transcribing and the song itself

[the_hook]

I'm curious about the job of transcribing music...

When you decide to transcribe a song, how do you know if the person that created it just made it up and played notes that sounded good (and may have created a great, memorable tune) or deliberately sat down and figured out the key signature, chord progression, etc. like a bluerpint?

I read magazines on drumming, bass, etc. and there are a number of interviews with some artists where they have little to no formal music training, yet have recorded successful songs.

How many articles have we read where one member of the band created a cool riff or hook, and then others built a song around that? Do they follow a set structure, or did they move around the fret and keyboard to find the right notes to make a cool song?

If songs are made that way, how do you then go back and figure out what key it's really in? Chord progression? etc.? Or am I totally missing something?

[megadan]

Good question.

Ultimately, music is about emotion and attitude, not math and lines on a page. That is one means to get there but not the only one by far.

I'm sure if you transcribed a Hendrix song or a Dylan harmonic solo they wouldn't be 100% technically correct. That's what gives them their charm and memorability.

[Roy Vogt]

A lot of the rules of what works are put together after the fact. Street players are also exposed to "the rules" by listening to music. Ultimately, Duke Ellington's right:
"If it sounds good it is good."
Learning how music works is a great shortcut in the process. I recommend it highly.
The cool thing about rules and Art is that you can bend or break them if you'd like-it's only Music.

[DudeistMonk]

Lets put it this way, I just learned 47 rock tunes for a gig on Sat and only 1 of them ever deviated from the root on beat 1 (Use Somebody) and it was just C/E forming a first inversion, which fits perfectly into theory.

Regardless of if they know it or not these guys fall into theory, and regardless of if you can read or whatever every musician I've worked with (for the most part) understood chords and progressions and the like.

Also no formal training doesn't equal no training...I might not have gone to school specifically for HTML/CSS coding, but after 5 years of coding sites I can code circles around most people. You pick up little bits of theory as you play with people whether you realize it or not, and whether you call it theory or not.

[MalcolmAmos]

We get some questions on the forums like; "I made this great progression. What key is it in"?

The people that actually finish writing a song - by the time they have pulled together - Lyrics, Verse Structure, Chord Progression, and Melody - usually understand what they are doing and everything fits together.

Sure Country chord progressions will take liberties with minor chords being shown as major, dominant sevenths being sprinkled around more than actually needed, but in the long run it all fits together. Liberties are allowed.

Now in transcribing their songs should you correct these liberties? Good question. Depends how close you want to sound like the original. The flip side of that --we play a lot of Willy Nelson's songs, I have to dumb down Willy's progressions so we can play them - the audience has yet to notice - or at least no one has called my hand on this. LOL

[Zombbg4]

Just because the person who writes it has no idea what key its in or what chord progression it uses doesn't mean someone else cant find that out. It's like, how do you solve a crime with no witness?? Well, the guys blood is on the victim ect... In the music, you can heard the chord tones, the root ect.

It would seem almost impossible to know whether the writer wrote the song off a riff or wrote out the structure and filled it in. A great composer could intentionally write a simple piece that could seem as though it was put together by luck, or a guy who has no idea what he's doing could write a complicated song. I guess looking at the musicians background could help.

[basseux]

Originally Posted by the_hook

I'm curious about the job of transcribing music...

When you decide to transcribe a song, how do you know if the person that created it just made it up and played notes that sounded good (and may have created a great, memorable tune) or deliberately sat down and figured out the key signature, chord progression, etc. like a bluerpint?

I read magazines on drumming, bass, etc. and there are a number of interviews with some artists where they have little to no formal music training, yet have recorded successful songs.

How many articles have we read where one member of the band created a cool riff or hook, and then others built a song around that? Do they follow a set structure, or did they move around the fret and keyboard to find the right notes to make a cool song?

If songs are made that way, how do you then go back and figure out what key it's really in? Chord progression? etc.? Or am I totally missing something?

It's not because you don't know how to spell and write the word "table", that you don't know what is a table and how to use it.

It's not because you can't put a name on the concept of "tonality", "chord" that you can't hear and manipulate the musical concept behind the words "tonality", "chord".


Like you say, it's just about transcribing in a written language.

[Hoover]

You're confusing Transcription with "Reverse Engineering".

It's not at all necessary to know how a piece of music was composed in order to transcribe it. You just need to be able to hear it.

That being said, if you do know something about how it was composed that information might make the job of transcribing easier. But there's no direct correlation.

[JHorstmann]

There is nothing on earth like music.

Music is science and math combined with emotion, feeling, attitude, and guts!
Here's my take:

While guys like Jimmy Hendrix may or may not have been technical when writing their songs. Guys like Jimmy Page have been technically proficient. He was in the studio writing and transcribing all of the time. There is no right or wrong way, and nobody does it the same way. For example, if you're writing a 1-5-6-4 (BASIC) progression and know it's basic and so you want to change it you know that a good chord to change would be a 2 instead of the 6. That's why it CAN be a HUUUGE plus to know you're theory (pretty basic theory, in fact) but don't rely on it.