Your first transcription?

[kiat]

Have learnt some great tunes (mainly soul/pop, early funk) from transcription, tab and by ear - but sometimes I can't find anything online so learn by ear. Am tempted to do a transcription, though I have zero formal music theory and only know what I see in transcriptions and the play along type books I have. So as I convince myself to do one ("Say a Little Prayer" likely the first), I'm wondering what other players have done.

If you've written a transcription, what was your first one?

(sneaky thought: might help extra transcriptions surface! ;-)

[Doddy]

I can't remember what my first transcription was,but start off with something simple(especially as you've got no training). Try to find a simple melody to write out and then work out the chords. Then,as you get better,look for more difficult tunes or solos.

[Bloodaxe]

[quote name='kiat' post='1144679' date='Feb 28 2011, 05:28 PM']Have learnt some great tunes (mainly soul/pop, early funk) from transcription, tab and by ear - but sometimes I can't find anything online so learn by ear. Am tempted to do a transcription, though I have zero formal music theory and only know what I see in transcriptions and the play along type books I have. So as I convince myself to do one ("Say a Little Prayer" likely the first), I'm wondering what other players have done.

If you've written a transcription, what was your first one?

(sneaky thought: might help extra transcriptions surface! ;-)[/quote]
Go for it, you'll learn a lot from having a crack & that's no bad thing.

I've fumbled my way along with regards to 'transcriptions', started with tab & have progressed a bit towards just using notation. Tux Guitar is a good (and free) way to get to grips with it all.

The first hurdle you'll hit is note duration. Text-based tabs don't really bother with this, so you're left groping for the phrasing in each bar. Trial & error worked for me, & it's still a work in progress. Tux won't let you write an 'illegal' bar - it automatically decides how long the last note is, & if you find it completing a bar with a dotted 64th the odds are you've got something wrong earlier. It (and the commercial Guitar Pro) allow for MIDI playback of the score, which helps a lot in figuring out those fiddly tails & that.

Next up will be Time Signature. Sometimes it's obvious (like 4/4 vs 3/4 or 5/4), other times it's not at all obvious (e.g. the apparent interchangeability between 6/8 & Triplet-feel or 'swung' 4/4). Key signature follows on, but omitting it for simple arrangements probably won't bring about the apocalypse.

I've yet to finish the first bassline I set out to transcribe... thought I'd go for something dead easy that everybody knew, so I picked Willie Dixon's line in Johnny B. Goode. Bad move. The 'proper' line to this badly overplayed classic is absolutely mental - WD scarcely plays the same thing [i][b]once[/b][/i], let alone twice I keep coming back to it, & one fine day I'll post the results.

I've posted a few in this thread: [url="http://basschat.co.uk/index.php?showtopic=97180"]http://basschat.co.uk/index.php?showtopic=97180[/url]

& there's a recent one here: [url="http://basschat.co.uk/index.php?showtopic=122564"]http://basschat.co.uk/index.php?showtopic=122564[/url]

Make of them what you will. I've also [url="http://www.talkbass.com/forum/f66/old-school-rock-n-roll-r-b-tabs-680702/"]cross-posted them on TalkBass[/url] in their 'Tablature' sub-forum, and on Finnbass - some of the responses have been very helpful in sorting out quirks in the notation.

Pete.

[Bilbo]

Thsi was my first although this is NOT the transcription I did at the time but an up-to-date corrected version. I chose it because it was within the range of the bass and didnt' have anything too fast or difficult to execute on the bass.

[url="http://basschat.co.uk/index.php?showtopic=48470&hl=song+for+strayhorn"]Song For Strayhorn[/url]

[Eight]

Think my first ever was Asylum Choir by Motorhead (on guitar as a kid). Can't remember what my first bass one was... I do a lot. Just for the training.