![]() Some players transcribe without writing anything down on music notation paper. It’s up to you.Ĭ) *High quality digital transcribing machineĮ) Using Your Instrument to Find the Notes You might start out by transcribing a melody to a tune you like, or a solo lick you want to learn. But what is required is the ability to listen very closely to a series of notes and recreate those notes exactly on your instrument, and hopefully, on the written page as well. You can learn as you go and practice on your instrument or a piano playing chords, scales, intervals, etc. You should be able to read and write music notation and having a basic knowledge of music theory is helpful especially knowledge of musical intervals, but it is not required to just get started. How does one actually begin to transcribe? It starts by choosing a relatively simple piece of music, whether it is a melody to a song, a part of an improvisation, and just diving in. Most of us aren’t blessed with perfect pitch, but having a highly refined sense of relative pitch can be about 90% -99% as useful. When you transcribe regularly, you focus in on these skills and refine them so that they can become available to you in an instant. These are extremely useful things to be able to pull off on the spot. For example, if someone calls a tune that you don’t know, you can follow the root motion of the pianist, hear and recognize the chord types and forms that are in the tune you’re playing. All of these can have direct applications to “on the gig” situations. It makes you concentrate on recognizing intervals, bass lines, chord progressions, rhythms, and single note lines. Transcribing is also the best ear training that there is in my opinion. All of their musical ideas are there for you to study and absorb. In fact it’s probably much better because there are no personality issues to contend with, and it’s a hell of lot cheaper too! You are going right to the source, no middlemen, just you and a recording of your favorite piano solo, bass line, guitar solo, whatever! You can sit down with your digital transcribing machine, your instrument, some music notation paper, a pencil and an erasure (yeah you will need an erasure) and take a private lesson with anyone you admire whenever you feel like it. When you are able to write down or even just learn by ear at first what someone is playing on a recording that you dig, it is just like taking a private lesson with that person. Harmony books are great, and books of scales are useful, but if you want to get inside the head of an improviser and really try to understand why he/she made those particular note choices, nothing is better than transcribing them in action. Why? For starters it enables you to learn directly from the masters via their recorded works. ![]() ![]() The ability to transcribe, or write down on paper what you hear on a recording, is one of the most valuable tools a musician can possess. ![]()
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