I try to do some most days, some days I may only do a couple of bars
if I've got other things to practice, others I may do a couple of
hours if I have the time and get well stuck in.
I work out solo lines to tunes bar by bar, say two or three notes at a
time with my guitar in hand, and notate them (with Noteworthy
Composer) as I go. Every now and then you may come across a scale run
or arpeggio and you can be sure of maybe seven or eight notes in a
row. Then every four or eight bars or so I practice the lines until I
get them up to speed with the recording.
I generally do a whole chorus of each song, before moving on to
another tune, maybe coming back to do another chorus in a couple of
weeks. I will probably play each chorus a few times a day for a couple
of weeks after transcribing to get it well ingrained. I usually play
several of these as a warm up.
I transcribe from a tape recorder or CD -ROM with the Presto program
which can loop sections.
The important points to me are:
Write it down. It's easy to do on a notation program. You can print it
out as a great professional looking piece of music that you've
actually produced yourself and this will give you the impetus to start
another. A scrappy piece of staff paper with countless crossings-out
just won't do justice to the effort you've put in.
You can print it out and highlight interesting note choices and
motifs. You can compare note choices etc at the same point across
choruses. You can share it with your musical friends.
I've found it disheartening in the past to work something out one
month and then go back six months later and find you've half forgetten
it. If it's written down you can always refresh your memory.
It'll improve your reading ability, for rhythms as well as notes.
You'll slowly build up a permanent library of transcriptions that'll
make you feel good about the whole thing.
I transcribe at my instrument. I found it easier at first to do it
this way and I think that at the start it can be such a slow process
that you need to get a few under your belt as quickly as possible to
give you confidence and momentum. I don't think there is any problem
with hunting for notes on your instrument, rather than trying to do it
all by ear alone. You soon get past this stage and you soon get to
'hear' where to put your fingers. Plus, you can learn to play the
piece as you go through it. I've also found that you can't help but
learn how to sing it. The piece I'm working on is always playing over
and over right in the front of my mind all day. It even keeps me awake
at night sometimes.
I don't think you need to slow anything down. For me the point of the
excercise is not to produce a 100% accurate definitive transcription
that you could give to another player to recreate the exact substance
of the original recording. It is not a competition to see who can hear
the most accuracy and detail in a recording. Nor is it to produce a
bag of picture-perfect licks of the masters to drop into your own
solos. The purpose is just to identify what sort of note choices,
rhythmic choices,etc the artist is making over a known set of changes.
The sort of thing I get from it is: ' Oh, I see that X uses either a
flat 5 or sharp 5 over a dom7 but not both in the same phrase' I can
then easily try this (imaginary) principle in my playing.
To do this you don't need to identify every little ghost note and
subtle trill on the recording. If you find a particular group of notes
is too fast to get down, just approximate to it as best you can or
simplify it for now and press on. You can always come back to it in a
few months when your ear is better. Any idea that you want to end up
using in your own playing is going to be modified to a greater or
lesser extent anyway, so 100% accuracy is superfluous. In fact I would
go so far as to say that it doesn't really matter if you transcribe
something completely inaccurately and then go and use that 'wrong'
idea to create an interesting lick of your own. Nobody is giving
points here for slavish imitation, its just a tool for expanding your
own mind set.
I don't generally practice specific licks from my transcriptions as a
preparation for my own solos. It's no good having a particular ii-V
run lined up in your mind for an approaching chord change. This is
probably going to ruin any flow that your solo may have had, and it
rarely fits in seamlessly with whatever else you've been playing.
Occasionally I might use a pre-prepared idea at the beginning of a
chorus say to get off with a strong idea.
I know different people have strong views about what you should and
shouldn't do when transcribing. I don't see it as primarily an
ear-training method, although this is a useful by-product. I see it
just as a foolproof way of distilling out interesting ideas that have
a practical application without having to wade through the
overwhelming mass of possibilities presented in theory books today.
You don't need to spend anything on sophisticated gadgets, you can
start with just a little casette recorder and some shareware. Try
different methods yourself and see what is most effective for you.
Jonathan