Music Transcription

[EscapeReality]

Hi,

I've recently been listening to a lot of anime music arrangements for piano (especially those of TehIshter and Animenzzz), and I've been trying to learn how to transcribe music by myself. I don't yet to have a pitch, and I have no idea how to use musical notation software. I only can read music fairly well. If any of you have a good musical ear or have transcribed before, please give me some suggestions on how to develop pitch and which notation programs to use!

Thank you

[aestivial]

Interested in learning too. I'm an adult music learner.

Hopefully some experts will notice this thread.

[Puddingman]

Hey guys, I studied music therapy + jazz in college..I have a few tips.

My teacher had me sing arpeggios of chord changes in songs. So if you get a "Real Book" and say the first chord is C major7, you sing the 1, 3, 5, then 7. It's really really hard at first but you'll notice improvement even after a few days.

He had us do that through an entire song. So if the changes went something like ||Cmaj7 | Dmin7 | G7 | Cmaj7||

We'd sing the arpeggios for each chord in the order they appeared. Uhh I hope I explained that well enough >_>

Probs, start with the triads first, so sing 1, 3 and 5. Then build up the chord when it gets easier.

Also for transcribing stuff just listen to the bass notes. Sometimes it's tricky cause they're hidden really well in there, but if you can hear the bass note, and then sing it back, and then locate it on piano/guitar/whatever, you can start writing out a lead sheet for the basic chord structures of the songs. If you guys are mostly into pop style stuff you'll pick up on stock chord patterns that happen A LOT. If you're into the orchestral kind of stuff, that can be really challenging, I still don't understand it XD

AND, I didn't say before, but have a musical instrument with you when you sing. Cause if you can sing the pitch you hear in the song you're working on, then you gotta figure out what pitch it is by matching it with your instrument. Then write it down. So like:

Note from song (bass note most likely)----> Sing it---->find on guitar/piano---> write it down.

Then once you get the bass note you can play around with major minor etc etc, either by singing which arpeggio you think it is, or by playing around with the instrument till you find the one that fits the best.

Ehh, I'm not the best at explaining things, but I hope it helps you two some ^_^;, if you need more information I'm happy to help!

[EscapeReality]

Originally Posted by Puddingman

Hey guys, I studied music therapy + jazz in college..I have a few tips.

My teacher had me sing arpeggios of chord changes in songs. So if you get a "Real Book" and say the first chord is C major7, you sing the 1, 3, 5, then 7. It's really really hard at first but you'll notice improvement even after a few days.

He had us do that through an entire song. So if the changes went something like ||Cmaj7 | Dmin7 | G7 | Cmaj7||

We'd sing the arpeggios for each chord in the order they appeared. Uhh I hope I explained that well enough >_>

Probs, start with the triads first, so sing 1, 3 and 5. Then build up the chord when it gets easier.

Also for transcribing stuff just listen to the bass notes. Sometimes it's tricky cause they're hidden really well in there, but if you can hear the bass note, and then sing it back, and then locate it on piano/guitar/whatever, you can start writing out a lead sheet for the basic chord structures of the songs. If you guys are mostly into pop style stuff you'll pick up on stock chord patterns that happen A LOT. If you're into the orchestral kind of stuff, that can be really challenging, I still don't understand it XD

AND, I didn't say before, but have a musical instrument with you when you sing. Cause if you can sing the pitch you hear in the song you're working on, then you gotta figure out what pitch it is by matching it with your instrument. Then write it down. So like:

Note from song (bass note most likely)----> Sing it---->find on guitar/piano---> write it down.

Then once you get the bass note you can play around with major minor etc etc, either by singing which arpeggio you think it is, or by playing around with the instrument till you find the one that fits the best.

Ehh, I'm not the best at explaining things, but I hope it helps you two some ^_^;, if you need more information I'm happy to help!

Hey, thanks a lot for your advice! As for singing, I can emulate the melody from a song fairly well. I've heard that singing helps pitch, but it hasn't done so greatly for me. I mean, I can notate a melody through trial-and-error, but I was wondering how to listen to a short segment of music and be able to detect intervals between the notes, simply by ear.

[Puddingman]

Oooh I gotcha! I'm terrible at transcribing melodies by ear too >_< Honestly, I just practiced the singing thing enough so that I can sing the melody. Because then I can sing it as slowly as I need, isolate each pitch, and find it on my instrument.

For intervals there's the old fashioned play a note, then think "sing a minor 3rd up" WITHOUT playing the minor 3rd first. It's kind of hit or miss for a while..you can use songs you know to help memorize. The interval stuff is a pain IMO.

But it's helpful knowing too that most melodies are gonna be step wise, unless there's a giant jump. And with the jumps you can kinda figure:

-major 6th sounds like NBC news theme (the N to B), minor 6th is ehhh guess work lol
-no one hardly jumps minor or major 7ths, so you don't have to worry too much about that
-Perfect 4ths are "hear comes the bride"
-Perfect 5ths are power chords, n sometimes get em mixed up with 4ths but no big
-Then tritones are death, you'll know those XD

Haha well I'm glad I was able to help you even a little bit!

[EscapeReality]

Originally Posted by Puddingman

Oooh I gotcha! I'm terrible at transcribing melodies by ear too >_< Honestly, I just practiced the singing thing enough so that I can sing the melody. Because then I can sing it as slowly as I need, isolate each pitch, and find it on my instrument.

For intervals there's the old fashioned play a note, then think "sing a minor 3rd up" WITHOUT playing the minor 3rd first. It's kind of hit or miss for a while..you can use songs you know to help memorize. The interval stuff is a pain IMO.

But it's helpful knowing too that most melodies are gonna be step wise, unless there's a giant jump. And with the jumps you can kinda figure:

-major 6th sounds like NBC news theme (the N to B), minor 6th is ehhh guess work lol
-no one hardly jumps minor or major 7ths, so you don't have to worry too much about that
-Perfect 4ths are "hear comes the bride"
-Perfect 5ths are power chords, n sometimes get em mixed up with 4ths but no big
-Then tritones are death, you'll know those XD

Haha well I'm glad I was able to help you even a little bit!

Haha. Thanks for your help! The song references were especially useful!

[Seitsuki]

Having played both piano and guitar (one note based and one chord based) I can safely say that chords are the far easier way to transcribe. With enough experience (and there are only so many chord progressions used really) you can easily tell what chords are being played; if you have problems discerning the melody then this narrows down the note range considerably.