Transcribe! Perhaps the best software to transcribe songs
- Postado por Ricardo Frade
- Categorias Sem categoria
Last Updated on 24 Agosto, 2014 by
If you are a musician, guitarist, pianist, bassist or whatever, and you do not transcribe songs by ear, then you are committing a big mistake. Having the ability to transcribe songs is perhaps one of the most important skills that you can have as a musician. If you search for any great musician, all of them transcribe songs by ear. Jimi Hendrix had not a traditional training in music, he could not read music, there were no easy ways like are today, and do you know how he learned to play? Listening!
With so many facilities today likethe internet, it should be expected that also appear more legends in music, however the new students are forgetting one very important thing: The music is sound! Your ears are simply the most important judge. If you really want to take the next step, then you will have to develop a good ear, without it you will NEVER be a good musician, sorry the sincerity.
But there is good news, the ear can be developed, and when it comes to transcription of music there are great tools to help us, but today we are going to talk about what, to me, is simply the best software which i had invested. Transcribe! Is a software that as the name suggests, helps us to transcribe music. Transcribe! is a software that help us to transcribe songs. How?
Transcribe! gives us a series of tools to facilitate transcription. Let’s see the main features:
Changing the speed
Transcribe! Lets us change the speed of the song without changing it’s key. This is awesome. With Transcribe! you can change the speed of a song down to 1 %, but usually 50% is enough to transcribe even more advanced solos.
Change the Key
Another very useful feature is the capability of change the key of the song. You can raise or decrease the key of the song by half tones. This is very useful. For example, currently I am transcribing the music Anastasia of Slash. Slash tunes his guitar an half step down in this music. So i don’t have to always be tuning my guitar, I simply open the music in Transcribe! and increase the song by a semitone and I practice with my guitar in standard tuning. When I want to play it live I change the tune of my guitar but I play the song in the same way.

EQ
Another very good feature is that we can apply filters in the frequencies of the song. In other words, imagine you want to transcribe the guitar of a song, you can attenuate the bass frequencies so the sound of the guitar is more noticeable.
Selection and keyboard
With the selection tool, you can choose a passage of the song and loop this passage. You can also use markers to easily mark where are the parts of the song or make notes, for example, identify where is the solo of the song.
The keyboard you see in the picture is a synthesizer. If you do not have an instrument you can use it to find the notes of music with accuracy.
The transcribe! also lets you record with your microphone, in addition to several other features that we do not show here.
Practice with Transcribe
Transcribe! Can be used for other things than transcribe songs like to practice. As a guitarist I love to learn difficult solos and who play hard solos knows that we have to play very slowly in the beginning, and increase the speed gradually. Using the transcribe! I can play along with the song at slower tempos and go up to the extent that I reach the original speed of the song.
Evaluation Version
If you want to make a complete test of the software you can download free trial version and use it for 30 days. You can download it here:
Windows version;
Mac Version;
Linux Version;
The price of Transcribe is 39$ which is very good if you take the music seriously. After all how cost your passion and desire to be a good musician? Here’s the official site.
Tag:chords, guitar, keyboard, piano, songs by ear, transcribe, transcribe songs, tutorial
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Professor de guitarra e criador da Academiamusical.com.pt, Ricardo Frade é um apaixonado pela música e pretende incentivar o estudo da música em Portugal e Países Lusófonos.
O seu instrumento primário é a guitarra. O instrumento secundário é o piano. É aficionado por bandas sonoras instrumentais, área onde ambiciona atuar. Trabalha com ensino musical, produção musical e deseja conseguir contribuir para a dinamização do ensino da música em Portugal.