Audacity for Transcribing

okay let's talk about using audacity to help save some time when you're doing transcriptions so without further ado there is my desktop and here I have a recording of Sonny Rollins playing with dad Jones on the record list for life I want to take the second track and learn Sonny Rollins solo so for thing I'm gonna do is open up audacity and you should get the blank home page with no tracks in it and what we want to do is take that second track that has Sonny rollin solo we want to transcribe and we're gonna drag it right into audacity like so it's gonna take a minute to read the track and process all the data and show it visually but we're gonna get the left and right and see the entire audio file tada so one of the things that slows me down when I'm transcribing is if I'm listening to an mp3 player for example is that I have to always you know scroll through and find the right spot where the solo begins and maybe the soul is a little bit too fast so the main objective today is to isolate just the solo so every time you go to transcribe you open it up and you're right at the beginning of the solo and then the second part of this is if the solo is moving too fast to figure out what information or pitches or notes are being played we can slow it down without changing the pitch which is very handy so first things first I'm gonna pop in my headphones so I can actually hear what the heck is being played and we'll listen to this track a little bit we'll find the head will find the solo so here we are [Music] all right Sonny Roland's that Jones are playing together so that's the head I'm guessing this big wad that looks kind of visually similar it's probably the saxophone solo so let's find the beginning of that saxophone solo it looks like the head ends I see a little tiny break perhaps somewhere in there let's try it out [Music] saxophone solo began sax solo began just a little bit before 30 seconds so it really begins somewhere in here so what I'm gonna do is just grab this piece right here pull back I'm gonna delete the head from this audio file and that way when we're transcribing we can just get right down to business and not have to search for it every single time all right so now we've cut off the head we're right at the beginning of sonny rollin solo and visually speaking you can kind of see i'm betting this as a saxophone solo because the saxophone is so loud and full of overtones this is probably gonna be a quieter instrument like a piano or a bass taking a solo and then you can see another loud instrument taking over right there so let's test that theory out let's see what happens in the transition okay so what we're gonna do is cut out the rest of this recording because we just want to transcribe sonny rollin saxophone solo for right now all right when that bass solo takes over I'm gonna just grab it and delete the rest of this track all right so we have the solo isolated we'll check out a few spots Axl I think it's still a saxophone solo [Music] I'm guessing still the same here and it ends right about here [Music] great that's all we want so from here I would actually save this project you know and yeah what the heck we'll put it in here less life will go Roland's solo track to something like that okay so the project is saved in there with the album so we can always reference it later and from here you can start transcribing [Music] first like Buddha Buddha think we're d-flat yeah that's it okay so you can just start transcribing or you know if you're having trouble find that first you know pitch I can't seem to find it you can of course play it over huh I'm pretty sure that's that no deep flat right there starts on the root it's a good place to start but if you're having trouble finding the notes this is where audacity is really helpful we're gonna select this whole track by clicking this empty space here and you can see it turn white that means it's selected what we're gonna do is slow this recording down and we're gonna slow it down not by changing speed but by changing tempo the real advantage of changing tempo is that it does not change the pitch which is really cool so at zero percent change this recording will remain at exactly the same speed we're gonna slow it down 20% so it'll be 20% slower click OK and you'll notice it's transforming it see how it's kind of stretched out there so let's take a quick listen to it [Music] now I know there was a little ghost known there that was a little hard to hear I was a little very small detail but an important one so we're gonna listen to it a couple more times [Music] boo though I think that was it but let's say I'm still having trouble hearing it you can of course slow it down more so effect change tempo keep in mind every time you slow something down the quality like on an mp3 in this case it's gonna get a little bit kind of distorted sounding but let's slow it down another 15 percent on top of that now this should feel grudgingly slow [Music] I can hear that a little bit more clearly now so now we know that first lick is going to be I think that's pretty close to that original idea right there but there we've got it so that's how you slow things down with audacity now you can always of course practice with the solo at that slower tempo which is really handy I'm gonna go ahead and revert back to our old tempo a shortcut is ctrl Z that will undo like we just did that tempo change and we're gonna undo it again to get to our original tempo and you can also besides transcribing along with it in audacity you can record yourself in this case I'm gonna record with Sonny Rowland's and kind of see how you sound against him when you record it so what you're gonna do is open a new track in this case I have a stereo microphone so a stereo track and I'm just gonna record right along with Sonny Rollins okay and you can listen to it and see how you sound right next to them [Music] and if you want to hear yourself you can of course solo yourself see how you sound with the recording give Masey alright but that's how you transcribe using audacity so it's number one very helpful to slow it to get it isolated just write to the solo saves you a little bit of time every time you practice but also being able to remember the effect is change tempo and reducing the tempo a little bit reducing the tempo a little bit will make it easier to catch those pitches in there that's it for transcribing with audacity

Channel: Patrick Sheng

Views: 2,593

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Id: vtQm5WHSlr8

Length: 8min 52sec (532 seconds)

Published: Mon Jul 13 2020