I'll never be able to find sheets for these songs so I'm going to -attempt- to figure them out by ear (they seem kinda complicated though). Any ideas of what the keys are for these songs? Any help? Tips? I really want to learn them.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zu1Gv063wQ0&feature=related

http://seanonolennon.com/menu.htm
(This may take a while to load.. it plays in the background).

Well, depending on your experience in transcribing, or even playing things generally by ear, I'd say that most of the song ( I only listened to the first) would be fairly straight forward unless you've never done it before. Lots of repetitions, and some whole tone scale stuff thrown in at the end of the first section.

If you like the tunes, I'd say just start trying to learn the thing phrase by phrase, and you'll soon discover the key and the repetitions.

Good luck with it!

When I try to reproduce a song by ear, what I do is just
dig in and play, purely by ear, not worrying if I'm
reproducing it exactly note for note, but, using
the rhythm as a guide, playing whatever comes
out. What you get this way is essentially
your own version of it, with the rhythm the same, but with
the notes maybe quite far off, but that doesn't concern me.
If you continue at it, you'd be able to eventually zero in
on the correct notes, but I don't even go that far. After
playing it a couple of times, I lose interest and move on
to something else.

That is completely stupid assertion. How can you say you are playing that piece if you are playing "whatever comes out" and your notes are "far off"? how can you even call it your own version?

If you are playing wrong harmony/melody to a "Fur Elise", you aren't playing "Fur Elise", you are just playing some random BS inspired by the song, which may or may not resemble the original music at all.

Let's face it, playing by ear your way has some merits, but it's completely useless when you want to learn a new song by ear.

Trifoce

when transcribing, go for the bottom note first, they usually tell you what the chord is. It may get tricky if he is using inversions of a chord, but even he is, chances are the low note is the 3rd or 5th of the chord.

If you want to know what key a song is in, listen to the first and last chord of the tune. Most songs usually end on the tonic or the I chord.

Good advice from etcetera.

No comment on Gyro's 'advice'

Had a quick listen to the first one, so to get you started, the first few notes are:

R/H, D
L/H, G B D G D B G

It may help, to use software to slow down the music, without changing the pitch.

Deleted

did you check the forum rules to see if you are allowed to do this? I know advertising is prohibited in this forum.

The second one certainly doesn't seem like it would be too hard. Some may consider it cheating, but I'd recommend that you slow it down with something like Audacity. For example, here it is slowed down by 50%:

http://www.box.net/shared/ctq1hxybnx

Other tips: Use an app (e.g. NoteworthyComposer) that will allow you to play the notes on your keyboard to enter them in.

Here's how I do it: Slowed down music in Audacity in one window, NWC in another. I play a section in Audacity until I know the notes, then switch to NWC and play them in. I don't worry about rhythm, I just play them in as, say, eighth notes, and adjust the rhythms.

Next (important), delete the section in Audacity that you've already transcribed. It can be very easy to lose your place.

+1



+1

Here's a good little program that will allow you to slow down music without changing pitch. It will also let you repeat/loop certain sections of a song.
It's called "Best Practice" ... I got mine at link below

http://www.softpedia.com/get/Multimedia/Audio/Other-AUDIO-Tools/BestPractice.shtml

Here's a partial screen shot



Just press the "now" button where you want to start the loop and the other "now" button to end the loop. Put a checkmark in the "loop" box.

You can adjust the time to zero in on the exact spot you want ... great little program.

that is a marvelous link dannac - very cool. (apple who is working on Keith Jarrett)

If you are remotely serious about transcribing, learning tunes by ear, playing along to records, whatever. Do yourself a favor, spend $50 on Transcribe.

You will slow down recording with minimum quality loss, isolate instruments via EQ, create loops, markers, beats, measures whatever.

http://www.seventhstring.com/xscribe/screenshots.html

I've used transcribe every single day since I bought it 3 or 4 years ago. It even slows down videos for those you downloaded from Youtube or any other site. It's serious software for musicians.

Audacity is nice for mixing, but it compares to something like Logic, not Transcribe.

http://www.seventhstring.com/

My mother even uses it to learn languages...

You're welcome apple.

That link knotty provided also looks like a fine program
with a lot of features ... I may try out the demo.

Wow, Knotty, that looks like a good app. From the screenshot, it looks like it will actually tell you what notes are played. Does that feature work well?

Hey, Knotty, I just downloaded Transcribe! and it's great. Thanks for the tip!

Hey Al,

Glad you like it. You'll be using it more than you can imagine. Sorry I had missed your previous. I found the actual note transcription thing to work ok. It will get you out of tough spots once in a while and highlight that color you missed. But I don't really that feature too much.

Did you know you could slow down youtube vids with it, too ?

Really neat, now you get slow down that video of Chick Corea taken from above. Really wild.

Enjoy!