How to Make Transcribing Piano Music Faster and Easier
Transcribing Piano Music Faster and Easier
The amount of time and effort required to transcribe music depends on how complex the piece is, how good you are at transcribing and how detailed you want the transcription to be. Even with the best ear, it can take hours to write down a single minute of music. However, there are ways to make the process faster and easier.
For starters, it’s worth investing in a quality pair of headphones. These will give you a much more accurate representation of the soundscape, making it much easier to hear all the different frequencies and tones that are present in the recording. They also help to eliminate any ambient noise that may be distracting or preventing you from hearing what’s actually being played.
Another way to make the process quicker and easier is by transposing the music to a different key or keys. This will force you to think of the music in terms of its relative pitch rather than absolute pitch, which will help you a lot more when it comes to transcribing. The easiest way to do this is by simply moving the music up or down by a half or whole tone, but you can also try transposing it to different scales if you wish (although I wouldn’t recommend doing this within the context of transcription practice, as it would probably be overkill).
How to Make Transcribing Piano Music Faster and Easier
It’s worth noting that even though the most important part of any music transcription is hearing what’s being played, that isn’t necessarily all there is to it. You’ll also need to be able to deduce what notes the chords are made out of, which can be difficult. It’s also necessary to consider what’s physically possible to play on the instrument in question. If you’re unsure of how to transcribe something then it can be helpful to ask a professional musician for assistance.
To help you make the most out of your transcription practice it’s a good idea to start with something relatively simple, such as a solo or a song that’s entirely diatonic (i.e. it doesn’t use any chords outside of the key in which it’s being performed). This will help you get accustomed to the basics of transcribing before trying more complicated things, such as transcribing full songs or incorporating a bassline.
In addition to this, it’s important not to over-think the transcription process and to take it slowly. It’s easy to get overwhelmed by the amount of information that needs to be taken down and end up giving up or getting it wrong. Instead, work on a phrase by phrase and use an app or program that can slow down the music for you to listen to more easily. This can be done by using your DAW or an app such as Amazing Slow Downer, and it will speed up the transcription process enormously. Lastly, it’s always useful to keep checking your transcription against the original recording to see how close you’ve got to the real thing.