How do you approach transcribing a complex piece for piano?
approach transcribing a complex piece for piano
Transcribing a song or piece of music is a great way to practice your piano playing. It requires you to listen to a recording and work out what notes are being played. If you’re an experienced pianist this might be easy but for beginners it can be a real challenge.
Some people can transcribe without having an instrument in hand and just use their ears. This is really impressive but can be difficult for beginners as they have to spend a lot of time listening and working out what they are hearing. A better way to do it is to play a piece of music, such as a melody or chords, on your keyboard and then try to write down what you hear. You can then check this against the recording and see if you have it right.
Obviously, you need to have some basic music theory knowledge to be able to do this. You need to understand what a major, minor, diminished, augmented, seventh, ninth etc chord is and what notes these contain. You also need to have a good sense of rhythm and be able to identify intervals and note lengths. You can practice this on simple songs or pieces from sheet music, such as Alfred’s Masterworks Classic level 1 method book pieces.
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How do you approach transcribing a complex piece for piano?
A good starting point is to look for a high-quality version of the song that you wish to transcribe, so that you can hear every note clearly. It’s best to do this in a quiet room and not to have any distractions. Make sure you have an instrument handy, such as a guitar or piano, so that you can play along and test your transcription against the recording.
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The next thing to do is to identify what parts of the song you are going to transcribe first. This will depend on the complexity of the piece but it’s usually a good idea to start with any single-note instruments (including the vocal) and then move onto the chords. It’s often easier to transcribe a chord that you are already familiar with than one that you aren’t, so get to know the different voicings of a particular chord and how they sound.
It’s also worth noting down any sharps and flats that are used, especially if the song is in a key with a large number of accidentals. You’ll need to keep checking your transcription against the recording to make sure that you have got all of the flats and sharps correct.
Finally, if you are struggling to figure out a super complex chord then a useful trick is to imagine the notes that it could be made up of. For example, if you are trying to work out whether a set of fast notes is eight eighths or six sixteenths then tap your fingers in time with the quarter-note pulse and sing along “duh-duh” until you have figured out which ones are a pair of eighths and which are triplets.