An important part of learning the jazz language is transcribing the music of those that have gone before us as well as those that are still with us. It is important to not only figure out the notes and rhythms but to also to figure out the articulations, pitch bends and other nuances.
We happen to be fortunate to live in an age of technology that provides us with wonderful tools to simplify the transcription process. In the past, transcribers would slow down the speed of phonographs in order to determine the notes. Although this would slow down the music – the pitch would also be lowered and in many cases the music would be “muddy” and difficult to “play along with”.
I have evaluated several different transcription software packages and prefer Transcribe!
Transcribe is available from the following URL:
http://www.seventhstring.com/
The software runs on mac, PC and Linux.
Do you use any transcribing software? If yes, what are you using?