Question for composers

Toddskins

Toddskins

Member
Hey guys (and gals),

Reading music is one thing, but transcribing a composition of yours to score is quite another. I have faced the dilemma I'm in now, several times in the past years, and always end up working out the issues on my own, painstaking as they are.

QUESTION: What might be the name of a music course that teaches you how to figure out the timing of a song you have written?


My own piano compositions are oftentime very syncopated, involve many time signatures and keys in the same piece, and I cannot figure out if the time is 3/4, 4/4, 6/8, or something else. Like I said, reading and figuring out a written piece of music is one thing, but to try and figure out your own piece of music (or anybody's for that matter) and put it to paper is another thing altogether.

And before you go throwing out responses like "Sibelius" (which I own), or "Finale", these software programs do not interpret what they hear. They only notate according to the rules you dictate to them from the beginning, i.e. 4/4 in the key of D.

Anybody tackle this issue before have any ideas, or what course specifically deals with transcribing something you are listening to? I might add that I have asked other pianists for their help with my compositions and almost always get a blank stare, or "Gee, I really don't know how to do that."
 
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so wait, is your question how to put complicated time signatures and tempos down onto official sheet music? or this scenario:
"holy crap that was awesome... what the hell did i just play??!?! time signature is all weird. seven... no, eleven.. wait, damn now it just sounds like 8"

the answer to 1 is just to have sheet music thats littered with notation...
the answer to 2 is just to practice so you get good at recognizing certain time signatures and structures. what i've learned about piano is it tends to swell in tempo so thats hard to track. not as straight forward as a band piece.

or maybe im totally missing what your trying to say. sorry.
 
There's not an easy solution for you with this. If you didn't start with notation, it's very hard to transcribe. It takes years of practice for most folks. Look at all of the sickly tabs out there that students bring to their guitar lessons.
The people who can do it for a living are (or perhaps were, I'm a little older,...) able to find work with publishers. That's how some folks got through school.
It's a combination of ear training and theory. Those are difficult to master, but if you start with simple melodies and rhythms you can probably unlock your abilities over time. Chunk it out into small sections.
All music is transcribable (that's probably not a word), and sometimes you need to make it up and provide the performer with a key or legend to interpret it correctly. As with everything music, it's an art.
 
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I think I got a basic handle on the question? (maybe, lol...)

lets say I make a soft rock piece. Last one I remember, I used 5/4 complex time sig for the drums, but, 4/4 simple time for the electric guitar. if I scored it because someone wanted to BUY the music? I have choices now...

1) i can score the drums AND the guitar as 4/4 time... here, the guitarist gets what he wants, as the measures make "sense" as blocks of the idea, for lack of a better term, when the guitarist sight reads it... BUT, the drummer is seeing a stream of seemingly 4/4 time sheet music thats not making "sense" completely. It seems as if the quick riffs are almost random

2) alternately, if put both in 5/4 time, the drumemr is now happy, as the blocks make sense now, but... now the guitarist is wrinkling his brow, seeing his blocks start and end at seemingly odd times...

3) I COULD score both as 4/4 and 5/4, respectively, so the drummer and the guitarist each are seeing "complete measures" that make "sense" now... seeming best, but... not really. when the band wants to "discuss" something? The guitarist might say "hey! Lets have a cymbal crash at measure 37, eh?" and the drummer's 37 is WAY off the mark, lol... heck, unless its at one of the "every 20 measures" where both time sigs "meet" to "end" at the same time? well, YOU get the idea...

nothing is "perfect", and its tradeoffs.


I COULD score BOTH in something 5*4=20 beat "measures", but... thats just silly... neither part now makes "sense"




Here's another dilema, as that was a simple example, ha ha... what if i am using a polyrhythm, say, in the piano part? keeping it as simple as possible, its basically a "3/3" time melody, played simultaneously with a second "4/4" time melody... making one complex "polyrhythm" melody....

how the *&^% do i choose to represent THAT monstrosity?

But wait... if you wanna see something REALLY "fun", have a gander at "Spring Rites" classical sheet music, ha ha. Its absolutely ridiculous, believe it. I mean, a single LINE or PART? Each and every separate measure is in a different complex time signature, LMAO... it surely looked like "note soup" on sheet, but... when I HEARD IT?

good lord, it blows you AWAY...

back to my simple first 4/4 and 5/4 2 part example? Hmmm... what if the drums are in a polyrhythm coming OUT to "look" like 5/4, but... are in reality 2 different time sigs? or the guitar line? Or... *both*

it starts to look like shotgun blasts of notes and calculus equations written around it, LMAO...

THEN you have other considerations (it never ends, lol) you might use 8ths or 16ths to represent the quarter notes... dotting and tieing them together... so that the "fast part" makes sense, but... the slower parts are all a jumble of dots and ties... (or the reverse, just as bad)

I suppose you simply change for each part, but then you are approaching the situation where the score starts to look like 2 different pieces cut-and-pasted together to form the bigger piece...

PS - I strongly urge one to look up "Stravinsky's SPRING RITES" sheet examples... THEN go to youtube and watch/listen to the piece... you will then quickly appreciate the polymath genius of stravinsky.

and, REMEMBER... plenty of soundtrack composers (high end ones, anyways, lol) rip off stravinsky's style particularly for extended climactic chase/fight sequences... so, its "doable"...

and also remember? Your not going to PLAY in a modern orchestra, as a professional "day job" orchestra performer... unless and only if, you can sight read and figure OUT the insane sheet music for spring rites, eh?

PPS - i was aghast that to be a "composer" I was expected not only to WRITE a piece, but... then to be able to score it properly

*shudder* I can see I'll never get to where I dream of, without a couple years in some fancy music conservancy in europe, LMAO...

hey, the non musician public doesnt realize how much education and sweat equity can GO into writing a piece of music, lol...
 
remember... theres regular musicians, then, theres "progressive" musicians.

"prog" rock? One o the hallmarks of it, is using complex time signatures, and polyrhythms... all the time, like its nothing.

You see a band like dream theatre, in sheet not tab, having an intro in, say 17/4 time... followed by changing complex tuime signatures, sometimes measure by measure... with polyrhythms IN lines, or ACROSS 2 or more lines...

"scoring" has other problems, too...

some instruments are in such a manner, as all parts have to written in a certain "key"... which,, as fate would have it, is naturally different than other instruments, which have to be in THEIR own key...

and YET... the piece ITSELF is actually in a whole other key itself...

you can easily see where SCORING a piece correctly and accurately can take easily MUCH more length of time that WRITING the damn thing, lol...



those of you in the "ear only" camp... that think music theory "takes away" creativity and originality? works fine for a song like "name".

But, you start wanting to make advanced sounding floyd-like stuff? Queensryche type stuff? Dream theatre type concept stuff?

not something your going to have 4 cats who play by ear only, refuse music theory, and no one reads sheet.... just "come up with by jamming, man"... there's too much going on at once. I mean, sure, maybe you'll squeak something out, but...

HOW in the &^%# are you going to REPRODUCE 4 people playing in 4 different time signatures, all forming a complex overall polyrhythm? Where everyone is both "in time" and "out of time"... at the same time?

not my memory, ear, and jamming... thats for sure...

but, it works fine for 3-chord power anthem style, a-la "mr 3 chord neil young".
 
Toddskins said:
Hey guys (and gals),

Reading music is one thing, but transcribing a composition of yours to score is quite another. I have faced the dilemma I'm in now, several times in the past years, and always end up working out the issues on my own, painstaking as they are.


QUESTION: What might be the name of a music course that teaches you how to figure out the timing of a song you have written?


My own piano compositions are oftentime very syncopated, involve many time signatures and keys in the same piece, and I cannot figure out if the time is 3/4, 4/4, 6/8, or something else. Like I said, reading and figuring out a written piece of music is one thing, but to try and figure out your own piece of music (or anybody's for that matter) and put it to paper is another thing altogether.

And before you go throwing out responses like "Sibelius" (which I own), or "Finale", these software programs do not interpret what they hear. They only notate according to the rules you dictate to them from the beginning, i.e. 4/4 in the key of D.

Anybody tackle this issue before have any ideas, or what course specifically deals with transcribing something you are listening to? I might add that I have asked other pianists for their help with my compositions and almost always get a blank stare, or "Gee, I really don't know how to do that."
Click to expand...

It should be so simple; 3/4 is just 123 123 123 123 etc. 6/6 is 123456 123456 123456. You shouldn't need any music course to teach you that, it's just counting. Times like 7/8 are more interesting, and it goes 123,1234 123,1234 123,1234 123,1234 ...an old and excellent band called Caravan used to write songs with all sorts of different timings such as 11/8 7/8 etc. It's all just how many beats there are before it repeats.
 
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