Transcription - Where to get started?

Harmony & Theory
#1

Hello code-crackers,

Straight to the point. I’ve never been one to train my ear too much or transcribing melodies, let alone harmonies!

When I was okay at guitar I naturally picked up some skills and was able to transcribe plenty of stuff on the fly, although I never cultivated this ability and -to be frank- I never delved into any sort of super-shreddy lines.

That was then. Now I want to work on this hyper-important skill. One step at a time.

I’ve thought about getting started by transcribing memorable melodies.

For instance, yesterday I was working on Bach’s cantata 147. I’m thinking along the lines of doing more classical music first and then move on to modern focusing on chords and bass lines.

Can anyone steer me in the right direction? I don’t want to bite more than I can chew and lose motivation (which is what happens when I try to transcribe a guitar solo - I cant’ be bothered if there’s a reliable tab somewhere around, lazy me).

Looking forward to hearing your thoughts on the subject!

#2

Great initiative! If you haven’t done lots of transcribing before, I’d recommend trying pop/modern music first. You said you don’t want to lose motivation (which is ultra important imo!) and I’m just concerned that classical might throw you off since it’s generally less predictable. A transcription is often easy to start by figuring out what the bass is doing (which then gives you an idea what chords might be happening), and that’s usually very audible and easy to pick out in pop or rock stuff. Any pop/rock will do.

I started out 15-ish years ago by doing “midi covers” of Rammstein songs for fun. Simple riffs, chord progressions, plenty of repetition with variations here and there, cool rhythmic hooks to get your head around. And it’s easy to compare the midi to the original song and see if something sounds wrong, and then figure out what changes you have to do to make it sound right. You can even play them on top of each other in a DAW.

#3

Check out Rick Beatos youtube channel. He has plenty of eartraining lessons and advice.

#4

Thanks for your reply. I feel you may be right and my original idea was to start with songs that have power chords mainly and build it up from there.

When I mentioned classical music I meant very simple and well-know melodies, not about transcribing Dvorak’s works of course!

@Spooky_tom I’m a huge Beato fan but I find his content can be hit and miss. I reckon he’s a good one to follow for this, though.

#5

Agreed! I think starting small and simple is great. Pop music, jingles, theme songs.
Do vocal melodies as well, too often ignored. Eg people learn all the chords and guitar parts to a song but couldn’t say anything about what’s going on in the actual melody, which is arguably the most important element of a tune.

Little tip: when rhythms seem too crazy, try to get the pitches and come back to the rhythms later. When the pitches are hard to decipher, try to get the rhythms and come back to the pitches later. Also, I know some people are big on just hearing and playing/memorizing and not writing down, but being comfortable with notation, especially writing rhythms, is so valuable and opens up so many doors.

Transcribe every day!

2 Likes
#6

I highly recommend this app Capo. It’s a fantastic tool for transcription and learning new songs, with a full suite of useful functions: slow down audio without changing pitch, looping, automatic chord recognition, spectograph mapped to piano roll (so you can visualize the strong harmonic tones).

The only thing it doesn’t do is write everything down for you.

3 Likes
#7

Thanks for bringing this to my attention. It looks pretty good.

#8

First thing - singing (humming, whistling whatever fits you better).
Second - scales (and arpeggios). Knowing them saves you a lot of time and efforts, because instead of thinking about every particular note you just hear that, for example, this was just a 4-notes scale run up, that was a simple subdomninant arpeggio etc. Singing scales back and forth, ascending/descending, singing scale intervals, singing arpeggios. After that the most of music pieces becomes pretty obvious.

For example, in the beginning of the video strings go from the tonic three degrees up, then jump third up, second down, repeat, third up etc. Also it has obvious major quality, so writing it down is not a problem if you are familiar with major scale.
Transcribing is not about transcribing per se. It’s about being able to hear the relation between notes. Once you start to hear it you can’t unhear it )

2 Likes
#9

Thanks a lot @ASTN.

This is what I’m working on before moving on to more complex things. Basic, singable and memorable melodies.

It gets trickier if there are fast runs, admittedly. But with a bit of time and effort, things will come into place.

1 Like
#10

The interesting thing is that in fast parts knowing scales lets you not just transcribe things that you hear, but also transcribe things that you don’t hear.
It’s pretty often that during the solo a guitarist misses a note, or play it undistiguishibly. But usually you can restore it.

Say, I hear that someone plays some ascending passage that sounds like this: TA-RA-RA-RA-RA-RA-RA~~~ (vibrato :slight_smile:).
I hear that he plays pentatonic run. I also hear that he starts from I degree (let’s say A) and end-up on a II degree ( C). So, putting all this together I know that he plays: A C D E G A C~~~
Even if some note is muddy I still know what he supposed to play.
Of course, it implies that you have the sound of pentatonic scale in your head, so you can recognize it instantly. But it’s just a matter of practice, moreover it takes ususally no more than 5-7 days to drill any scale, even some tricky one like double harmonic minor.

#11

Yes, it’s quite difficult to replicate the noodling but you can get around it.

I’m 100% focused on taking baby steps before even attempting to tackle harder solos.

#12

I can highly recommend the “Transcribe” app to help slow down, filter, tune etc audio files that you are working on. It also syncs to video files.

I’ve only recently started transcribing to help with my ear training. Key for me has been to work on slower simpler solos, licks etc. Also, you don’t always have to transcribe whole songs, solos etc. I find that it’s helpful just to work on riffs, licks, phrases.

Check out some of Levi Clay’s videos on YouTube- he’s a monster transcribed. I think he may have transcribed some of the CtC stuff for Troy!

1 Like
#13

Thanks @sawt00th I’m checking both transcribe and capo for windows and mac respectively.

This is what I’m trying to achieve. Simple stuff. I’m starting to transcribe easy guitar solos. You’ve got to start somewhere!