About transcribing

[loveguitar]

hi guitarists

I have some questions about transcribing.
I understand you got to listen carefully to
transcribe a song into the guitar tabs, but
sometimes the solo are just too fast and noisy
to hear the notes one by one.

So more than often, I ended up with a "rough
idea" of the solos and play perhaps only 50%
similiarity to the solos.

But when I look at the tabs on the web, I am just amazed
at how some people can transcribe even to
eg. "A5, A6, A7 chords" when the rhythm is so noisy
that it is quite "impossible" to breakdown the notes.

Such as the solo from "Still got the blues", there are certain
parts that's so fast. Even with a good ear, how do
these musicians transcribe to note by note accuracy?

Is there any freeware web tools that allows songs to be
slowed down so that it can be heard note by note?
Or is just by pure listening? (think I am going to spoil
my cassette player soon becoz I keep rewinding, play
rewinding play.....for hundred of times and still cannot
get the notes individually!)

[Rock_Rocket]

Hi there,

when transcribing a fast and complex solo, a tool like "Transcribe" might come in handy. It allows you to slow down a track without changing the pitch. You can download it here: http://www.seventhstring.demon.co.uk/xscribe/

Good luck!

Rock_Rocket

[Anubis]

I started to play guitar back in 1981 and back then things like tab books,instructional books etc was almost impossible to find.
So what I had to do was to rely on my ear.
I have spent more hours in front of my stereo trying to figure out things then what is healthy.
However it did gave me a decent ear and I can transcribe many things today.
One thing I remember back then was that I thought I would never be able to transcribe a really fast solo without slowing it down (I'll get back to that)..
Today I can actually hear a solo by Malmsteen for example and sometimes transcribe the fast parts pretty accurate just by listening to it in real time.The reason I can do this is because my ear has improved a lot over the year.
In the beginning a line of fast notes sounded like....well just a line of fast notes but by listening a lot over the years to stuff like that your ear will learn to identify all the notes in that fast solo line.
Also by becoming faster on the guitar yourself you also learn to identify fast solo lines.
I mean even a fast solo line still has notes played and it is just a matter of training your ear to identify them.
I should mention that I am still not a very good guitar player and I still cannot transcribe many fast solos without actually slowing them down.
There are some really good tools for that today.
I use something called Amazing Slow Downer.
You can download it for free and try it out.
That thing will really help you to transcribe fast solos.
Then when you are going to learn those fast solos you might want to start out by slowing the solo down to 100-150% but the faster you get the more you can decrease the setting.

Download Amazing Slow Downer from here.

http://www.ronimusic.com/

[d7th]

It may also depend of what you are used to play. For exemple in heavy metal most guitarists use the same tricks in their solo's... once you've learned one you find it's easier to learn the others. 2 years ago I couldn't play Van Halen's solos, I had no idea how to play them. Once I've learned a 2 or 3 VH songs I understood his way of playing. Now when I listen to a VH song I can figure out most of its parts including solo.
Here again it is a matter of habbit and practice.

[DepressedNazgul]

I'll add another question to this thread.
When you transcribe song chords, what method do you use? Do you identify the chord tones one by one and figure the position on the guitar, or maybe you identify it by it's type, like "hmm, that must have been a m7 2nd inversion" or something like that?

I find it very hard to transcribe chords even on very simple songs, like "A hard day's night", because it's production is terrible and it is so noisy...

My problen is that I can't transcribe songs, therefore I can't learn off records, and on the other hand, I don't want to use tabs, I want to do the work myself.

[loveguitar]

Thanks all. The softwares seems very interesting. And the
messages are very encouraging.

I am impressed by Anubis post
"Today I can actually hear a solo by Malmsteen for example and sometimes transcribe the fast parts pretty accurate just by listening to it in real time."
This is really impressive and what I am working towards to.

I guess I will still stick on to transcribing on my own
to as much as possible. Then I will turn to slowing down
the songs for verification and correction.

To DepressedNazgul,

Can't help in this question much since I am also having problems in this area. I can only struggle to figure out diatonic chords and maybe dominant 7th chords. I guess it is also important to be able to recognize the sounds of say the "m7 2nd inversion" you mentioned, so that you can transcribe them.

[Greg]

Originally posted by DepressedNazgul
I'll add another question to this thread.
When you transcribe song chords, what method do you use? Do you identify the chord tones one by one and figure the position on the guitar, or maybe you identify it by it's type, like "hmm, that must have been a m7 2nd inversion" or something like that?
Well, I´m not really a superhero when it comes to this subject (or any other, for that matter...), but I can share my method, just in case...
I use a rather primitive method, where you start with the bass note, then play a powerchord over it just to check if it´s the root of the chord, then I try to identify the colour of the chord. Is it major or minor, or diminished etc. Then I figure out if it´s a maj7, min7, or dom7 etc. After that I try to figure out where on the fretboard the chord is played, what inversion etc.
I think that it´s very healthy to listen to different chords and try to zoom in on the sound of each chord. Eventually, you´ll be able to identify if it´s a maj7 chord right on the spot. It´s like learning scales, eventually you just "know" what type of scale you´re hearing.

If all else fails, use the force, Luke! :D

[daviej]

The vast majority of really simple songs like 'hard days night' will use mainly, if not only, chords I, IV, V (one, four, and five - ie C, F, and G in C; G, C major, and D in G major, etc) of the key, which will most probably be a major key. Knowing this, you can start experimenting with those and get to understand the sound of the way each of those chords fits together.

Transcribing has a lot to do with learning a formula, eg the blues progression, and getting to understand the way it sounds, and being able to say 'that's the blues progression' rather than working out each chord individually. There are so many musical cliches out there in the various styles that you can learn like this, and find the experience beneficial.

Personally, when I work out a melody I work it out based on the way each note functions against the chord or root, as well as scale used.

The more you do it, the better you get. And the only way to start is by just doing it! Start with something really simple like a folk song or a nursery rhyme and go for it.

[Anubis]

loveguitar if someone would have told me back in 1984 that I one day would be able to transcribe fast solos without slowing them down I would have laughed.

One thing that d7th said has also something to do with it.
If you know a certain guitarist style it makes things a lot easier.
For example I am not very familiar with Brett Garseds style so if I had to transcribe something by him without slowing it down I wouldn't be able to do it very well.
Malmsteen has a style I am very familiar with.
I know what kind of licks and phrases he often uses so it is not very hard to pick them up by ear.

Transcribing chords is another interesting subject.
From time to time I hear chords I just can't figure out.
From my experience I have found out that by learning many chords and playing them a lot the sound of the chords gets stuck in your head so when you hear them in a song you know what chord it is.
For example E7#9.
Most people knows that's the chord in Purple Haze and many many other songs.
I have heard that chord so often that I can identify it right away in a song.
The same goes for chords such as Major 7th and chords such as A13.
I have been trying to learn a lot of jazz over the last few years and the sound of certain chords just get stuck in your head.

A typical chord I just can't miss identify today is 9th chords such as D9 and E9.
I've been playing a lot of blues over the years and I have played those chords so much so they are easy to identify today.

I remember one day just recently I was driving around in my car and this song with Brian Setzer came on the radio.
The first chord was a D chord.
You know that D chord at the second fret we all learn in the beginning.
Most people can recognize that chord by ear without having the guitar in your hand.
Just by hearing him hitting that I thought "yes that's a D"
Then just for fun I tried to imagine how he played the rest of the song while I was driving around.
When I got home I picked up my guitar and tried to play the song.
I had to correct a few things but overall I was pretty close.
Now I hope someone don't think I have an amazing ear cause I dont.
Sometimes I fail identifying even the most simple things by ear.
But anyway I think transcribing chords are very much a matter of getting the sound of different chords into your head.

I've been playing a lot of Beatles songs over the years and pretty much every Beatles song I have played is made from the harmonized major scale.
For example a chord progressions such as D-Bm7-Em7-A7 is made from the D Major scale and a chord progression like this is quite common in both Beatles songs and other songs.
I am not a big theory guy but I know the basics and that helps sometimes cause if I am not sure what chord it is I can use my theory knowledge to understand what chord is being played.