Piano Transcription
As the name implies, music transcription is the process of translating an audio file into sheet music. It’s an essential part of any pianist’s toolkit, used to learn licks and solos by ear and to transcribe songs for use in practice. This can be a hard job, and the best transcribers have an excellent ear for detail. Besides being skilled at piano playing, they have a good understanding of music theory and notation and are able to work through difficult or low-quality recordings. This is a demanding career, and most professional transcribers work on several projects at once.
In the past, musicians would slow down a recording to listen to the melodies and chords. However, this changed the pitch of the sound and often required that the transcribed score be transposed into the proper key. Today, transcription software does the same job more accurately without changing pitch. It is a very helpful tool for a pianist and is becoming even more useful as midi keyboards become more sophisticated and accurate.
Some composers transcribe their own works into other musical forms for aesthetic or practical reasons. For example, a violinist may translate a Beethoven string quartet into an arrangement for clarinets and strings or a pianist might transcribe his or her own improvisations into standard notation for publication. For the most part, however, musical transcription is used as a creative exercise.
Is Piano Transcription a Hard Job?
The main challenge of transcription is recognizing pitches, melodies and chords from a noisy or poorly recorded recording. This is made more difficult by the fact that human hearing does not have perfect accuracy. To be effective, a transcriptionist must rely on scale degree recognition and harmonic analysis to distinguish between notes. Additionally, the ability to hear overtones is helpful for identifying different pitches.
While it is possible to make a living working exclusively as a musician transcriber, most do this as a sideline or supplement to other musical pursuits, such as piano performance or composition. Occasionally, an expert transcriber becomes a successful arranger and creates orchestral versions of classical piano works like Beethoven’s Seventh Symphony or Mussorgsky’s Pictures at an Exhibition.
Piano transcription requires a great deal of repetition and listening to the same audio over and over again. It can also be frustrating to work with poor quality recordings or music that is unclear or has a thick accent. As a result, some transcribers have trouble with this type of work and are better suited to other fields of musical composition.
Regardless of the challenges, many pianists find it very satisfying to work as transcriptionists. They can earn a decent wage, work from home and choose their own projects. It is also a great way to hone one’s piano playing skills, and it can help improve the overall quality of an ensemble’s performance.
It’s important to note that the most successful pianists in this field are usually the ones who love their work. They are detail-oriented and can often spot mistakes in their own work, which is a sign of true excellence in this career.