How Does Being A Transcriber Affect Your Musicianship?
Along the musician’s journey, many of their earliest exposures to music have influenced their styles of composition and writing. Transcription can be a powerful complement to music listening, both of which help us find our musician voice.
By transcribing of a line, a riff, a progression, or even a full tune, we gain a rich awareness and future control over how we might deploy a harmonic/melodic device, a combination of voicings, or even the use of a specific rhythm or two. Transcribing licks and runs allows us to visually see this line on a score that we can then port at our leisure. Transposing the line to the additional 11 keys outside the original one we pulled the device from, as well as being able to do various harmonic alterations to see where this single line, lick, or run can be melded into other contexts as well.
Transcribing also offers a similar benefit: it teaches one to recognize chord progressions when they hear them as well as popular voicings. A trained ear can even recognize and reproduce individual chords on their instrument. For some of the more complicated chords consisting of altered extensions, playing them outside of their original context may be confusing for the novice or intermediate musicians. What transcription offers is a way to analyze these harmonic situations and how either advanced musicians find creative or interesting ways to implement them within their own arrangements or musical works.
If you are new to transcribing, it is best to take baby steps. Start off with simple melody lines, then work your way towards tunes with limited harmonic information (such as a few chords). Eventually you will build up to the more complex, two-handed musical projects. A serious and lengthy transcription project can be made manageable by incrementally tackling it a little at a time, revisiting as many times as necessary to finish the job.
Happy transcribing and remember, musicianship is a lifelong ongoing marathon, not a brief sprint!
