My first attempt at transcribing/tabbing a tricky solo - Thurston Moore - Cantaloupe

francer

The song is here, James Sedwards’ very cool solo starts around 2:20.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=74DArFxxlCw

I think I’m reasonably close with the notes, not sure if my tab is correct. Ironically it’s actually too fast for me to play at full tempo, there’s two descending runs I can’t get, it’ my picking that’s out, I can fret the notes ok-ish. In particular the second descending run, second row on my tab, it’s got a Stairway to Heaven style ‘rollback’ in it on the tenth fret, do you guys think he’s picking every note or are there some hammer-ons in there? If they are hammered they’re not really hammer one, just fretting the string hard enough to play the note, same on the penultimate run where he runs down to twelfth fret on the G string (I’m not sure he even plays this run at this position, he might be further up the neck on the fatter strings. 

I’d love some advice on how to approach it if someone has the time to take a look, cheers. 

fastonebaz

Is that the convention then to show the high end string as a lower case e?

francer

fastonebaz said:

Is that the convention then to show the high end string as a lower case e?

Edit: that’s what the songsterr app does.

stratman3142

If it helps at all, I had a quick go at transcribing a short section using Guitar Pro 7. See picture below.

I think there are a lot of hammer-ons and pull-offs. My transcription starts a bit earlier in the tune than yours. There's a sound clip exported from Guitar Pro after the transcription, so you can judge very roughly what it sounds like.

https://i.imgur.com/9sSub5j.png

Below is a sound export from Guitar Pro. It sounds very micky mouse because it's not real guitar, but audio generated by Guitar Pro. 

https://soundcloud.com/thefretboard/gp7-solo

francer

Blimey! That’s awesome, thank you!

stratman3142

I used Transcribe! (link below) to play back the track.

https://www.seventhstring.com/xscribe/overview.html

Guitar Pro is great for notation because you can play back the track to check what you've notated. However, it has the added burden of having to work out the phrasing/timing as well as the basic tab.

Although I could hear the notes at normal speed, I used Transcribe to play some sections at half speed to get the phrasing/timing.

francer

Cool, thanks, I’ll give that a look.

I couldn’t work it out at all at normal speed at all, I broke it into sections at half speed from YouTube into my Boss RC-3 looper and worked it out from there, although during this process I made the happy discovery that the RC-3 itself allows you to adjust tempo whilst maintaining pitch, so I didn’t actually need the YouTube slow down feature after all. Took me bloody ages, I’m impressed how quickly you were able to suss it out.

I’m still a bit unsure about which strings are plucked and which hammered on the second fast little run that descends starting on the fourth row of your transcription, I can only play that slowly with 16 notes or faster with quarter notes, using hammer ons to fill the gaps but each time I move down a string I need to hit the tenth fret hard to make a note without picking it, so not a true hammer on from a note on the same string, just hammering a note on a new string as I move across them.

I can’t tell from listening whether Sedwards is doing similar or picking those notes, any thoughts?

Ps. cheers for the time you’ve spent to help me out, much appreciated.

stratman3142

I think the hammers-ons and pull-offs are as indicated by the letters H and P in my transcription.