I’m practicing my transcription skills - have any requests?

Harmony & Theory
#69

Sure, but I’ll work on it tomorrow. I’m trying to limit myself to one lick a day :wink:

Oh, I’m definitely the wrong person to give advice on this. All I can do is to tell you how I do it :wink:

In the beginning, I used to loop (and slow down if necessary) some small section and to play along with my guitar. Sometimes I would loop only a single note and would try to find it on the guitar. Once I got, I would notate it. Then move to the next bit.

Later on, I got courageous enough to attempt things without guitar. That was and still is very difficult. The only help that I get is GuitarPro playing the pitch as I enter it. It is still a crutch but I would fail miserably without any help at all.

For this last Eric Johnson passage I tried another method: at first, I notated only rhythms and only then I tried to add pitches. I did all of this without guitar and made mistakes in every step: rhythm step and pitch step :face_with_symbols_over_mouth: Also, there were bits that I couldn’t figure out at all. I worked on these with guitar the way I described my first transcribing efforts.

Notating isn’t too difficult for me just because I learned to read music early on and if I can read it, I have an idea how things should be written. Of course, sometimes my musical literacy proves to be deficient.

I guess that’s it. Again, keep in mind that I’m wrong person to give advice on transcribing :wink:

Relative…perfect…I have none of them. Only a terrible pitch :rofl:
Seriously, it is really difficult for me to distinguish intervals or melodic patterns. I did improve on interval quizes but that skill didn’t really translate to transcribing real music. My aural abilities greatly frustrate me.

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#70

You sell yourself short dude! Your transcriptions are excellent.

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#71

Taking that into account, why are there so many submissions if Vinnie Moore solos? Talk about high speed solos!

I’m going to try to follow your guidelines with this submission which I think would be interesting for you because while it’s heavy, guitar oriented music, it’s not technical on the level of a Vinnie Moore. I’m interested in the whole song, but if you don’t have time for that, how about the solos that starts at 1:46?

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#72

Can’t wait to check it out! I know exactly what you mean about transcribing and notating Eric’s lead playing. The third beat had me pretty perplexed when notating it my self. Maybe I’ll share with you what my version is after I complete it. Thanks!

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#73

Oh, some activity in the thread :sunglasses: Nice :+1:

Awww, thanks :blush:
Seriously, I gladly accept and appreciate kind words :slight_smile:

That being said, these transcriptions are mainly the fruit of my persistence and patience. Things should and would be so much easier if I would have at least ordinary aural skills.
That’s why I transcribe. I hope that it will improve my ears :innocent:

:smiley: Some of forum friends missed them. That’s ok. Nothing too tragic. But thanks for reading and considering my guidelines :+1:
Still, this solo appears to be hard to hear. I’ll see what I can do :wink:

I can definitely work on the whole song but I want to upload transcriptions to my instagram as well so I’d rather cut things in separate riffs and licks :wink: Also, I’m not sure about the legality of transcribing a full song at once and putting it on the internet :thinking:
If there are some parts that you can already play, please let me know. Otherwise I’ll work on it whole (but piece by piece :wink: )

Please do. I certainly want to know about the mistakes I make. Or at least to compare my work with yours and to consider the differences :wink:

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#74

I really like the phrasing “I’d be curious what you come up with for that!” :slightly_smiling_face: I like it because I do not claim my work to be highly accurate. It’s just what I think happens in these passages :wink:

And that’s what I came up with:

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Notes:

  • The rhythm of triplets are probably innacurate. Bizzare things happen when you slow down fast runs and that seemed to be the easiest way to notate whatever happened there.
  • I indicated two fingers (4 and 3) because that’s where Eric seems to make a position shift. I wanted to make it clear.
  • Fingerings/positions…I tried to match it with the video footage but some things were hard to see. There may be mistakes.

The rest seems to be straight forward despite some hard to hear notes and wobbly rhythms. I guess my tabs lie somewhere between real [accurate] transcribing and interpretation. To my defense, transcribing these fast licks super accurately would make them look really confusing: hard to read and hard to play.

I played along at 35% speed one bar at a time and it sounded reasonably well. Let me know if you spot any mistakes :wink:

Also, I made a short DWPS / rest stroke exercise out of this lick. I don’t want to flood this thread with too many pictures so I’ll point to my instagram if somebody wants to check it out :wink:

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EJ clip in the new CTC Gambale Analysis
#75

If you could transcribe any of these Eric Johnson inspired licks, that would be amazing:

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#76

Well done! To my ears all the notes/pitches are there, and I know what you mean when you said you have to balance exact transcription vs interpretation/practicality. Maybe that’s the nature of the transcriber’s art, in a nutshell. Many solos with irregular rhythmic groupings have scared me away in the past because they required too much brainpower to chunk and learn. But I like how you’ve grouped the notes in this run - it makes it way easier to conceptualize and learn. I also like the DWPS exercise on your Instagram. What you’ve isolated there is a classic EJ lick!

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#77

Even if the notes are rhythms are right, I doubt EJ would play it the exact way again? I know that I certainly couldn’t play it exactly as written!

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#78

Your comment encourages me greatly! :star_struck: Thanks :+1:
And you wrote quite a precise word that I didn’t use before: “practicality”. I think this is what I should strive for.

Thanks for the comment and for the suggestion :+1:

Sure, I’ll try something from that video. But first, there was a piece suggested by Acecrusher :wink:

Thanks for the suggestions, everybody. Keep them coming :sunglasses:

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#79

Well, now I feel dumb. After your brought up my guidelines and tried to follow them, I have to admit that I’m not able to transcribe that solo :cry: There’s too much noise there. I can hear few licks and some more prominent notes but I have no idea happens in between them. Sorry :worried:

What I can do is to notate the riffs. Here I did the first one.
(Wait, first of all, the tune is in Eb standart. My tabs/notes do not match the actual sounds. In order to play along, one should detune guitar. Or to screw with audio, which I did.)

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It seems straight forward but I managed to find uncertainties anyway. I’m not sure if it’s played in position V or in open position. Both ways are possible. The difference is that the string skip becomes larger in open position.

Also, I’m not overly sure if two first notes are both low E. Second note may be F natural on the first fret but it’s hard to distinguish. If this is the case, then one should play in open position.
Or perhaps they pick the second note harder or move the muting palm a bit closer to nut which makes it sound different :thinking:
Anyway, it sounds totally acceptable to my ears the way I wrote it.

If you want, I can notate other riff that comes at around 0:32.

By the way, cool composition :+1: It reminds me a bit of Lethargy. (I don’t listen to much music so it’s the closest match I have in my musical memory.)

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#80

Thank you very much. Don’t worry about the solo. If you could transcribe even a few more riffs that would be great! Yes, they play in E flat or sometimes in drop D which actually becomes E flat with the low string tuned down to D flat, but this song doesn’t use drop D tuning.

I’m interested to find out what some of the chords he uses are since they’re not chords I hear often in other songs.

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#81

Oh man, chords are death of me. I find it hard to hear melodic intervals and often have to rely on guitar and/or blind guesses. With chords, I can’t get them down even with the help of guitar :worried: I’m afraid I won’t be able to help with that. I certainly plan to improve in this regard as well but first I’d rather focus on melodic ear training and transcribing.
But I’ll gladly work on riffs :wink: (probably tomorrow. It’s Sunday now :wink: )

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#82

Well, give t a shot and if you aren’t able to get the chords you’ll have improved your listening skills by at ,east making a decent attempt. At least these chords are loud in the mix - not buried in the mix.

I’m glad you like the song. Unorthodox has three very good albums you can find on youtube. I especially recommend the first two - their debut album titled “Asylum” and their follow-up which Zombie Dance is from titled “Balance Of Power,” Dale Flood has a great and very unique style of songwriting with really cool and melodic riffs. If you’re just into transcribing single note riffs you might enjoy these 2 songs from them:

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#83

If you want to hear one of their songs with vocals this one’s beautiful and might not be too hard to transcribe compared to the others. He’s really a good singer and lyricist!

#84

@Medium_Attempt I found this video on Youtube and thought of you -

Maybe you will find it useful? Enjoy my friend!

#85

Well then, that’s amazing :blush:

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It’s the first lick in that video. As usually, there are some things I’m not confident about:

  • Third note sounds like G# but I’m not sure if that’s what he intended to play. It is very possible that the note should be G natural. Anyway, this time I left it the way I heard - G#.
  • Even though I wrote that note as G#, I indicated Em as the key signature. These two facts clash quite a bit. The reason I did it is that key signature of E major (or any other) looks less fitting than Em.
  • Some notes (especially in the middle of the second bar) are blurry. What you see in my tab is a mix of what I heard and what I assume should be played there.
  • It is a free time noodling so I didn’t even bother notating rhythms. He played some notes a bit faster or slower. I don’t think it matters too much in this context.

I will definitely give it a shot. But no promises about the results of my…shots… :roll_eyes:
Yeah, every minute spent on transcribing improves my ear skills. Hopefully :crossed_fingers:

I listened through the songs you linked here and I totally liked them. At first I was afraid about the song with vocals because I thought the vocals may be distorted-growling-scream or whatever, which I’m not a fan of. But that was nice clean singing :+1: I’ll totally listen to some more. Thanks :+1:

Oh, thanks so much :blush: I’ll cerainly watch it (in an hour or so).

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#86

Thanks man!! Thornley is a monster player, one of my favourites for sure.

#87

@Acecrusher, here’s a second riff from Zombie Dance.

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This part is quite noisy. I have many doubts here.

  • First three notes are probably correct. Even though the third note might be open high E string. I’m not sure. It’s much easier to play it the way I wrote. Unless he does hybrid picking :thinking:
  • Fourth note: I’m relatively confident that I hear open string there.
  • Notes 5 & 6: I’m very unsure about them. They sound kind of ok when I play along but it’s noisy :roll_eyes:
  • The chord…that is what I am able to hear. It sounds ok but it may very well be incorrect.
  • Last note can be played over the bottom two notes of the previous chord. It’s raw playing/music and it sounds ok if I “accidentally” hit xx799x or xxx99x there :wink:

The next riff right after this bit is simple and easy. I already played it but I’ll write it down tomorrow.

Oh it certainly was helpful! I saw that much more competent people are struggling with the same exact issues as I do, so I’m in good company :slight_smile:
Also, I realized that relying on instrument isn’t as much of a cheating as I thought. Still, it would be amazing to transcribe solely by ear. But finding sounds on guitar is also a desirable and useful skill.

Thanks a lot for posting it :+1:

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#88

@Acecrusher, here’s another riff from Zombie Dance.
This one is certainly easy to figure out and I’m sure you could have done it yourself :wink: But hey, I’m not complaining. This was a practice session for my ears nevertheless and that’s what I need.

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I could have (should have?) notated it in half time and eighth notes. But I didn’t :roll_eyes:
Other than that, I don’t have much to add to this transcription. Well, ok, there are few slides but these seem to occur as artefacts of changing positions. I don’t think they were musically intended and that’s why I didn’t bother notating them.

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