Lets Make a Transcription Primer.

[Dr. Love]

It seems to me, that jumping right into transcribing solos is a difficult thing to do, especially for students who have never done anything by ear. And because of the many great resources we have available on this website, it occurs to me that we could make this process a bit easier for everyone. As a beginner myself, I would like to gain as much knowledge about this, and hopefully, these contributions can be helpful to others.

So, I'm looking for every little tip you have that made transcribing solos easier, or more fun, for you. Any little games that can be played to help with ear training that you may have. A list of players (and possibly songs) that are fairly easy to transcribe, and provide a basis for future transcription.

For my own contributions, I will add the following:
I attended a clinic at the IAJE Conference in Las Vegas given by Tom Ervin (trombonist). He recommended learning simple tunes by ear; tunes that are (1) well known, (2) Diatonic (few accidentals), and (3) technically simple. These songs should be learned by ear, and then transposed into all keys. He provided a list of the following songs:
My Country, 'Tis of Thee
Oh, How Lovely Is The Evening
Mary Had A Little Lamb
Lightly Row
Joy to the World
Twinkle, Twinkle Little Star
Good King Wenceslas
Three Blind Mice
The First Noel
Away in a Manger
Oh Come, All Ye Faithful
Pop, Goes the Weasel
Joshua "Fit" The Battle of Jericho
Deck the Halls
We Three Kings
We Wish You a Merry Christmas
Hark, the Herald Angels Sing
Oh Tannenbaum (Christmas Tree)
Tell Me Why
Go Tell It On The Mountain
Amazing Grace
America The Beatiful
Oh Little Town of Bethlehem
Home On The Range
God Rest Ye Merry Gentlemen
Way Down Upon The Suanne River
Frosty the Snowman
76 Trombones
Rock-a-Bye Baby
Battle Hymn of the Republic
Rudolf, The Red-Nosed Reindeer
Walkin' In a Winter Wonderland
Hail To The Chief
Star-Spangled Banner
Silent Night
Jingle Bells
Row, Row, Row Your Boat
White Chrestmas
Gilligan's Island
Rock Around The Clock
Mickey Mouse
Old MacDonald Had a Farm

In Addition, lets start a list of relatively simple jazz heads, such as:
St. Thomas (Sonny Rollins)
Blue Lester (Lester Young)

A list of solos that are fairly simple to transcribe:
Blue Lester (Lester Young)

And any miscellaneous tips you may have.
Advice from both beginners (like myself) and seasoned professionals (and all degrees in between) is wanted. If you know anything that was easy for you, or helped you along, please post any information here. Thank You.

[saxophone_volume1]

tenor madness
now's the time

[Dr. Love]

Another simple song/jazz head:
Oh When The Saints Go Marching In.

[Josh]

Wouldn't most ballads be a good idea? That's how i started.

[Anonymous]

I find that knowing the sound of invervals is imperitive (or, at the very least, extremely helpful) to rapid learning of songs by ear.

Try to imagine the sound of a third above/below, a fifth above/below, a sixth above/below etc; a reference note until you feel confident you can identiry them with some accuracy.

Then try to detect these relationship in the music you wish to learn or transcribe! It's a gradual process, something like phonics in reading! But eventually it will pay off in the ability to learn or transcribe material, by ear, in remarkably short order!

Music has an interesting property, a note is only as good as the note before it and the note after it. Chords are that way, too. The coolest chord in the world is ineffective without having come from, and/or heading in to another complimentary or contrasting chord!

[Wailin']

Go and here and download this software which slows down music files such as mp3's and others without changing the key.

[bdussy]

two plugins for winamp have greatly added to my transcribing productivity.

loop master allows you to loop any section of a piece.
pacemaker can change the speed without changing pitch.
this plugin only works on mp3s so you will have to convert.

both of these plugins are free and available for download from www.winamp.com

[Toni Linder]

I remember seeing a short transcription primer in the form of a Powerpoint presentation, somewhere in the Internet - maybe done by professionnal transcriber Reed Kottler who produced Transkriber software et al.