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Stews Learning Transcription Thread


stewblack
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13 hours ago, FDC484950 said:

... I’ve never (intentionally) seen a quarter note rest across the beat - apart from when the chart was just badly written all over.

Me neither. It would be two rests and that's it. But notes over the bar lines, many.

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Hello folks, I am undertaking another transcription. I had imagined it might be a nice simple one.

Oh, how swiftly hubris is punished. Well, by bar 20, that's how soon.

It Must Be Love, the Madness version. I have happily picked my way through the minefield of the timing, only to find bar 20 is shorter than all the others. I mean by that, it is 1.623 seconds long while every other bar lasts 1.709 seconds (timings are approximate but as close as I could get them) This is roughly equivalent to one and a half demisemiquavers.

I assume this means the tempo is different for this bar from the rest of the song. I can work out the tempo for that bar, but how do I show this in the score please?

Here is the bar as I worked it out it. But there is simply too much room at the end !

image.png.7c159ed3723525e81a1bde4c6fa0706a.png

 

 

 

 

Edited by stewblack
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In fact it may be worse than that! I wonder if the bar doesn't slow throughout its length

Wait a cotton picking minute. Is it triplets???? No no no not the right amount of notes, sorry.

Edited by stewblack
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1 hour ago, itu said:

I know that shorter notes and rests exist, but they are not used here, no. If you find something shorter than a 16th, you know something is wrong, or then it is a jazz solo...

Ha ha! I like it. Thank you so much for your input. I solved the problem with your advice. A triplet and two crotchet did the job. 

This is what I love about learning. I knew what a triplet was, but didn't understand its power. Thanks to your input I have a deeper understanding. 

The transcription is finished. First draft. Now I will leave it to settle then play through and correct any glaring errors. Then I will attempt to tidy it up in accordance with the constructive criticism received here. Then and only then will I share it. Hopefully there will be some improvement from my previous effort. 

Thanks again. 

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1 hour ago, Kirky said:

Hi Stew,  Gardner Read's book Musical Notation is excellent for learning this.  https://www.amazon.co.uk/Music-Notation-Crescendo-Book-Gardner/dp/0800854535

Happy to lend you mine if you can't get hold of it.

Thank you so much, I have ordered it. Not sure of delivery times right now but I look forward to it. Today's transcription is nearly done. I have to learn how to direct people back to certain bit's that are repeated. That's a bit bloomin' complicated all that dc al coda mularky, so for now I'll put up in long hand as it were!

Oh and I have not put the chords on as suggested; reverse engineering chords from bass notes is a big step for me and I'm trying to take one step at a time.

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1 hour ago, stewblack said:

Nice to see you taking the plunge and sharing your work!

There are (very small) layout things in here that I would change, but I'm hesitant to force my personal chart preferences on others...

The main thing that I always try to do to make life easier for the reader is to try to keep 4 (or 8 bars) to a line; sometimes, this isn't always possible as some bands write sections that are 17 bars long, but I try to get in that ballpark as 90% of songs divide neatly into 2/4/8 bar chunks and laying things out in this way makes it much easier to read at a glance. I also like to see a double bar line to signal that there's a change in a section coming up (e.g. between verse and chorus).

I've been toying with the idea of doing a series of videos/articles on how to notate, but I didn't know if there would be much interest in such a thing.

Anyway, sorry for the nitpicking and look forward to the next one(s)!

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3 hours ago, TKenrick said:

Nice to see you taking the plunge and sharing your work!

There are (very small) layout things in here that I would change, but I'm hesitant to force my personal chart preferences on others...

The main thing that I always try to do to make life easier for the reader is to try to keep 4 (or 8 bars) to a line; sometimes, this isn't always possible as some bands write sections that are 17 bars long, but I try to get in that ballpark as 90% of songs divide neatly into 2/4/8 bar chunks and laying things out in this way makes it much easier to read at a glance. I also like to see a double bar line to signal that there's a change in a section coming up (e.g. between verse and chorus).

I've been toying with the idea of doing a series of videos/articles on how to notate, but I didn't know if there would be much interest in such a thing.

Anyway, sorry for the nitpicking and look forward to the next one(s)!

I genuflect before the master.

I am only learning by people sharing their knowledge. I have failed to tell Musescore how I want it all laid out, but I am making that my next priority.

Thank you.

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This is my take of the same score. No, I did not listen to the track. It could have changed the layout somewhat (with those double bar lines etc.). This was just a 10 minute re-mapping of few notes and so on. Good base, have to say.

As the honorable sir @TKenrick said, the 2/4/8 works usually very well. Here the start is looking a bit funny with long pauses, and some harder rhythmic figures, but then I changed the layout mostly to 8 bars. The line is not too hard to read, so 8 is still legible. Probably some changes would appear if I listened the song.

Bars 43 and 44 were a bit odd to read, so I changed the first 16th and pause to a staccato 8th. Maybe not exact, but easier to perceive. In 44 the rests and notes were different, I divided all rests and notes to a steady 8th pulse.

From 73 there were two quarter rests that I changed to a half. The half takes half of the bar, so again a bit easier to perceive.

All in all, the basic work was very good. These tweaks were tiny after all.

The "chorus" texts started to wander around: choose the first note of the chorus, go to the TEXT and there is that boxed B1 or Swing. You'll get the part text that you can change by clicking that B1 or Swing, whichever you choose to use. These texts then move with the bars and layout.

Last but not least is the lowest left box of the software. It includes those bar and page changes, that help you to make the layout neat and according to your preference. Sometimes 2/4/8/16 bars is fine, but there are so many places where 3/9/something is the only reasonable choice. As there were so many bars, I divided them almost evenly to two pages for legibility. Again: the content here is approximately the same, but layout may help you a bit to read it on a gig, if the "chorus' first bar is always in the same column" on the paper.

It_Must_Be_Love.mscz It_Must_Be_Love.pdf

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31 minutes ago, itu said:

This is my take of the same score. No, I did not listen to the track. It could have changed the layout somewhat (with those double bar lines etc.). This was just a 10 minute re-mapping of few notes and so on. Good base, have to say.

As the honorable sir @TKenrick said, the 2/4/8 works usually very well. Here the start is looking a bit funny with long pauses, and some harder rhythmic figures, but then I changed the layout mostly to 8 bars. The line is not too hard to read, so 8 is still legible. Probably some changes would appear if I listened the song.

Bars 43 and 44 were a bit odd to read, so I changed the first 16th and pause to a staccato 8th. Maybe not exact, but easier to perceive. In 44 the rests and notes were different, I divided all rests and notes to a steady 8th pulse.

From 73 there were two quarter rests that I changed to a half. The half takes half of the bar, so again a bit easier to perceive.

All in all, the basic work was very good. These tweaks were tiny after all.

The "chorus" texts started to wander around: choose the first note of the chorus, go to the TEXT and there is that boxed B1 or Swing. You'll get the part text that you can change by clicking that B1 or Swing, whichever you choose to use. These texts then move with the bars and layout.

Last but not least is the lowest left box of the software. It includes those bar and page changes, that help you to make the layout neat and according to your preference. Sometimes 2/4/8/16 bars is fine, but there are so many places where 3/9/something is the only reasonable choice. As there were so many bars, I divided them almost evenly to two pages for legibility. Again: the content here is approximately the same, but layout may help you a bit to read it on a gig, if the "chorus' first bar is always in the same column" on the paper.

It_Must_Be_Love.mscz 21.34 kB · 0 downloads It_Must_Be_Love.pdf 50.71 kB · 1 download

Just about to go to sleep now but I shall read and properly digest tomorrow. 

Can I just thank you once again for taking the time to help me with this. 

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15 hours ago, itu said:

This is my take of the same score. No, I did not listen to the track. It could have changed the layout somewhat (with those double bar lines etc.). This was just a 10 minute re-mapping of few notes and so on. Good base, have to say.

As the honorable sir @TKenrick said, the 2/4/8 works usually very well. Here the start is looking a bit funny with long pauses, and some harder rhythmic figures, but then I changed the layout mostly to 8 bars. The line is not too hard to read, so 8 is still legible. Probably some changes would appear if I listened the song.

Bars 43 and 44 were a bit odd to read, so I changed the first 16th and pause to a staccato 8th. Maybe not exact, but easier to perceive. In 44 the rests and notes were different, I divided all rests and notes to a steady 8th pulse.

From 73 there were two quarter rests that I changed to a half. The half takes half of the bar, so again a bit easier to perceive.

All in all, the basic work was very good. These tweaks were tiny after all.

The "chorus" texts started to wander around: choose the first note of the chorus, go to the TEXT and there is that boxed B1 or Swing. You'll get the part text that you can change by clicking that B1 or Swing, whichever you choose to use. These texts then move with the bars and layout.

Last but not least is the lowest left box of the software. It includes those bar and page changes, that help you to make the layout neat and according to your preference. Sometimes 2/4/8/16 bars is fine, but there are so many places where 3/9/something is the only reasonable choice. As there were so many bars, I divided them almost evenly to two pages for legibility. Again: the content here is approximately the same, but layout may help you a bit to read it on a gig, if the "chorus' first bar is always in the same column" on the paper.

It_Must_Be_Love.mscz 21.34 kB · 2 downloads It_Must_Be_Love.pdf 50.71 kB · 3 downloads

Its common practice to group long numbers of rest bars together as a single bar with a number above the stave and a horizontal line in the middle of the stave - easier than counting through each of the bars.


Hmm 8 bars is OK per line but when the verse gets a touch busier it looks to me like it’s too many bars on one line. It is a balance of legibility vs an overly-long chart. For me the key is where possible to start sections at the beginning of a stave - repeats, signs etc are much easier to spot when all on the left hand side rather than buried in the middle, particularly  if you add chord symbols etc

The first beat on bars 9 and 17 seems to have a stem but no note (maybe you’ve set the note head to invisible?)

What’s going on in bars 43/45 (and elsewhere)? No-one would beam an eighth note to a dotted eighth note as it just makes it unnecessarily harder to read. I haven’t listened closely to the song but does the note really sound on the first sixteenth note of beat 2 only? 

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1 minute ago, FDC484950 said:

Hmm 8 bars is OK per line but when the verse gets a touch busier it looks to me like it’s too many bars on one line

This was my thought as well but I lacked the confidence to say it!

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5 minutes ago, FDC484950 said:

What’s going on in bars 43/45 (and elsewhere)? No-one would beam an eighth note to a dotted eighth note as it just makes it unnecessarily harder to read. I haven’t listened closely to the song but does the note really sound on the first sixteenth note of beat 2 only? 

This was what I came up with (best guess) image.png.9138666e4c69654406140eebccf2561a.png

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Nearly - I’d put the sixteenth note rest first and then the eighth note rest, that way you clearly define the middle of the beat and you pair the sixteenth note with the corresponding rest. It still seems very specific but having not listened to the track, you may well be spot on:)

Edited by FDC484950
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