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

Harmony & Theory
#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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#89

Hi Medium,

What about the intro riff to Healer by Badlands?

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#90

Thanks for yet another suggestion (and for resurrecting the thread) :slight_smile: :+1:
Today I’m finishing the theme from Of Elf And Man by Andy Wood, so I’ll work on Healer tomorrow :wink:

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#91

Yep :slight_smile:
This one was fun to play along.

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Cautionary notes:

  • It is played in Eb standart. The tabs show what it would look like on an Eb standart guitar.
  • The scale seems to be E mixolydian. Key signature indicates A major, which shares the notes with E mixolydian. (As seen on Eb standart guitar)
  • Sometimes I hear some additional notes and I’m not sure what was intended so I notated only the most “confident” pitches.
  • The last guitar sounds of this part are two chords. I suck at them. It seems to me, that these two are the same and that they are some kind of D. D major fits better than D minor but I left just a D powerchord. I’m not sure about that bit.

Let me know if you find any mistakes :wink:

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#92

You are good, thanks very much! Jake E Lee kicks ass!

I know what you mean about the chord that he plays before the vocals start. Jake plays some really wide stretches, with his thumb over the top of the fretboard. A D5, or a Dsus2 sounds good to me.

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#93

I got one for ya @Medium_Attempt Hahahaha.

(video deleted) sorry.

:bear:

#94

@Hanky_Pooh, oh man…that’s…yeah :sweat_smile:

Ok, first of all, I’m unable to see the video. Can you find another clip? Or just give me the name of the tune and the part of interest :wink:

Second of all, I have heard some of her music years ago. I seriously make no promises for any accuracy :smiley: Well, it will depend on how clean her playing is. I haven’t listened to her with intention of transcribing but I remember that my first casual impression was “this is really messy”. Perhaps because of the tone. Perhaps my ears were even more broken then than they are now.

When I saw that it’s The Great Kat, my first reaction was laughter :smiley: I don’t know why. That was just honest and natural reaction. (with no negative connotations at all)

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#95

Hey, is the video blocked in your country or something? Man, I’m actually going to delete it… because she is really bashing the Japanese (it was '90). It’s maybe not the best thing to have on here. I don’t want to leave the video up after thinking about it a minute. It’s offensive.

Here, how about this looping riff in the right speaker at 1:21? If you run outta stuff and are bored, try that one. :slightly_smiling_face: I think it whips ass.

#96

Now I’m intrigued :grin:

I’ll try that tomorrow but by listening to it casually, it sounds messy :roll_eyes: I’ll see what I can do.

Oh, between the suggestions from this forum members, suggestions from Instagram users (these might be the same people :smile: ), and my own “suggestions to myself”, I don’t think I’ll ever run out of stuff to transcribe :blush: But I’m not complaining :point_up: So far, I’m happy about this situation.

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#98

@Hanky_Pooh, you sure like to delete your posts :laughing:

Here it is:

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Now, beware! While transcribing this I felt like those priests or whatever who used to listen to rock/metal music backwards in order to discover some satanic messages: I slowed it down and eliminated left channel in order to hear what probably isn’t even there. I am really not sure what he plays but what I wrote sounds kind of ok when I play along at slower tempo. I’m definitely not confident about this transcription. If you come up with something better, let me know :wink:

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#99

Could you transcribe the opening riff to Red Blues? It’s an e minor groove, but I can’t get those notes on the lower strings right.

#100

@aliendough, man I love you! This is a perfect passage to improve my ears! :+1:
I’m speaking about the instances when two notes are being played at the same time. I would probably fail and get mad dealing with three+ harmonic sounds but two notes seem to be totally workable and it pushes my boundaries really well. Thanks! :+1:

That being said, it will take some time for me to transcribe it. I already worked on it for a while but now I’m taking a break. It’s challenging :wink:

And these lower notes, some of them are extremely percussive. Do you know how he achieves that? Or is it a simple pick and palm muting? (I don’t know anything about the player) Sometimes the pitch is basically unrecognizable. Sometimes I hear the pitch but it is so distorted that I’m not sure which octave that is :dizzy_face:
If you know anything about the way it might be played, let me know :wink: (perhaps a thumb pick?)

Anyway, thanks again for this suggestion :+1: I really appreciate it :slight_smile:

2 Likes
#101

Hay bro where do i get transcribe from? Thanks

#102

Hi :wave:

This is the official Transcribe! web page. I didn’t check the price now but it used to be ~50 dollars. Also, they used to give one month trial period for free.

It is a really helpful piece of software but there are some free tools that can also help you. For example, Audacity (which I haven’t used for this line of job) or VLC (which I did use for transcribing). You can slow down and select a piece of music with both of them. I’m sure there are more programs that can be used for transcribing :wink:

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