In this bass lesson, you’re going to learn
how to transcribe - how to hear something in a song and then figure out exactly how
to play that on your bass. Hi, I’m Luke McIntosh and if you’ve ever
wanted to ditch the dodgy tab sites and figure songs out for yourself, then stick around
for this video - I think you’ll like it. [Video Intro] If you’ve never heard of transcribing, it’s
a simple concept. You’re just learning music or parts of a
song from a recording by ear. It’s super useful because it means you can
learn songs without having to rely on other people to teach you, plus you can avoid all
of the really dodgy sites with questionable tabs of everything. You can even write your own or correct all
the terrible ones you find all the time online. Imagine the whole world that this can open
up for you. You can listen to any song, and learn any
part of it! Love a bass line? You can learn it through transcription. Like a guitar lick? Transcribe it and play it on your bass! Love the sound of a vocal melody? With transcribing, you can play it for yourself. I want to show you how you can get started
transcribing any sort of music or parts of a song, plus exactly how I do it myself. To do that, we’ll be looking at a melody
rather than a bass line because those are generally easier to hear. If you want my specific recommendations for
deciphering bass lines in recordings, check out my video all about that. I’ll put a link in the description. But right now, let’s head over to my computer
and I’ll show you exactly how to get it all done. Alright - let’s dive in. The song we’ll be looking at today is called
Strasbourg St. Denis by Roy Hargrove. This is a song that I’ve played a lot, but
I’ve never actually learned the melody to it. I played it at a gig last week and it made
me want to learn it properly. So the first thing you want to do when you
want to figure out a song from a recording isn’t to jump straight to your bass and
try to figure out the notes. The first thing you want to do is just listen
- that’s step one. Listen intently and actively to whatever you’re
trying to transcribe. So let’s do that right now. I’ve got the melody cued up in Transcribe!
here so let’s give it a listen, and we’ll be trying to play the melody that the saxophone
and trumpet are playing. Here it is. [plays recording] There’s much more to this
song, but for now, let’s just focus on that first phrase. Ideally, you’d listen to the song or phrase
enough that you can still hear it in your mind when you turn the song off. Of course, if you haven’t heard it in a
while, you might not always hear it in the right key, but as long as you know it well
enough that you can hear it in your mind, you’ll be fine. So step two, after listening is figure out
just one note in the phrase - and that’ll usually be the first note. So what’s the best way of doing this? It’s by using your secret weapon when it
comes to transcribing - your voice. Yes - I want you to try and sing the thing
you’re trying to play. Now don’t worry - you don’t have to have
a wonderful singing voice. All you need to do is be able to match the
pitch of the recording in any octave. If you’ve got a really deep voice and the
melody is really high - that’s fine. Just sing it down an octave or two and vice
versa. Sometimes matching the pitch of the first
note will be easy. For example, if the first note is very long,
it’s going to be easier than if the first note is really short. In this recording, the first note of the melody
IS really short, so it might be a bit trickier, but let’s give it a try. [plays recording] We’re just looking for
that very first note. Hear it go by really quickly? Now if you really struggle with finding the
first note, you can do a couple of things. First of all, you can slow down the recording. On Transcribe!, this is really easy. You just go up here and select say 50% and
the recording slows down a ton meaning every note lasts twice as long, which in theory,
should make it twice as easy. [plays recording] You can do similar things
in programs like Audacity and Garageband as well. But are you hearing the first note yet? Now if that’s not enough and you still can’t
make out the note, you can also just isolate that one note in particular. If I just highlight this part of the waveform,
we’ll get this. [plays recording] Now this is JUST the first
note of the melody - nothing else. Can you sing that note? It’s this [sings note] That’s our first
note of the melody. So we’ve listened intently, we’ve sung
the first note, step 3 is to figure out what that note is on the bass. Notice all this work we’ve done before we
even involve our basses? This is very different than hearing something
for the first time and immediately trying to figure it all out. If you’re experienced and have worked on
your ear, you can do things that way, but if you’re starting out, I’d definitely
recommend following the first 2 steps. But let’s figure this note out. Remember, this is the note we’re looking
for. [sings note] Now because I’ve played this
song before, I know the bass line starts on a Bb, so let’s see if the melody is the
same as the bass note. Here’s our target note [sings note] and
here’s the Bb [plays Bb] Oh ok - so these 2 notes aren’t the same. (singing) Our target note is here, but the
Bb sounds like this. The Bb is too high, right? So our melody note must be below it. Let’s try just going down chromatically
and see if we can find it. It doesn’t seem too far away. [sings] OK - there it is. This note is actually an Ab - not a Bb. So our first note of the melody is an Ab - awesome
to know! From here, we just follow the same process
- listen, sing and play back. As you get more and more advanced, you’ll
be able to hear multiple notes, maybe even entire phrases that you can just plug in to
your bass and off you go, but you can start slow. You know the first note, now try to figure
out the 2nd note. We can isolate the first 2 notes [plays recording]
Is the 2nd note higher, lower or the same as the first note? It’s lower, right? So let’s find that one. [sings, then plays] There it is! So from the Ab to the F. Once you know how
the process works, you can keep going one note at a time but since I know the sound
of this song pretty well, although not how to play the melody, so let’s see how I can
go with the rest of it. This whole first phrase sounds very pentatonic-y
to me, so let’s see if it’s just coming down the pentatonic scale. [plays melody with recording] Oh ok - it’s
not straight down the pentatonic - although, I’m pretty sure the notes are all just Ab
major pentatonic - same as F minor pentatonic - but
we’ve got a few jumps back and forth. [sings, then plays] Ok, so we’re doing a
few back and forths before going all the way down to the Eb, then up to the Bb, then back
down to the Ab. Now once you get to the point where you’re
getting pretty good at transcribing, you may have to consider writing down the notes as
you go so you don’t forget - especially if it’s something that’s a little more
complicated. You also have to consider how you’re going
to play everything on your bass. Chances are you’ll have multiple ways to
play almost everything on your bass. If you’re transcribing something that wasn’t
originally played on bass, like we’re going here, you have to consider which octave you’re
going to play it in and how exactly you’re going to play it. For example, if we started this melody down
here. [plays melody in low octave] This wouldn’t
actually work, right? We haven’t got a low Eb we can go to. We also haven’t got a higher Ab to start
on up here, right? Unless you’ve got more than 24 frets on
your bass of course. So we have to start in this middle register. But even then, we can start on the G-string
like we’ve been doing [plays melody] You could potentially start on the D-string, but
it would mean you have to move around and shift positions, but that’s a possibility
as well. And what works for me may not be great for
you, so you’ll have to make your own mind up about how you play some of this stuff. The other important thing to consider is the
small details of what you’re transcribing. Things like which notes are more emphasized? Which ones aren’t? Are there any articulations you need to be
looking at? Are the notes long or short? Should you pluck every one? Or use hammers and pulls? Let’s look at Strasbourg once more and see
what they do on the recording. [plays recording] To me, in this recording
it sounds like every note is being articulated. Everything is standing on its own. To mimic that kind of effect on bass, that
means plucking every note and maybe making them a fraction shorter than you might ordinarily
do. So this [plays articulated notes] vs. this
[plays longer notes] Hear how the first one was closer to the sound of the original recording? These are the little details that will make
a huge difference. So that’s the basic process for transcribing
and figuring out music, melodies, song, riffs or licks by yourself. Step 1, intent, active listening. Step 2 - finding just the first note and singing
or humming it. Step 3 - find that note on your bass, then
rinse and repeat. When you get more advanced, you can start
to think in terms of multiple notes or even entire phrases, but every step of the way,
you should be considering where exactly on your bass you want to play everything and
of course HOW you’re going to play it. On easy songs, you should have no troubles
with this process, but if you need a little bit of extra help, I use the software called
Transcribe! It’s what I was using in this video. If you’d like a free trial, just click the
first link in the description and give it a shot. I use it all the time and recommend it to
pretty much all my students. Thanks so much for watching. It’s good to have you with me. I’m Luke from Become A Bassist and I’ll
see you another video soon.
