Transcribing voicings?
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first i move the voicing around in 1/2 steps, just move it up chromatically an octave or so and then back down.
then i move it in whole steps. i change it up in the middle so i hit all the possible voicings.
then minor thirds with the same idea- i play the voicing in a "scale" made up of minor third intervals. as i do in whole steps and most of the other intervals, i change the interval just a little as i progress to make sure i hit all the possible starting notes for the voicings.
i'll do this for all the intervals up to a perfect 5th. once you can harmonize a melody, play a scale, and do arpeggios with the same voicing for each melody note, you've got that voicing down.
this exercise can be painful to the brain at first, but you progress super quick and it gets easier each time. after i started doing this exercise, i found that i was harmonizing melodies faster, doing block chord improvisations, and that sort of thing.
give it a shot, let me know how it goes.
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by Scot Ranney on 07/06/2013, 03:16
as far as transcribing voicings go, you just have to start simple. it's hard to pick out those extra notes.
sometimes i never quite figure out what someone is doing, but i can usually pick out the top and bottom note and what the bass is playing (or left hand if it's solo piano), then infer from the sound of the recording what chord they are playing. usually it falls into place after that.
it's like transcribing a melody- you get the melody note and bass first, then the rest falls into place.
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by Scot Ranney on 07/07/2013, 14:37
here's what i currently do. keyboard is plugged into pc's sound card, headphones connected to pc. then i open the media player. there are several you can use, one mentioned by michael above. with this set up, you can hear both the piano and the tune you're trying to transcribe, both, through the headphones. then like scot, i try to recognise the chord quality after having heard the bass note. it helps to 'loop' the music at the specific voicing you're trying to transcrip. so just start the loop maybe a second before and after the chord voicing; sometimes it helps to make the loop longer because hearing the voicing in context can help reveal the quality of the chord. if i'm having difficulty working out the chord voicing i experiment with various possible notes. so i might wonder 'was that an f#?', what i then do is, just as the chord voicing is coming up, i will play the f# several times to get the sound in my head, stop playing it as the chord voicing arrives, and listen for that sound within the chord voicing. i've personally found that this helps me 'eliminate' or confirm the presence of a note within the chord. i repeat this, trying to hear for other notes, and once i'm satisfied with the overall sound after having 'found' several notes, i then leave it at that and start practicing the voicing. as scot said, it can be an approximation because it can be hard to figure out some stuff, so no need to punish yourself if feel you can't quite get the chord. i have found that going back to the music several months later reveals that there were notes that i didn't hear, or i added notes that were actually not there. anyway this sort of works for me... good luck
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