The Workout Part 2
(19 Dec 03)
Transcribing
Yes, that too can be part of your practicing schedule. If you do a really long practicing session, or if you wanna work on several different things, you might appreciate doing something without a guitar in hand, or rather, something that isn't a strict technical exercise.
The most basic way to transcribe something is to have a tape, CD or MP3 of a song, listen to it bit by bit and transcribe the music (writing down the chords, melodies etc. In notation).
These days, there are many cool ways to make this process easier and more comfortable.
Stuff like recording and audio-editing-software such as Wavelab etc. Can be a great tool for transcribing music, since you can use it to loop certain parts that are hard to figure out, slow down certain parts, change the pitch of a piece etc.
Let's keep it simple, and use only one really cool tool that is available for free if you have a Windows PC... Powertab. This is really a cool tool to transcribe stuff and write it down... well, ok, you're writing it down in TAB (which is cool if that's what you wanna work on, as opposed to working on actually writing notation).
The cool part is, you can have the program play back your transcription, which makes it quite easy to check whether you transcribed correctly... especially regarding rhythms. If you're not used to reading rhythms and note lengths, you might not know whether you transcribed them right unless someone plays your transcription back to you exactly as it is written down. PT can do that for you.
So try it... pick any simple piece of music - some basic melody, solo, chord progression or anything. Pick up your guitar, and try to figure out that part you just listened to.
Important: Try to always think as a PLAYER. Which means, once you have figured out a part, say, a run, play it a few times to figure out the best possible fingering. If you transcribe note by note, you might come up with some impossible-to-play-stuff. So you should check whether your TAB can be played. Once you have the right notes and a good fingering, put the part into your powertab-file.
Try to get all the rhythms right... the playback-option of powertab is a great help here. After a while, you'll be able to figure out some typical rhythms and pattern easily. The more you do it, the easier it gets (after all we're talking about practicing here, right?)
Don't limit yourself to guitar-stuff only... try to transcribe parts played by other instruments as well... bass lines (which you might have to transpose on the guitar), brass-parts (if you listen to brass ensembles, you'll often hear lots of very clustered harmonies... it's tough to figure those out at first, but once you get a feeling for it, you'll become used to it).
A few years ago, I used to pick out and transcribe everything I heard for a while... once a friend was over at my place, and he brought the Play Station. Back then, "Tomb Raider" had just been released, and I really liked the main theme of that game.
So I picked out the melody on the guitar. Same goes for other stuff I heard in video-games, on the TV etc. (we recently discussed the "Final Fantasy" arps, so there you have another example).
This will not only help you to improve your ear, but also, you'll improve your transcription-skills and, if you want to, your reading- and writing-skills.
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