Need Tabbing Help

Tabs, Lessons, Tutorials of all styles. Got a question? Heres where to ask!

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Paul Wolfe
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Need Tabbing Help

Post by Paul Wolfe »

Okay, so years ago a friend of mine was in a band and wrote some decent songs. It's been 20 years since then and I thought it'd be fun to surprise him with a Tab of one of his bands songs... the problem is that I am not very good at figuring songs out by ear and even isolating parts and slowing them down in Adobe Audition I'm having trouble working this song out.

Would anyone hear be willing to help me out with this or could you point me to a reasonably priced transcription service? I did Google 'transcription services' and found loads of possibilities. If anyone has ever used a transcription service, let me know how it worked out for you.

I'd appreciate any help you all can give me.
Paul Wolfe
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Re: Need Tabbing Help

Post by Paul Wolfe »

During my Google search, I came across a few services that sounded promising: "Email an mp3 of the song you want transcribed and we will notify you with an estimate of time required and an ETA with no obligation."

I did the emailing to 2 places last Friday and have not heard back as of yet from either... one guy (who I didn't contact yet) has a package deal of 20 songs for $100... I was thinking that if I get the original song done by him and it's quality works out, I might be willing to go with him for some other stuff I've always wanted tabbed, like The Mighty Quinn, Kiss of Death, Suicidal Show, Back to the Coast...

Anyone have suggestions for songs you've always wanted tabbed, RR or otherwise?
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TheMrAxeman
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Re: Need Tabbing Help

Post by TheMrAxeman »

get a free trial of the program called "transcribe" and it will slow it down and you can isolate one note at a time and have that on loop and take your time to match up your note to the one you hear. Thats what i do, hope this helps!
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Paul Wolfe
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Re: Need Tabbing Help

Post by Paul Wolfe »

As I mentioned in my thread on bass playing, my son wanted to play Determinate from the Disney movie Lemonade Mouth. That song is heavy on keyboards, the guitar is deep in the mix and the bass is not obvious, which makes tabbing difficult!

So I found a free BPM Analyzer to determine the tempo. Then I put the song into Adobe Audition and adjusted the tempo line to 140 bpm. I also ran the metronome in multi-track mode (made a sound recording of the metronome with the aid of Audacity)... next I ran the song through some filters to bring the guitar up in the mix and then highlighted one measure at a time to figure out the timing and notes. Finally I opened up Guitar Pro 6 and started tabbing. The metronome and individual measure process made it much easier to figure out how to tab the right notes and rests (quarters, eighths, combination of the two) on the proper beats of each measure.

When I was done I could highlight a section in Guitar Pro & play it as a loop at whatever tempo Jakob could follow (again using the metronome in the software to help him learn to keep time). He's getting the hang of this song, and since it's the first song he's ever played, I think he's doing great. I'm doing the same with him that I'm doing on the bass - learning songs and forgoing theory for now.

As for the tabbing services, no one has gotten back to me in nearly a month, so they won't be getting my business :(
Paul Wolfe
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Re: Need Tabbing Help

Post by Paul Wolfe »

Before I started playing bass, I often didn't pay attention to it. Mainly due to listening so intently to the guitar parts, I missed out on some great playing. For instance, I was listening to Smoke on the Water this morning and there is some cool bass work during the verses while Blackmore is playing very basic arpeggiated chords...

I'm also listening to a lot more pop music with some really cool basslines... a lot of the rock stuff is pretty basic. Although I found Breaking the Law to be a challenge with constant 8th notes non-stop. The fingers get tired after a while!
Paul Wolfe
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Re: Need Tabbing Help

Post by Paul Wolfe »

Okay, since none of the tabbing people seem to return emails, I used the above method to isolate the guitar as much as possible and pretty well worked out the guitar parts of the song...

I wanted to do the bass as well, but it was mixed so poorly that the bass is VERY hard to isolate and the bass player was a self-taught lefty who played a right-handed bass upside down with out re-stringing, so his playing is quite unorthodox...

I'll keep trying, but it's not easy!
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