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Doing Music Transcriptions

July 8, 2009 on 10:35 am | In Music etc. | No Comments

Unless it is a fairly simple or familiar piece of music, music transcription can be a very daunting task. Listening to 6+ instruments at the same time and then going through the pains of writing out the musical part for each instrument is tedious. Nonetheless, here are some of the methods I adopted doing this kind of work every now and then.

First get familiar with the song and realize what are the instruments being used. As a musician, you should be able to recognize several instruments by its sound and timbre. I use to struggle with differentiating the Oboe from the Clarinet and the Trombone from the French Horn. But then I realize that the French Horn has more of a “watery” sound in it and the Oboe on the other hand sounds like a “sick sheep on its last lap” Graphic but that’s just how I am able to differentiate.

Once you have identified the instruments being used in the piece, your next step is to realize the structure of the piece. Intro–>Verse–>Chorus etc. if it is a pop tune; A–>B–>A if it is something more challenging.

Now that you know your instruments and you know the structure, you next identify the key (in concert) the music is performed in and the time signature. Once these basics are established you are now ready to begin transcribing.

I usually start with the instrument that is most obvious to the ear and in a true “layman” term, I write the notes out without any regards for the rhythm. Simply put, if I hear the trumpets play A-C-C#-D then I write that down and completely disregard the rhythm. I would do this for an entire portion of the structure (e.g. for the introduction or the verse or A section) and then repeat for each instrument going from the most obvious to the least obvious.

This entire process is then repeated for each segment of the structure until I have completed the full song which in many cases is Intro-verse-chorus-bridge-modulated chorus-fade out…or something along those lines.

Once I have this valuable information written out, usually on some kind of paper or notebook – the next step would be to use the limited musician and techie in me to play each part into a computer program (e.g. Logic or Finale) ensuring that I play the rhythms exactly as I hear them. Of course this is the most challenging and frustrating part, but it is what musicians do because we get better after we completed every single one.

This is a quick overview – a more detailed writing may be in the works, especially about the frustrating part “Using Logic or Finale or some computer Program to transcribe music.”
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