Double Bass transcription techniques?

[crd]

just a little snippet of the solo transcription, for some reason it's not letting me embed the link:
https://www.youtube.com/shorts/BLROjpnA6Vg

Awesome!

 

[damonsmith]

Questionable intonation and note choices can be found over the course of many notable recordings by many notable players, and PC is one of them. The fact that you are hearing it is a sign of a good ear and engagement with the recording. I'm quite surprised anyone is challenging that, honestly.

Getting weird about pitch to me is sort of like watching a bmx rider or skateboarder do a 900 and quibbling over whether it was 8ft high or 10ft high. Is the music great or not? If great music depended on 100% pure intonation from the double bass, we would not have much music to listen to, and if we are honest, a lot of it wouldn't be that great. If pitch was the most important thing, we would all slam the action and play exclusively arco.
Pitch is not the be all end all. It is one aspect. You have to take into account what is going on in the room, where the pitch of the other instruments are from, where the tuning A came from, etc.
Sometime we all do things we don't intend. So yeah, you can find notes that are not the exact pitch it seems like they should be, but can you find a recording of Chambers where the music is not happening?
Pitch is important and we should all do our best, but I think we all know when it is the primary material or not. Is PC making a questionable note choice or is the choice of note far less important than the choice of tone & time feel in that moment?

 

[Chris Fitzgerald]

About pitch: sometimes when helping a student with a transcription, we have a discussion about what we believe the original player intended to play. I’ve always advised students to transcribe their best understanding of the performer’s intention.

In the end, all bassists are human, and in the end even the masters are still occasionally - as @Sam Sherry so beautifully sports as his user title - “inadvertent mircotonalists”. The odd slippery note does little to reduce the value of a great musical performance.

 

[Groove Doctor]

Slow it down.

If needed, also transpose it up an octave (+12 semitones).

Try a Fretless instrument - really heaps if the recoding intonation is a bit off.

 

[jtrom]

I've gotten lots out of your comments: Transcribe! really helped, also I purchased a copy of the tune off itunes for $1.29. I'm isolating phrases and singing them out first, have my acoustic guitar and notation paper, can sit down and relax. Transcribe! is a nice tool. I moved past measures I couldn't hear well, I still need to go back and do best guesses for the missing notes. I got through the walking bass section, the melody and solo are easy to hear so I think I'm good.
Couple things I'm noticing about the PC walking lines - there's several questionable notes for intonation (as well as possibly grazing adjacent string), there's some sort of ugly phrases (just going up and down chromatically without any strong harmonic support), the bass sounds not great in upper register, thin w/ odd timber. Also I'm wondering if he tuned down his E? or had an extension? I seem to hear a low C in the walking bass section at one point.

Depending on what medium the original song was recorded on it might modulate. If it was recorded into tape it might be a few cents off… more than once I tuned my bass by ear to the recording so I wasn’t having to play in between notes.

I transcribed Whims of Chambers back in the day and a bunch more of his solos. One thing I got from it is write down the notes/beats that are obvious and then fill in the rest. As you say, he does lots of chromatic lines. For example, if the target note of the phrase is D on the “&” of beat 4 then write it down and then get the rhythm of the phrase and fill in the gaps. Sometimes it seems like there’s 4 notes in between C and D lol!

 

[AllieM]

Depending on what medium the original song was recorded on it might modulate. If it was recorded into tape it might be a few cents off… more than once I tuned my bass by ear to the recording so I wasn’t having to play in between notes.

I transcribed Whims of Chambers back in the day and a bunch more of his solos. One thing I got from it is write down the notes/beats that are obvious and then fill in the rest. As you say, he does lots of chromatic lines. For example, if the target note of the phrase is D on the “&” of beat 4 then write it down and then get the rhythm of the phrase and fill in the gaps. Sometimes it seems like there’s 4 notes in between C and D lol!

I spent lots of hours on it but I got it done! the whole tune, melody, solo and walking choruses. Seems odd but now my teacher gave me Base on Balls w/ Doug Watkins - a slow blues, very easy to hear, not nearly as technically challenging as Whims but I think maybe he's honing in on wanting me to play a really even groove, maybe he saw I needed work on that in the walking parts of Whims. Anyway, thx for the tips, I did start doing what you suggested kind of, picking the low hanging fruit first, lol.

 

[thehindteet]

very late the thread here and apologies in advance if I've duplicated parts of the responses, but a few things that I advise students when transcribing double bass stuff:

* find a way to use headphones. obviously it can be a pain with DB having to get your instrument mixed with the headphones, but even a cheapo pair of closed back headphones are like a magnifying glass for transcription.
* If you're using Transcribe, I always have the student use the "markers" feature (just push the m key while the reel is playing) to place a marker at every measure, and to use a section marker to tag each section A/B/C etc. It only takes a few minutes to do but it will save you an enormous amount of time when you're trying to locate passages you want to focus on. Be sure to save after you put them in though!
* For passages that are difficult to hear, use the loop feature in transcribe to limit the playback to a bar or portion of a bar. While that small section is looping, play over it, change the speed if you need to, change the EQ if you need to etc, but often hearing like 2 notes a hundred times makes it much easier to process what you're hearing than when it flies by.

whims of chambers was such a great selection- that was one of the first PC pieces I tackled, and I recently started to work on bowing heads and solos and thought Whims would be the natural place to start, it works really well arco although there a couple of phrases that are driving me crazy.

anyhow good luck, transcribing PC and Ron Carter stuff had such a huge impact on my development as a player, definitely time well spent!

 

[AllieM]

very late the thread here and apologies in advance if I've duplicated parts of the responses, but a few things that I advise students when transcribing double bass stuff:

* find a way to use headphones. obviously it can be a pain with DB having to get your instrument mixed with the headphones, but even a cheapo pair of closed back headphones are like a magnifying glass for transcription.
* If you're using Transcribe, I always have the student use the "markers" feature (just push the m key while the reel is playing) to place a marker at every measure, and to use a section marker to tag each section A/B/C etc. It only takes a few minutes to do but it will save you an enormous amount of time when you're trying to locate passages you want to focus on. Be sure to save after you put them in though!
* For passages that are difficult to hear, use the loop feature in transcribe to limit the playback to a bar or portion of a bar. While that small section is looping, play over it, change the speed if you need to, change the EQ if you need to etc, but often hearing like 2 notes a hundred times makes it much easier to process what you're hearing than when it flies by.

whims of chambers was such a great selection- that was one of the first PC pieces I tackled, and I recently started to work on bowing heads and solos and thought Whims would be the natural place to start, it works really well arco although there a couple of phrases that are driving me crazy.

anyhow good luck, transcribing PC and Ron Carter stuff had such a huge impact on my development as a player, definitely time well spent!

hey thanks for the advise!! yes, my teacher did suggest using headphones too - a little difficult to hear myself when really trying to hear the music, I used one ear off, seemed to work ok. That's interesting about using markers in Transcribe, maybe I'll try it for future - just having that ability to loop difficult phrases, to slow down a little, it helped tremendously, almost feels like cheating. But using headphones and learning to sing it before even picking up the bass seemed to help as well. On to Base On Balls, Hank Mobley - a slow blues - not nearly as hard to transcribe as Whims, maybe my teacher was trying to weed me out with throwing Whims at me right away! lol

 

[AllieM]