Step One: The very first thing to do when beginning to transcribe any piece of music is to rule up a piece of manuscript paper with barlines, a time signature and then, for the purposes of giving your eye something to follow when listening to the song, "slash" symbols to mark off each beat - in this case, 4 beats per bar.
We will ignore the two bars played for the introduction and concentrate on an 8 bar verse section. Play the song again and follow the chart once the introduction has finished playing.
The next thing to mark on your chart is the positions where you hear a chord change. I've labelled them as "Chord 1", "Chord 2" etc. but it's enough to simply make some kind of indication (in pencil so you can later erase it) such as a dot or an "x" above the slash where the change occurs.
Tips:- Chord changes usually occur on "strong" beats in the bars - i.e., beat 1; beat 1 and 3 (such as in bar 7)
Step Two: Now that you have a very rough "map" of a verse, it's time to define the chords with names. There are two main ways to do this and which you use depends on whether or not you're using a piano as a reference or working entirely by ear. For the purposes of this exercise it's assumed you'll be using a piano to assist your ear locate certain notes.
From this stage, transcribing music is a lot like doing a crossword puzzle. The very first chord you need to identify is (unsurprisingly) "Chord 1". How is this done?
Play the recording again and be ready to pause it exactly after the first chord is played. The note you need to identify by ear is the bass note because the chord you're searching for (most likely) is named from this bass note. In other words, this bass note is the root note of the chord to be identified.
Keep in mind there are only 12 possiblities this bass note could be. Immediately after you pause the recording, play a note in the bass register and listen for the quality of "sameness" with the recording. Two things can happen at this point: you could guess correctly (in which case move to the next step) or you will be incorrect (but at least you've eliminated one of the 12 possibilities and increased your odds of guessing correctly next time).
If you're incorrect it's because the note you're listening for is either higher or lower in sound than the note you guessed. It's important to decide in advance what your next guess will be. Each guess will either be correct or again it will be higher or lower. If you work slowly and methodically, using your ears to guide you higher or lower, you will find the correct note.
For example, let's say you chose a C as your first guess. Play the recording and compare your C with the first chord in the song. Is it the same? Answer: no - it sounds close but is too low.
If you choose D as your second guess you'll hear it's also close but this time it sounds too high to match the recording. A simple process of elimination here suggests the bass note has to be the sound between C and D. For the purposes of this exercise, call it C#.
Step 3: Now that you have identified the root note of Chord 1, the next step is to listen closely again to determine the quality of the chord: is it Major or Minor? (Note: There is a third possibility, but not in this song. This will be the subject of a future lesson).
In order to make a comparison between the recording and your decision, you'll first need to prepare yourself to play one or other of C# Major or C# Minor. The correct chord in this case is C# Minor. Take a moment to make the comparison yourself.
Step 4: Move on and repeat the previous two steps to identify Chord 2 and so on through to the end of the eight bars. When complete your chart should look like this following:
(The tempo indication medium bounce is purely a guide for performance. The names of the composers - Schwartz and Wyle - are included for the sake of completeness. On your own charts, you'd also note yourself as the arranger - Arr. Your NameTips & Tricks
Chord changes in most songs occur as patterns that repeat, often in groups of 2 bars, 4 bars, and 8 bars. Once you worked out that the chord in bar 3 was the same as the one in bar 1, you can start to make predictions that bars 3 and 4 will contain the same chords as bars 1 and 2. Similarly, bars 5 and 6 turn out to be the same again.
An interesting thing happens in bar 7. Aside from the fact there are two chords in this one bar, the A major chord also is notable. Had you predicted a C# minor chord to appear on beat 1 of bar 7, you'd almost have been correct. An A major chord is almost identical to C# minor in that both chords contain two notes the same: a C# and an E. It is possible to play a C# minor chord here instead of the A major with no real noticable difference in effect. The reasons as to why this is so will be explained in a future lesson about chord families.
Activities:
Before moving on to the next lesson, practice playing the chords of this song - slowly at first and then in time with the recorded version. It's only necessary at this stage to play and hold the chords for the duration of each chord change (4 beats each, except in bar 7 where they're 2 beats each)
A fully notated version of the chord chart of your activity above looks like this:
(A key signature has been added to indicate this song is in the key of C# minor. The original basic chord chart is included above the piano stave for the sake of comparison.)
Audio Example (slow tempo) of the chart as it's written above:
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