Piano Transcription Work Easy
The main thing is to work as slowly and carefully as possible – this helps you concentrate more and get more accurate results. It also means you can rework sections more easily. Another very important tip is to use good quality recordings. A clear recording is much easier to transcribe than one that sounds muffled and difficult to understand. If you can’t find or buy a good copy of the original recording, try using a piece of software such as Amazing Music Slowdowner (for Windows) or Soundlice (for Mac) to slow down and loop the track as you notate – this allows you to hear and see exactly what is going on and will greatly speed up your transcription time.
The first thing to do is listen carefully and think about what is happening in the music. This can take a long time, but it will make your transcriptions much more accurate. Try to form a picture in your mind of what is being played – ie a melody, a chord progression or just the rhythm of the music. If you can do this, then you should be able to write down the notes without too much difficulty – and more accurately than you might expect!
Another useful tip is to use a keyboard shortcut to quickly close all open transcriptions – this saves a lot of rewinding and makes it easier to focus on the one you are working on. You can create keyboard shortcuts for this and a number of other commands by looking at Help – Keyboard Shortcuts on the Application or File menu.
How to Make Piano Transcription Work Easy
A keyboard shortcut can also be used to move the current playback point to the selected marker – this can be very helpful when transcribing. In fact there are several other commands that can be used to jump directly to various different markers in the same way – see Help – Various Topics – The Transcription Window.
It’s also a good idea to put all the xsc files for your ‘playlist’ tracks into a single folder – this will make it very easy to move them between computers, or even between the different versions of Transcribe! that you have installed.
It’s also worth considering using an external software application such as PianoConvert to automatically convert a musical piece into standard notation – although this isn’t as accurate for piano as a human transcriber, it will significantly reduce the amount of transcription work you need to do. If you do this, be careful to check the output – it is not guaranteed to match the original music precisely and can often be quite inaccurate. Another alternative is ScoreCloud which is specifically designed to handle multi-instrumental pieces – though it’s less accurate for piano than PianoConvert. Both of these applications are free to download and use for private purposes.
