Performers vs Teachers

Scoredog

Transcribing to me always means putting it to paper, or these days notes to screen. Copying a solo is not transcribing it unless one puts it down. That was the definition when I was in music school.

Russell Letson

Well, you have to have some means of retaining the listened-to-and-absorbed piece of music, and "transcription" includes a root that means "writing." In traditions that don't preserve-in-writing, that means either having a very good memory (and passers-down who demand accuracy) or putting up with drift, as parts of a tune or arrangement get misremembered or improved or simplified. That "folk process" we've all heard about. (Which includes large portions of "gypsy jazz" as played passed along via aural tradition.)

A transcription needn't be in standard notation--I've preserved pieces in tab (I'm mostly a fingerpicker) that I would otherwise have forgotten or subjected to my own folk processing. Which, once I've preserved a tune-as-performed, I proceed to inflict on the helpless tune anyway.

vanmalmsteen

Unless you do it on a regular basis, scratching out Music notation can be extremely laborious . I’ll do it with simple things, otherwise I will copy down solo fragments on fretboard diagrams . One phrase can keep me busy for weeks, as a person can really extract a lot out of a good phrase that moving through the changes