If you’re looking for some new music I absolutely can’t go past recommending this website.

 

www.jango.com offers a range of services but by far the best one is their radio stations.

 

If you like a particular artist, it will put together a special playlist for you with that artist as well as similar music from that genre.

 

This is a great way to find new music.

 

Go there and give it a go.  I guarantee you’ll love it!

FoxTab MP3 Converter is a free downloadable program.  It converts all popular audio formats including (converted from MP3): *.mp2, *.mp3, *.aac, *.au, *.ogg, *.ape, *.flac, *.aiff, *.m4a, *.mpc, *.ac3, *.wav, *.wma1, *.wma2

 

Free YouTube Download allows you to download YouTube videos, single videos as well as whole collections.  I’ll definitely be using this one!

 

Adobe Audition and Audio Performance is a try before you buy audio program, which allows you to do post-production work on tunes you record or lets you restore sound quality to music and video.  Very handy for those old files you have converted, such as my 20+ year old demo tapes!

 

Virtual DJ is a music mixing application for Mac Computers.  It allows you to use your laptop as like a traditional vinyl mixing deck and the Home edition is completely free to use for no commercial usage.  So good for practice!

 

TunePrompter makes creating your own Karaoke videos easy.

It’s absolutely free and you can create your videos, export them to iPod, iPhone, QuickTime or AppleTV format (which TunePrompter automatically does for you) and then burn the results to disc.

You need Karaoke tracks of your favorite songs to load into TunePrompter. But you can easily access these at http://www.karaoke-version.com/

 

Corripio is helps you to manage your music library as well as find new artwork and lyrics to all your songs. You can customise Corripio to make it work for you.

 

If you haven’t been able to find the right music recording and production program yet, try MixPad.  It let’s you mix multiple audio tracks together quickly and easily.

 

It’s always important to work on your aural skills as a musician.  Here is a site with loads of programs and games to help you sharpen your hearing.

 

http://trainer.thetamusic.com/en/content/music-training-games

 

Yay!  Finally an app to help you improve your music reading.

 

http://itunes.apple.com/app/piano-music-reading/id317546952?mt=8

 

And this one’s for the more advanced reader of music.

 

http://itunes.apple.com/app/read-piano-music-pro/id339129594?mt=8

 

Good luck!

I have been thinking about writing an article on transcribing for quite some time now but whenever I have come to do it, it has proven almost as hard as transcribing itself!!

 

Transcribing is the act of writing down music that you hear.

 

Many musicians use this technique in order to learn songs, improve their ears and theoretical knowledge, find out how other musicians interpret music and a lot more.

 

Learning to transcribe and the act of transcribing can take a lot of time and patience but is worth every ounce of this for what it can deliver to your musicianship.

Finally, I am biting-the-bullet, so to speak – which is also the same way I feel when I set out on a transcription project – but it was an incident which brought me to this point.

 

Myself and another band member had to transcribe a song for the Band to perform, however, when we got together for rehearsal the results we came up with were completely different.

 

How could this be?  We both had ears, surely there was only one definitive answer to what was going on in this song.

 

I was perplexed until I got together with this person and realised we had heard the same thing but our approaches to transcribing were different.

 

He was right and I was right, we just had to put our work together to get a good chart.

 

Let me explain….

 

When I learned to transcribe the first thing I was taught to listen to was the bass line.

 

This is the most important part of working out what the harmony is doing because it provides you with the root note on which the rest of the chord is built.

 

In this blog, I have written about basic harmony, however, this is only the beginning of where chords can go and there are a myriad of different sounds and flavours you can add to them.

 

Also, as spoken about in this article, there are also some very common and repetitive harmonic progressions, so hearing the bass line also provides you with a clue to what the chords are going to be.

 

I am good at hearing bass lines, so my basic chords were correct.

 

The guitarist, who also transcribed, only transcribed his part, which was obviously based on the chords, but which didn’t necessarily give the correct root notes and chord names, therefore chordal notation for the other instruments (bass and piano) was incorrect.

 

What his transcription did provide me with, however, was the missing “flavours” of the chords, e.g. flat 9’s, sharp 11’s etc.

 

When we got together, I was able to improve upon the basic harmony of my chart by figuring his chords into mine.

 

When I explained to him what I had done and what he had done, he realised that it was important to notate chords based on the root notes and would do so from now on.

 

But because he had trained his ears, always to pick up on the “added” notes, he was quite easily able to get them, whereas I had more difficulty.

 

It was therefore a pleasure to work together to get the right answers.

 

So, the moral to this story is…. Well, there is a few morals:

 

• When transcribing, first listen to the bass line to gain the big picture of the harmonic structure of a song.

 

• When you have discrepancies with other musicians (such as the one described above), don’t jump to conclusions about the other’s musical ability.  Instead, find out their approach to transcribing and work it out together.

 

• Recognise your strengths and weaknesses and be open to sharing them.

 

• The more transcribing you do, the better you will get at it.

 

There are several ways you can go about transcribing music (as illustrated above).

 

Here are a few tips:

 

If you are a beginner at transcribing

 

Start by doing some ear training.  This means learning to hear a pitch and sing it or play it on your instrument.

 

There are a few programs out there to help you do this that you can research.  Meanwhile here are a couple to get you started.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Auralia

 

If your ears are happening

 

The next step is learning how to transcribe.

 

As I said, I always start out by working out:

 

1. The form of the song
2. The harmonic progressions (bass line!)
3. Then focus on the different instruments.

 

Start by choosing relatively easy songs.  You will get to know what these are as you experiment.

 

This website also has some good suggestions.

 

If you want more detailed transcriptions, i.e. written on the stave, you will need to learn how to notate music, and especially rhythm dictation.

 

This should really start with learning to read music, just the same way we learn to read and write our language.

 

Again, you will have to be patient with this process but the key is just to enjoy it.

 

Please refer to this article if you are a beginner and learning read music.

 

If you don’t want to learn to read and write music, you could always choose from a number of notation programs where you can play the music into the computer and it will notate it for you.

 

However, sometimes this notation isn’t as clear and simple as it could be so I would recommend you take it to someone who knows music and who can help you to edit it.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Get quick and easy access to the best and most necessary software and online programs needed for the study, teaching and preparation of music.

 

Many of the programs are free or of minimum cost.

 

Each month, I will be trawling the internet to provide you with ten more!

 

Sign up to my Newsletter above to receive these directly to your email.

 

Audio recording

 

Ableton Live, has been highly recommended.  You can use it for live recording at home or onstage and it’s easy to use.  Please read this article for a more detailed explanation and links.

 

For a free recording package, you can’t go past Audacity.  It’s easy to use and good for editing wave files.   You probably wouldn’t use it for a professional finish but it’s great for getting ideas down.

 

Aural Training

 

This is a fantastic package for teachers and students.  It covers all aspects of ear training and is very easy to use.  You can download a free version of this which is limited in the number of questions and levels available, or you can pay for a version which will cater to all levels and which you can update.  It is very well presented and easy to use and both downloads are available here.

 

Here is a demonstration video.

Karajan is a free iphone/ipad application.  It’s easy to use and provides lessons in recognising intervals, chords, scales and much more.  This is great for the beginner musician however, is limited to one level.  If you would like to unlock all levels it will cost $15.99.  You can download it here:

 

http://www.karajan-eartrainer.com/en/iPhone-and-iPod-touch.html

 

Backing Tracks

 

This is a great site, especially for singers.  It has a wide range of styles and the tracks are pretty good quality.  They cost around US$2 and you can transpose them up or down by two semitones.

 

http://www.karaoke-version.com

 

Career Advice

 

This site has great articles, which cover every aspect of opportunities for musicians.  It’s written for musicians, by musicians who have first-hand experience.  They really know what they are talking about and if you want to ask any questions or make any points they have a forum.  Go to http://www.musicianwages.com

 

 

Composition

 

Band iphone app allows you to compose and mix music from virtual instruments.  It costs $3.99.  Great if you have some ideas you need to get down quickly.

 

Beat Maker iphone app is a high-end compositional device calling itself the “mobile music creation studio”.  You can even pick up audio samples and use them in your composition.  It costs $19.99.

 

Chord Finder – Guitar

 

Most chord charts only give you one option for playing a particular chord and I have met many guitarists who thought there was only one way of playing a chord and didn’t realise inversions existed!  So here is a complete guitar chord finder document.  It is in PDF format so you can print it out and it’s free.

 

http://guitarwebapp.com/pdf/chordcharts_all.pdf

 

Try the Chordmaster for iphones/ipads which provides a library of 7,800 chords and only costs $1.99

 

Dictionary

 

This music dictionary, is easy to use with concise and simple explanations

 

http://library.thinkquest.org/2791/MDOPNSCR.htm