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Originally Posted by tomshepp  I'm proof that it's hard to teach an old dog new tricks. I am however willing to try. Seems I'm wanting to get back into transcribing these days. Problem is, I haven't done it since the days of records and cassette tapes.... yes, that long! The time has come and I need advice. What do you use to transcribe? Advice on advantages and disadvantages would be most appreciated. I've seen the Tascam bass trainer and find that interesting. Thanks for any help.
Tom |
I use Winamp for the stuff you can work out in real time, as it whizzes past... you can easily pause & rewind etc...
if I need to zero in a bit further, i'll use Wavelab... you can time stretch the tune... sometimes that helps although sometimes it introduces artifacts that make it harder to hear what's going on
the best thing about Wavelab is the ability to zero in on the waveform and pull out very short bursts of notes... you can set it looping... sometimes this is very useful for faint & quick passing notes in a busy phrase... your ear can get confused by big strong notes either side, so I can isolate one single 16th note chunk of time in Wavelab, loop it so it's a drone and pick out what the bass note is... it would take ages to do that for a whole tune, but when you absolutely have to get every note right, it's worthwhile
sometimes i'll import the audio into Cubase SX and synchronise the tempo to the tune, to get an accurate tempo mark for the transcription... it's amazing how tempos drift even with bands with supposedly metronomic drummers.. importing into Cubase can also sometimes be useful if you have very silly polyrhythms to analyze... suppose you have a Zappa-esque guitar solo with an even group of 7 notes over 2 1/5 beats in a 3/4 tune... it can be hard to work out what's going on just by listening but if you synch the tempo and reconstruct what you hear using a VSTi in Cubase, often the graphical representation of the notes helps you get a grip on the polyrhythms... sometimes you have to make a judgement call on what the musician intended vs what they played sloppy... i.e. did they mean an eight note quintuplet or did they mean two eight notes followed by a triplet..? sometimes what someone plays is somewhere in the middle... deconstructing the exact timing in Cubase can help you there... but it's pretty hardcore and not usually needed...
for notation itself I use Sibelius, which is easy to navigate & very versatile once you get used to the note input system
