How do I figure out the Chords or a Melody (in a Song)?
Figuring out and Transcribing Melodies
Writing out or “transcribing” a melody is very difficult for some people, very easy for others.
However, the beginning of the exercise should always be the same. I’ll describe a few steps here that I use myself and also teach my students.
Requirements
You should be able to sing a single note.
For example, if you hear this note, could you sing it back?
If you have a tuner, you can also use it to check if you hit the note “C”.
Find the note on the guitar
Now you should sing the note and look for it on the guitar. Start with a string in the first fret, then play the second fret, the third fret, and so on, until you think you’ve hit the right note. Check this again with the tuner.
It doesn’t matter which “C” you ultimately choose, i.e., which octave. The main thing is that it’s the note C. Later, when you feel more confident, you can start with the correct octave.
Practical Example
Let’s look at an example that you can try to figure out yourself. I’ll show you the steps I use to make progress as quickly and accurately as possible.
How many measures, how many notes?
Of course, in our example, it could be anything rhythmically, since there are only four notes. But let’s assume it’s a 4/4 measure and four quarter notes are played.
Now you already know that it has to somehow work out at the end of the measure, no note is played in a second measure, etc.
What rhythm?
Knowing the rhythm from the beginning makes sense in many ways. Especially when you slow down the melody, it’s difficult to hear what rhythm the melody has. So knowing the rhythm beforehand is recommended.
First sing the melody
Before you even start writing down the melody or try to transfer it to your instrument, sing the melody. Listen to it a few times, sing along. After a while, turn off the audio and try to sing it without help.
Bring the melody to your instrument
Now try to play the melody you just sang on the guitar. Note by note. You should be able to sing the melody slower yourself, since you already know the whole melody.
Write Down the Melody
This is not absolutely necessary. However, I always write down each melody at the end. Sure, you could just figure it out again, you could theoretically.
If you came up with the notes “C”, “B”, “D” and “E”, you heard everything correctly.
Of course, as always, there are several ways to play these notes on the guitar. But you can see two of these possible ways here:
Piano notes sound different on the guitar?
The notes a piano plays or a singer sings are not different. If someone sings — or a piano plays — a C, then that’s the exact same note as when you play a C. What changes is the timbre. We’ve looked at something like this before on Different ways to play a chord.
The tuner will show a sounding C for all of them. So it’s not a different note, but the color of the note changes. The reason for a different timbre depends on many factors. On the one hand, it depends on which strings are used.
If you play a C in the 8th fret on the low E string, it has a different color than if you play the C in the 3rd fret on the A string. A piano has different strings than a guitar and a singer has different vocal cords than guitarists’ strings.
Figuring Out Melodies Yourself
Now try to figure out your own vocal melodies from pop songs, guitar riffs/licks or piano melodies and maybe even write them down. You’ll notice that after a while, you won’t need a whole day for 10 seconds anymore, but only a few hours. Eventually, at the end, only a few seconds.
Software
The best software for transcribing music in my opinion is still Transcribe! With it you can set markers, mark measures and beats, slow down, loop, transpose the whole song higher or lower and export individual parts.
