Tag: transcribing music

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My Transcribing Corner – all that tech :-P

List of gear:

1. Samsung Tab 7.0 plus – My tablet phone, for listening to original soundtracks

2. Sony bluetooth earphones – connected to my phone, so that I can hear the music more clearly. Want to catch every note, especially the bass line.

3. Yamaha CLP330 digital piano, with Philips headphones.
I wear the Sony earphones in-ear, with the Philips headphones on top of that – double input 🙂

4. Acer Aspire One laptop – cute little thing that fits perfectly on top of my piano. Musescore is the free notation software that I use. When I’m finished transcribing, I save it as pdf format, which I transfer to my…

5. Acer Iconia Tab – I use this to read all my scores. My daughter downloads tons of scores from the net onto the Tab. The pdf reader which comes with it, Lumiread, is great for reading scores (it flips pages instead of scrolling them). Needs a file manager (from the Play Store) – we use Astro – to organise the scores etc.

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Transcribing music for piano – Q & A’s

I’ve been asked many times, for advice and hints on transcribing music. Here are some Q & A’s first. I’m thinking about doing a step-by-step pictorial someday on that…Meanwhile, hope this helps. Please feel free to post more questions here ok? 🙂

Q: I’m thinking of doing some transcribing. Can you give me some hints on how to start please?

A: Ok…simple transcribing, which I will call Stage 1. Listen to the song with earphones, while sitting at your piano or keyboard. Stop and rewind as often as you need while you write down what you hear, starting with the melody. If you are using a manuscript sheet, write the notes of the melody as just black noteheads, without any rhythm. If you want to just use letternames on an exercise paper, write the melody notes in lower case, not capital letters. Then, go through it again, listening for the lowest note in each chord. Write the chord changes at exactly  the correct note, above the melody notes. Chord names should be in capital letters. Here’s a picture of a simple ‘transcription’ I did for my student:

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