Hello,

I'm just seeing if anyone has any advice for transcribing chords/voicings. I find this so difficult but really want to know what these guys do that makes it sound so good.

For example I'm trying to transcribe the solo portion of this Chick Corea video playing How Deep is the Ocean.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tB7EEpB-uoE

I'm ok with getting the melodic lines but it's grasping what he's doing underneath or just knowing the voicings, for example at 0:28 to 0:30 or at 1:07, 1:28 to 1:37.

I have quite a few of the voicings down but not much. This helps as it's video and when the camera's on the piano I just make out what he's doing. I have it converted to audio and slowed down. I have Amazing Slow Downer which is good up to a point, but the chords are a bit too wavy/shaky to decipher what they are.

Transcribing voicings is such a personal thing, as it's hard to figure out exactly what the musician was thinking when they were playing it. I've seen so many interpretations on lead sheets of the same song, that really, it's best to figure out what voicings you like best and incorporate them into your playing.

What I do is use programs like Transcribe! and listen to it over and over again. Transcribe can actually give you an 'estimate' of what notes are being played, so that's a good start. The next step is to hear the top and bottom note of that voicing, since they are most obvious ones.

The tricky part is hearing the notes that are sandwitched in between.. Sing&Play all the notes you hear in the chord and play that against the recording. Verify that the notes are actually there. sometimes it's a lot of educated guesses, based on chord quality and familiarity(if you can hear what type of chord it is). And you can also get a lot of clues if the piano player is using inner voicings/counter melody like Brahms.


I guess the only thing I can tell you is to keep on doing it, and it will get easier and easier.. it's something you have to develop over time like chops.

Transcribing complex jazz piano voicings is a challenge and it is usually necessary to use Transcribe or Amazing Slow-Downer software which helps a great deal to get an accurate representation of the harmonic structure. You can also use QuickTime Pro or Audacity for transcribing purposes.

Right now, we are working on Chick Corea's comp Windows version on the Now He Sings Now he Sobs CD. I have the Sher chart in Bm which is what Chick is playing the tune in. The chart is close to what Chick's harmony is as far as the changes in the chord progression, but I am trying to get an idea of what his voicings are, especially the open spread 4th voicings he is using which have a very modern sound. I'm running 1x and 2x slow down speed in QT Pro and transcribing slowly bar by bar until I hear an accurate copy. Then I will edit the voicings the way I would play them and learn some of Chick's solo patterns, many are pentatonic.

It just takes the necessary time and patience to get an idea of how Chick is harmonizing Windows and then getting some ideas of hoe i will play it in the trio.

katt

One thing I do is isolate the 1 or 2 seconds of the chord, and set audacity or other software to play it in loop.

Then, here's the trick: I play a note along with the chord to see if that note is being played. For example, if I want to know whether there's an A in the chord, I listen to plonk, plonk, plonk, plonk, etc, and in time with that I play A, A, A, A. Or I might play A, listen, A, listen.

That helps my ear pick out the note in question.

There is another sound analysis software that could help you, it's not very simple but it's for free http://www.sonicvisualiser.org/

aL

Thanx for the link. I downloaded a copy and it works fine on the MacBook,

katt

I will have to look at the help file, but can you start to work out actual notes from these different graphs that appear on the screen? Looks complicated, but if it helps me transcribe, then I'm all for it!

Melodyne Editor would probably do the trick. This "Direct Note Access" they talk about analyzes the notes in a chord and lets you edit individual notes, so it's not really meant to be for transcription I think. It aint cheap, though.

Hi Al - It's Thanksgiving and I get to thank you for this little tip. I have a slowdown program that I use for transcribing melody lines. I was never happy with a certain chord being played on Monk's intro to Round Midnight. There was some note in there that made it sound different from what I was playing. So, I set the speed to 13% (sloooooow) and hunted for that sound. I got it! I couldn't hear it at 50%, but 13% worked like a gem.

Thank you -- great tip.

Barb