TR-001 • Why Transcribe?

[justinguitar]

Questions...

Lesson Link: http://www.justinguitar.com/en/TR-001-WhyTranscribe.php

[mikemc]

Long time surfer of your site and first time poster!

Justin, love your work man!!, You have helped me brige the gap in a lot of areas in my playing.  I've been trying the transcribing by ear, as you have suggested, and I finally got a few notes on my own!!!  Not much, mind you, just an F, G and an A.  But wow, what a cool feeling to have done it with out relying on a tab or someone to show me!  Now, I still have a long way to go, but I thought I'd share that much with you!

Thanks Again,
Mike
Maryland, USA

[aguitarb]

does anybody have any simple songs to start off with?

[Mooty]

Yeah, Justin has.

http://justinguitar.com/en/TR-020-SongTips1.php

[4decopas]

i have a lot more problems to transcribe chords than single notes,  is that common?

[Linsen]

Yeah, that's very common and quite logical if you think about it. In a chord you have up to 6 notes (not necessarily different ones) playing at the same time, and several chords use partly the same notes. Problems you don't have with single notes.

[Mervin]

When u try and identify a chord you listen for the root note if i am right... my question is how do i figure of if its a 7th or diminished or whatever aftet i know the root note...

[Bootstrap]

I am but a nacent transciber but the theory behind your question is each different chord type eg major, minor, 7th all have a distinctive sound that you should be able to recognise. Play an A then an Am, play a D then a Dm and you will hear what I'm talking about.

B

[Mervin]

yup i can recognise that .. its something like

majors r happy sounding  ,  minros r dark/sad  7th's r jazzy ... but i hav a difficult like transcribing em from a song .. guess i'll hav to improve my listening skills   thank you

[Mervin]

oops bad sentence there

[AnimalsAsLeaders]

Trying to transcribe Lucy in the sky by the beatles on bass. Is is normal to want to cry when trying to transcribe for the first time?

[strapp75]

Trying to transcribe Lucy in the sky by the beatles on bass. Is is normal to want to cry when trying to transcribe for the first time?

Yes, and not only the first time. 

But you will become better with time. Just keep transcribing.

[AnimalsAsLeaders]

Okay, just double checking because a deep level of frustration resonated in me last night & today. I gave up on it, looked up the tab and saw that i was hitting the right notes on some of them but just on higher octaves. Going to be checking out some door songs next.

[Cue Zephyr]

Be sure to check out live performances and covers on YouTube, these can help a lot when transcribing.

[mvpetri]

I'm really sorry to bump this topic. The last post was freaking 7 years ago  !

But I think my problem is most appropriate to this first video.

I'm totally beginner and I'm just starting. A few days ago I tried to play the intro of smoke on the water by ear.

I use an acoustic guitar. With nylon strings. The song was played with a guitar. So although the notes are the same, the pitch isn't. This made it very difficulty.

But one problem that I don't know yet how to overcome is: Sometimes the song sound the same, even though the notes are wrong. For example: I tried to play the intro of Seven Nation Army.

It is quite easy, using the 5th and 6th strings. Disregarding the chords, because I'm focusing on the individual notes:

If you play A A C A (on the 5th string), G F# E (on the 6th string), A A C A (5th) and G F# G F# E (6th) it will sound like the intro of Seven Nation Army. But if you go to the video where justin teaches how to play this song, you can see that it is actually:

C C D C etc... It is all different. It uses the same pattern, and I think this is why it sound like the music, but it is actually 2 notes ahead.

Is it normal to do this while transcribing? Does people play the music only to realize that all the notes are one or 2 notes higher or lower?

[Dr Winterbourne]

If you've transcribed the pattern correctly, but in a different key, I would think it suggests you have good RELATIVE pitch, but need to keep working on identifying actual notes. Keep at it. It is a process.

[Majik]

As the good Doc points out, you are working on relative pitch rather than absolute pitch.

This is A Good Thing!

Being able to recognise relative pitches is so much more important than being able to recognise absolute notes. In fact, if you follow an ear training course (recommended) it will teach you to recognise "intervals" which are the difference between two notes, rather than on trying to train you to recognise actual notes ("perfect pitch") which is a nice party trick, but of almost no practical use.

So what you are doing is absolutely fine assuming you are doing it from memory. If you are doing it playing along to the record (or Justin's video), you should notice that you are playing in a different key (which you did).

My suggestion is, if you try to copy or transcribe a riff or a song, and you want to play it in the same key as the original, then you should try to learn the riff playing along with the original record so you get the right starting notes, and the rest of the notes should follow from there.

But there's actually nothing necessarily wrong with playing it in a different key, and it's also not unusual for a song to be played in different key as long as you're not trying to play along with the record. If it sounds good then it is good.

Cheers,

Keith

[willferral]

I don't know where to post this. I'm having trouble sometimes with relatively simple songs. Right now I'm trying to transcribe Dumb by Nirvana and I've spent a half hour trying to figure whatever the second chord or little riff is in the first bar.

Is it productive to work something where I'm making little progress or better to work on songs that I get through relatively fast like [for me] a song by the Ramones or the chord progressions worked on in the Justin training?

Hope my question makes sense and that this is somewhat the right place to post it.