I've been having a real go at practicing my transcribing skills this weekend.
My goal is to really feel chord changes so that eventually I can just hear a song and play it instantly.
When I've done this in the past I've used a notebook by my side to write down the bits that I've got - especially if I'm having trouble with a specific bit.
But this weekend I have been working on feeling the changes 100% - so no writing down. First thing that surprised me was that after doing a few songs I had forgotten the first one I had done when I went back to it.
This made me think that maybe that's a good thing, because my goal is to hear something and then play it - not to hear something and write it down and learn it. So each time I go back to a previous song I am having to search my 'inner ear' to listen for the changes and I am hoping that this is much more helpful than just going back and looking at my previous chord chart while I play along with the music.
What do you guys do? Use a pen and paper when transcribing or just 'feel it' every time?
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Writing stuff down is better for remembering it, as you've found.
Being able to hear your way around music is also useful.
One useful benefit of software like MuseScore is that you can play back the music to make sure that you’ve got the phrasing right. A lot of people stumble over incidentals and triplets, and other phases where there are more notes than fit into a 4:4 interpretation of the bar. Playback helps you sort this out.
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* melody and rhythm
Supportact said: [my style is] probably more an accumulation of limitations and bad habits than a 'style'.
Some songs are more of a challenge. I've just done Walk out to winter by Aztec Camera ... that's the kind of song where the chord changes on every bar and the quality of the chords vary through basic, maj7, dom7, slash chords etc so it took me a while to get it properly.
One trick I leant a long time ago is to recognise a cadence because songwriters will use the perfect and plagal constantly, whether they know it or not. Take Wizard's " I wish it could be Christmas every day" ... as I expect a few of us were brushing up on that in December. It's a constant barrage of perfect cadences ... 5's to 1's. You get to recognise these instantly.
You might also notice the same tricks come around again. At the moment the 1, maj3 (borrowed) 4 then minor 4 is very popular in pop music and this is something we have seen before from the Hollies to Radiohead etc.
For shorthand I just use numbers and as everything is taken as major (for minor just use the relative maj key numbers ) there's no issues in general.
For really riffy songs though that use a lot of open string, all bets are off and it can take quite a bit of work to move a key
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Writing it down and then remembering what you wrote doesn’t mean that you didn’t hear it first.
also rather than putting down the pen try putting down the guitar and see if you can listen to a tune and transcribe it - then you can play back what you have written down and see if it works. Obvs the starting note doesn't matter - more of a relative harmonic experiment. I am horrible at this - like really utterly useless, but apparently it gets easier with practise and has actually helped my ear skills.
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That's exactly what I'm going for - being able to play the chords for (fairly simple) pop and rock songs without any help.
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https://www.instagram.com/insta.guitarstuff/
Currently for sale:
24.75 scale Kotzen style telecaster
Grover Jackson superstrat
12 string acoustic
OTO Bim delay pedal
Eqd Speaker Cranker clone
Monte Allums TR-2 Plus mod kit
Trading feedback: http://www.thefretboard.co.uk/discussion/60602/
https://www.instagram.com/insta.guitarstuff/
Currently for sale:
24.75 scale Kotzen style telecaster
Grover Jackson superstrat
12 string acoustic
OTO Bim delay pedal
If you can play barre chords then you have all that you need to give it a go. I used to do it with slow down software, but at the moment I am trying to do it at full speed - way harder!
There must be a youtube on how to do it. If there isn't I'll do one and show you my very basic technique.
Actually, I just looked it up and this one isn't bad
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bCtY6Nv7E0g
The Rick Beato video is terrible
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Currently for sale:
24.75 scale Kotzen style telecaster
Grover Jackson superstrat
12 string acoustic
OTO Bim delay pedal