Transcribing is the skill of writing down musical notes onto musical score by listening to the music.  This is always helpful if you want to write down a piece you just can’t find the musical score for (or if one does not exist!), or for a piece of Jazz music:  Jazz is hardly ever written down and is almost pure improvisation over a series of Chords.  To create the music, one must listen closely to the music over and over again, to make sure every note of every instrument is written down precisely, and that the correct instruments are scored.  I realised I had a natural skill for this art when I was younger, and, while playing Super Mario All Stars on my SNES, if I could write down all the melodies and tunes I loved so much, which sounded so much more powerful and “meaty” on a 16-bit console as to the NES 8-bit, so I put that into practise, and wrote down note-perfect all the pieces I could.  This also gave me quite an ear for tonality and chord shift as well.

I have transcribed music from pieces as simple to a solo guitar piece used in a TV advert to Piano parts of Jazz pieces and even Organ works to full Orchestra pieces.  Organ music is particularly hard to transcribe as the many stops can produce a wide range of pitches which disguise the keys which are being played, so extra care must be taken in this respect.

When I write Orchestral arrangements of existing pieces (see Orchestration), I attempt to remain as faithful to the original scoring as possible, so I transcribe the music in its original format; orchestration, key, etc.  To do this, one must have a good ear for detecting particular voices:  Violins, Oboes, and Trumpets in an Orchestra stand out over the softer sounds of Flutes and Bassoons, so being able to audially recognise and detect the timbre and sound of a particular instrument is extremely helpful to a musical transcriber.

If you wish to have a piece of music transcribed, please contact me on the Contact page.  A quote can be easily given upon inspection of the music in regards to duration, complexity and scoring.