Transcription Tips?

[justonwo]

I've been reading tab for a long time. Though I learned how to read standard musical notation for piano many years ago, I don't use the notes for guitar. I use them for timing and the tab for fingering.

I have a number of songs that I want to learn where the basics of the song are pretty easy to learn quickly. However, there are a number of subtleties that make the songs transition from simple, boring songs to very sophisticated songs. Little licks that are introduced between normal bars, slight syncopations of the music, and changes to the basic structure. I've found that if I have the tab, it's much easier to me to remember them all. I spent the last weekend trying to transcribe a song using the Amazing Slowdowner.

I find that it takes me forever to figure out the timing and where measures start and stop. I've given up transcribing the song exactly how I hear it because much of the song is played off the beat (either slightly before or after). I can easily introduce that feel without having it written down, but even getting things divided neatly into quarter notes, eighth notes, triplets, dotted, etc takes me a long, long time. Sometimes I get stuck and can't figure out where a measure starts and it ends up throwing off a whole lot of subsequent measures.

Maybe it's just a simple matter of doing it a lot of times, but the process can be pretty painful for me. Are there any tips from veterans who are really good at transcriptions?

[mr. beaumont]

As you've figured out, doing it OVER and OVER again is the biggest thing.

For me personally, two things (well, they're kind of the same) really helped me in this process.

The first was just training my ear to guide my fingers...take a simple melody, one you could sing without question--say--"happy birthday." Now, try picking notes at random on the guitar as a "starting point" and play "happy birthday" from that point. This helps connect the auditory and the visual nature of the instrument.

The second is related--anything you want to transcribe, try to (as much as possible) learn to SING it first. You might have to sing it a hundred times before you even pick up the guitar...that's ok. Then it's repeating the same exercise...find that first note, sing it, play it.

It takes a long time. The good news is, every single time you do it, you're getting better. Start small...it can be done.

[Doug Young]

For me, timing is the hardest part of transcribing. Partly, people don't really play precisely in time - it's not musical, and we're not computers, so you're trying to convert a musical phrase into a best approximation that can be notated. My only suggestion is 1) lots of practice, and 2) use a notation program that can play back (most do). So you make your guess - "I think it's quarter-note triplets followed by a dotted quarter/eighth note" or whatever. Notate it, play it back. Does it sound right? If not, try something else. You'll learn from this to recognize various rhythms (there are also courses, software, online, etc, that I have seen that are rhythm trainers, that can help recognize patterns).

But just keep in mind that humans don't always play exactly, especially solo guitar. It's not unusual for someone to really put 4 1/2 beats in a measure, or play a triplet that's far from the theoretical evenly-spaced three notes, and so on. It is (usually) easy to tap your foot to the beat and know where measures start, so that's one trick. The problems occur when the notes in between the downbeats don't seem to add up... A lot of times, when I've transcribed for others, we end up having a discussion about whether to notate what was really played or whether it's better to clearly communicate what was *meant* to be played, i.e. straightening out various oddities. You'll see a lot of music with guidance comments like "freely" or "expressively" in them :-)

If this is just for your own use, write down whatever helps you remember how to play the piece - the music's in your ears, hands, guitar, etc, not the paper.

[mr. beaumont]

Doug's exactly right...

I took it that the OP was talking about "transcribing" in the colloquial sense-- learning stuff off recordings, writing down maybe to remember it, but not like transcription in the literal sense for a class or something.

[rick-slo]

Putting tricky timing into tab-notation is the biggest pain, whether it's something I wrote myself, or figuring out someone else's music. I can hear the timing and play the timing, but figuring out how to notate it can be a bear.

An example of one of my composition's in pdf format that took me some time to notate out:

http://www.dcoombsguitar.com/Guitar%...eWithSugar.pdf

[justonwo]

Yeah, it's the timing that's the hard part without a doubt. Doug brings up a great point: no one is holding people's foot to the fire to put 4 quarter notes in every measure for 4:4 time. Maybe that assumption on my part was a bad one.

I do use Guitar Pro and find that playing things back and slowing them down is extremely helpful.

I don't usually have problems finding the right notes. Most of the stuff I play is old time blues and rags that all hover around pretty predictable chord structures. I will also try to pick out single note melodies at times, transcribe that first, and then add the bass line later. Or vice versa.

Here is my initial attempt to transcribe Jim Steinke's Three Gospel Blues, which is a medley of three great Gary Davis tunes.

http://jus-tone.com/misc/recordings/...el%20Blues.pdf

http://jus-tone.com/misc/recordings/...el%20Blues.mp3

[rick-slo]

Originally Posted by justonwo

Yeah, it's the timing that's the hard part without a doubt. Doug brings up a great point: no one is holding people's foot to the fire to put 4 quarter notes in every measure for 4:4 time. Maybe that assumption on my part was a bad one.

I do use Guitar Pro and find that playing things back and slowing them down is extremely helpful.

I don't usually have problems finding the right notes. Most of the stuff I play is old time blues and rags that all hover around pretty predictable chord structures. I will also try to pick out single note melodies at times, transcribe that first, and then add the bass line later. Or vice versa.

Here is my initial attempt to transcribe Jim Steinke's Three Gospel Blues, which is a medley of three great Gary Davis tunes.


http://jus-tone.com/misc/recordings/...el%20Blues.pdf

http://jus-tone.com/misc/recordings/...el%20Blues.mp3

Unfortunately quite a ways off in timing and to a lesser extent perhaps the notes played.


If you have a tab-notation program that will play back your notation (midi) as you go along it would help you.

[justonwo]

Originally Posted by rick-slo

Unfortunately quite a ways off in timing and to a lesser extent perhaps the notes played.


If you have a tab-notation program that will play back your notation (midi) as you go along it would help you.

I have Guitar Pro and can play it back, which is how I check my work. Most of it sounds pretty close to me, though of course if you play it exactly in time it sounds a bit boring. There are parts that still need to be re-worked.

The notes sound 90% correct to me, but I'm probably missing stuff. I've not tried to transcribe more than 10-20 songs just from listening to music.

[rick-slo]

Originally Posted by justonwo

I have Guitar Pro and can play it back, which is how I check my work. Most of it sounds pretty close to me, though of course if you play it exactly in time it sounds a bit boring. There are parts that still need to be re-worked.

The notes sound 90% correct to me, but I'm probably missing stuff. I've not tried to transcribe more than 10-20 songs just from listening to music.

That's great you're happy with it however I tabbed part of your tab into my software and the timing is way off (IMO). You're starting off on the wrong notes however I did not go beyond the first three measures in my check.

[justonwo]

Originally Posted by rick-slo

That's great you're happy with it however I tabbed part of your tab into my software and the timing is way off (IMO). You're starting off on the wrong notes however I did not go beyond the first three measures in my check.

Hmmm . . . if you don’t mind. How would you tab the first three measures? Maybe I can learn something here. Bear in mind that triplet is meant as a stand-in for what is more of an arpeggiated chord, but I couldn't get a slow enough arpeggio to simulate what he is doing. It's faster than a triplet.

[rick-slo]

Originally Posted by justonwo

Hmmm . . . if you don’t mind. How would you tab the first three measures? Maybe I can learn something here. Bear in mind that triplet is meant as a stand-in for what is more of an arpeggiated chord, but I couldn't get a slow enough arpeggio to simulate what he is doing. It's faster than a triplet.

Sorry, don't have time right now for that. Maybe someone else here will do a few measures for you.
Do you already play this piece at least somewhat up to tempo. I'd suggest you do that first by ear. Makes it somewhat easier to tab it.

[justonwo]

Originally Posted by rick-slo

Sorry, don't have time right now for that. Maybe someone else here will do a few measures for you.
Do you already play this piece at least somewhat up to tempo. I'd suggest you do that first by ear. Makes it somewhat easier to tab it.

Yes, I can play the piece by ear at tempo. It would be hard to tab it without first playing it, I think.

[rick-slo]

OK, a couple of measures:

[Doug Young]

Transcription is hard, and different people hear it differently, and also make different decisions about how to convey the info. To me, trying to accurately convey a rag rhythm with triplets, sextuplets, etc, doesn't work too well. People can't read it. Just like jazz phrasing, I'd write it fairly straight, to make it easy to follow, and expect the player to know to play it with a bounce characteristic of the style. There's a ton of syncopation, even without trying to capture the rag timing exactly.

Here's how I'd write those 1st few measures. I hear it in cut time, with the first downbeat being on the C chord, and a backbeat on 2, which I've written as a brush - might not be, it might just be plucked. There are a couple of almost ghosted notes in the 3rd measure, a pulloff that isn't so much a clean pulloff as a dangling note created as he lifts his fingers, and the G on the upbeat of the 3rd measure going back to the C chord in the next. This is the kind of thing that gets tricky - did he mean to play these, or are they just noises made as he shifts chords?, and so on. There are other interesting questions, too, like the very first note. It's really quick. Maybe it should be a leading 16th note instead of an 8th, or maybe just write it as timed with the bass note, with a reverse ripple indication.

Anyway, my quick attempt.

ragtime3.jpg

here's what the playback of the tab (midi, from my tab program) sounds like for this (pretty square! and the more ghosted notes come out too strong...)

[JonPR]

Originally Posted by justonwo

I've been reading tab for a long time. Though I learned how to read standard musical notation for piano many years ago, I don't use the notes for guitar. I use them for timing and the tab for fingering.

I have a number of songs that I want to learn where the basics of the song are pretty easy to learn quickly. However, there are a number of subtleties that make the songs transition from simple, boring songs to very sophisticated songs. Little licks that are introduced between normal bars, slight syncopations of the music, and changes to the basic structure. I've found that if I have the tab, it's much easier to me to remember them all. I spent the last weekend trying to transcribe a song using the Amazing Slowdowner.

I find that it takes me forever to figure out the timing and where measures start and stop. I've given up transcribing the song exactly how I hear it because much of the song is played off the beat (either slightly before or after). I can easily introduce that feel without having it written down, but even getting things divided neatly into quarter notes, eighth notes, triplets, dotted, etc takes me a long, long time. Sometimes I get stuck and can't figure out where a measure starts and it ends up throwing off a whole lot of subsequent measures.

Maybe it's just a simple matter of doing it a lot of times, but the process can be pretty painful for me. Are there any tips from veterans who are really good at transcriptions?

You have to establish the pulse, one way or another - assuming the rhythm is not free, that is. (If there is no steady beat, it can become quite arbitrary how to represent the timing in terms of bars, beats or syncopations.)
Once you have a steady beat, a regular pulse you can clap or tap your foot to (or set a metronome to) it's easy enough (IMO) to feel where notes fall, on or off the beat, and how the beats divide (8ths, triplets, 16ths).

Where you place barlines, however, can be quite an art, if a player doesn't stick to a regular metre (time sig).

I've done a lot of transcribing of Bert Jansch pieces and, while he kept a very clear regular pulse, a lot of his tunes flip from 4/4 to 3/4, 2/4 or 5/4, in ways he didn't care about. (When asked to produce a book of his music, it was his own timing that defeated him.) As he said, "other people count 1-2-3-4. I just count 1-1-1-1..."
You could, of course, follow that thought and notate his music with a 1/4 time sig! But that would be very difficult to make sense of as a reader, and in any case you can determine common metres in his music enough to define an overall time sig. But where beats are added or omitted, deciding how and where to place barlines is often arbitrary. (If there's a group of 7 beats, is it 4+3, 3+4, 2+3+2?)

A good clue for deciding where beat 1 is is chord changes or bass notes. Chord roots tend to fall on beat 1, as do the deepest or strongest bass notes - i.e., when you hear those, you can make them beat 1. Obviously it's not a failsafe rule, and you need to consider other things like phrasing - and also try to be as consistent and simple as possible, for reading. (Maybe bars of 3/4 and 5/4, as suggested by chord changes or bass notes, will be easier to read and feel as two bars of 4/4, with a syncopation?)

Still, hearing where the notes are relative to the beat - beat subdivisions - is easy (for me). I use Transcribe, which (unlike ASD) has a waveform display where you can mark beats and/or measures as the track plays. See the screenshots here: https://www.seventhstring.com/xscribe/screenshots.html (H2, H3 etc are the measures, the other vertical markers are beats in 4/4.)
Then - where a rhythm is tricky - you can isolate a single beat, slow it right down, and be absolutely clear where the notes are within that space. (Often you can actually see where they are.)

Of course, the more you transcribe music, the more you get a feel for cross rhythms and polyrhythms. I don't like (or don't feel a need) to verbalise them, as "1-e-and-a" and so on. I can just feel them, or imagine them in visual space, like markers on a ruler. IOW, well before transcription software was available, I was able to feel rhythms in that way, and never had any real trouble notating them (I could slow stuff down to half-speed with a tape deck, but of course no visual analogue was available).

If you can give an example of a track which is causing you problems, maybe I can offer my $0.02...