The Answers to All Your Questions are in Your Living Room

 

    In this post I will talk about the art of transcription, or as I like to call it, the art of aural thievery.  "How does one go about stealing sound?", you may be asking.  The simple answer is by listening.

    What is meant by the title, "The Answers to All Your Questions are in Your Living Room," is that your music collection contains everything you need to know.  Having a good teacher is important of course, and you can glean some information from books, however one thing I've learned in my experience is that nothing compares to what you can learn by listening to and transcribing good music.  By "good" music, I mean music that sounds good to you, and that is quite subjective.

    To transcribe something, you'll need two things:

1. A music player (something that allows you to pause, rewind, and fast forward frequently.  It is also helpful if it has the ability to slow down the music.  There are a few reliable programs for doing this.  Here is the one I use.)
2. A good set of stereo headphones

    Many people use the piano or a keyboard to transcribe regardless of their primary instrument.  Personally, I only occasionally use a piano.  I mostly use my guitar.  So now let's talk about actually transcribing.  There are many ways to transcribe something, and the method I will explain is just the way I do it.  

    First, I listen to the whole tune a few times to get a sense of the overall form.  Once I've determined the form of the tune I'll go back and listen to the first phrase of the melody or whatever part I'm trying to figure out until I can sing it.  Now that the phrase is internalized I find the first note of the phrase on my instrument.  Sometimes it's by trial and error, just playing random notes until I find it, other times I just know what it is.  From there, it's just trial and error until I find the rest of the notes in the phrase.  Sometimes I find it helpful to not worry about the rhythm and just focus on finding all the pitches first, then figure out the rhythm later.  This process continues, phrase by phrase, until I've finished the part I wanted to transcribe.  

    Sometimes it is difficult to get all the notes in a phrase.  If you're having trouble with a few notes in the middle, just skip them and they will probably become apparent later.  The more things you transcribe, the better you will become at it.  This is called "ear training."

    Alternatively, I sometimes start with attempting to figure out the chord progression or underlying harmony of the part I want to transcribe.  The easiest way to do this is to figure out what the bass is doing first.  The software I use has the ability to raise the pitch of the recording by an octave, which makes it easier to hear the bass if I have trouble.  Unless you are trying to transcribe the exact bass line, you really only need to determine what note the bass is playing each time the chord changes.  This will save you lots of time, trust me.

    Once I have the important bass notes figured out, the only thing left is to determine the quality of each chord.  This is the easy part.  Ninety-nine percent of the time, a chord will either be major, minor, or dominant.  So if the bass note is F, try playing F major, F minor, and F7.  Odds are that one of those three choices will sound more correct than the others.

    In order for it to be a transcription, "technically" speaking, it needs to be written down.  This is up to you.  Personally I like to write down everything I transcribe, as the process of writing things down helps it stick in my brain.  Everyone operates differently.  Ultimately it comes down to whatever purpose you have for transcribing something.  If you're learning a solo, I feel it's generally best to memorize it as you transcribe it.  This forces you to play the solo along with the recording as opposed to writing it down and playing it later.  If you do want to write it out that's fine too, however my advice would be to only do that once you've learned to play along with the recording.  

    By listening to the music you like and learning it in this way, you develop a deep relationship to the music that can't be obtained through books or reading music from a page.  What is there to learn in your living room?