video you can see the artist picking bass notes with the thumb, the transcriber for whatever reason has left quite a lot of these bass notes out.
I didn’t ask for a fast turn around I just wanted an accurate transcription, because it’s s pretty clear video there isn’t really any interpretation in what the artist is playing. I just lack the skill to do it but I can see and hear where the notes are missing.
I’m just reading this thread now, and it’s probably too late, but I would strongly recommend Evan Bradley. He has transcribed books for Cynic, Exodus, Chris Poland, Katatonia, Dream Theatre.
You can contact him on his website for transcriptions - https://www.evanbradleytranscriptions.com/
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