So a retired minister at my church who writes hymn lyrics asked me to set some to a folky tune. And I came up with something that he liked. The problem? Now I have to take the tune I came up with and write it down so it can be sent to the publishers. I can read dots, but writing them has always been a challenge. What the relative length of the notes are, etc etc. Any advice, folks? (Besides pray, that is!) 😉
You aren’t friend with any other musicians who could help you out?
record your tune and take it to the music teacher at the local high school or better yet any local music school. If you have the time, go and play it for the music teacher so he/she is able to confirm what he/she thinks they are hearing. maybe it would be a good homework asignment for the music students.good luck.
Al, send me a sound clip of your tune, or post it to Sound Lantern and send me the link, and I’ll happily transcribe it for you.
Yeah, you could let Will do the work for you, or you could write it yourself in ABC, and let some software do the work for you. I find that much easier than writing dots, but maybe that’s just me… (and it helps you get a good understanding of ABC)
OK, letting Will do the work is still much easier. (Heck it’s been all of what, maybe 12 hours since I had him transcribe something for me?) 😉
If you have Audacity (http://audacity.sourceforge.net/) cheating is easy for a song tune.
Record it, load it into Audacity and look at the audio track using the ‘spectrum’ representation (not the default of ‘waveform’). You can see the relative lengths of the notes (and measure them in time if you want to). If you play along to a metronome with a good sharp click (clockwork are best) on the first beat of each measure you will see well defined ‘bar lines’ in the trace of the audio track - helps keep track of where you are.
in my opinion and experience don’t go to the local school - music departments these days are too hitty missy to be relied upon to actually be able to teach anyone anything of actual use and what they come up with will probably not be what you want
i’d go with getting that Will person up there to do it for you, mainly because it’s too complicated to explain transcribing over the internet and it’s also one of those things that come naturally to some people - well i think it does anyway
oh and I don’t trust computer programs either - they’re too literal with note lengths
Lucy
This is useful. Or at least it has been for me.
http://www.finalemusic.com/notepad/
It’s free. I’ve been using to learn to read and write the dots.
Thanks Will for your kind offer, be patient, though, because I am also new to making sound files! And thanks to the rest of you as well. I will try that free program also, Fishmonger!
Just in case someone stumbles across this thread again, and wonders what happened to my hymn writing efforts, here is a link to the finished product, published at last. Finale Notepad was what did the trick, allowed me to write it out neatly for publication, and the playback feature allowed me to listen to what the dots sound like, and ensure that what I had written was the sound I was playing. And again, thanks to those who chimed in on the thread with help and encouragement.
http://www.gbod.org/worship/default.asp?act=reader&item_id=47636&loc_id=17,823