Someone once asked Dizzy Gillespie, “Hey Diz’, can you read music?” He replied, “Not enough to hurt the way I play!” When I first heard that quote I was knee deep in music school and for the first time in my life I was trying to learn how to transcribe music by ear. My teacher in college was an accomplished jazz saxophonist. He had spent time touring with the Glenn Miller Orchestra and Phil Collins. He had a degree in performance from one of the top music schools in the country. He had also appeared on recordings by lounge lizard giants like Mel Torme and Barely Man Enough…I mean Barry Manilow! I used to come into lessons with something that I was trying to transcribe, unsuccessfully, and he’d listen to it like once and have it down perfectly. There were days I wanted to strangle him because he was so disgustingly good. He taught me more about being a musician than anybody else that I’ve ever known. I owe him a lot. The lessons that he handed down to me on transcribing are lessons that I use today on a daily basis. No one had ever challenged me to do that until he came along.
It’s sad that in the world of music education, the art of learning to transcribe (play by ear as some call it) is not a priority for most music educators. Don’t get me wrong, I understand why. As a band director I know that time always seems to be against you. However, a student that knows how to read music and play by ear is one that is truly on their way to becoming a more well rounded musician. So how does the ability to transcribe help the aspiring worship leader or the young musician in a worship band. To put it simply, it opens up a whole new world.
Transcribing consists of several components…the following comes in no particular order:
(1) Form
(2) Key
(3) Melody
(4) Backgrounds
Form
The “form” of a song simply refers to the structure of a song. For example a song might go in this order: verse = chorus = verse = chorus = bridge = chorus. For the worship leader form is both important and highly organic. So much of song leading depends on the ability of the worship to leader to feel where the song needs to go next. The worship leader might think to themselves, “I feel like we need to go back to a verse even though we practiced going to the bridge right here.” These are matters of discernment on the part of the worship leader. A good discerning worship leader who understands how to manipulate the form of a song can help facilitate a great corporate worship experience.
Key
Most worship songs are simple and in simple keys. There’s a good reason for this. One of the elements that makes a worship song good for a corporate setting is its accessibility. Something that is too difficult might prove frustrating not only to your band but to the people who have come to worship with you. There are many common keys that are good for most singing voices. Ideally you want something that is not too high but not too low either. Key can really help facilitate that. Popular keys for worship songs are G, C, A, E, D, and B. When I’m learning most songs the key is the very first thing I figure out. The key can also clue you in to what your options usually would be in a given chord progression. For example, if you’re playing a song in G it would not be common to have an A or E. It would be more likely to have an Ami and an Emi. It certainly wouldn’t be outrageously uncommon to have a A and an E in a song that is in the key of G but I can tell you from experience that it’s certainly not that common in contemporary worship music. Most worship songs are diatonic, which is to say that most modern worship tunes don’t often stray to chords that are not commonly found in their given keys.
Common chords in G: G Ami C D Emi (Bmi – less common but not unheard of)
Common chords in A: A Bmi C#mi D E F#mi
Common chords in E: E F#mi G#mi A B C#mi
Common chords in D: D Emi F#mi G A Bmi
Common chords in C: C Dmi Emi F G Ami
B is a common key in many worship tunes but it is usually capoed on the fourth fret and played using chord shapes from the key of G. I find that this key makes for easy medley’s of lots of great worship tunes: Marvelous Light, You Never Let Go, Blessed Be Your Name, Nothing But the Blood (Redman), Not to Us, Sweetly Broken and the list could just go on and on.
Melody
Melody is usually what I learn next. Think of the melody as the “sung” part of a song…that’s kind of a tongue twister isn’t it. It’s important that the worship leader have a good firm hold on the melody of a song. This will better enable them to help their respective fellowships learn the song. As a general rule of thumb, most melody’s in worship songs are simple and repetitive. This makes them quick and easy to learn and that’s ideal in a corporate setting. As the vocalist you don’t want to do a bunch of melody alteration as you sing. This could throw people off, make them uncomfortable and damage the experience that they’re having. Everything that a worship band does is done with the mindset of helping people meet with God in expectancy and glorify Him through the offering of song. If the singer starts doing all kinds of crazy stuff then people could start to focus on him or her and that is not at all what you want in a corporate worship setting. The moral of the story…stick to the melody.
Backgrounds
In worship tunes figuring out the form, the melody, and the key is usually a quick and painless process. The backgrounds, i.e. cool guitar/keyboard/drum parts, can be infinitely more difficult because mimicking something with your voice is much easier than replicating an instrumental background on your particular instrument. This is especially true if you’ve never tried to do such a thing before. If you play guitar but have never tried to transcribe guitar parts by ear you’ll find much frustration before you find ease and success. The same is true for any other instrument. Background figures can make a song sound so much deeper and mature. For example, you can play Chris Tomlin’s Indescribable without that really cool guitar lick at the beginning, but it sounds much more interesting if it’s there. Background figures require much more time and effort out of an individual. However, if your praise band meets on a regular basis and you have enough time to work all that stuff together then I think you’ll find the process very rewarding and worthwhile. This kind of work is really the heart of true transcribing. It means that you’re beginning to think like a musician. You’re beginning to think more like a cog in the wheel and you’re starting the very important process of learning how you contribute to the whole sound. This is a key mentality in a worship band. I highly encourage every musician to sit down and figure out those little “here and there” parts that you hear in worship tunes. They’re usually really easy and they will help make your praise band better.
When I’m transcribing a song I usually do it in this order: Key (including the chord progression), Form, Melody, and Backgrounds (if they are needed and if I have the time). You certainly don’t have to do things in this order. Find what works for you and do it.
So if those are the primary elements of transcribing then the next question might be, “How do you do it?” I’ll tell you the same thing my teacher told me in college, “Experiment, get it wrong, experiment, get it wrong some more, experiment, get a little bit of it right, experiment some more, get more right, experiment more, get even more of it right, continue to practice and experiment and voila…after potential months of frustration you’ll finally know how to do it.” So the answer to the question is that you just have to do it. You have to first gain some basic knowledge. If you’re a guitarist or a keyboardist then you’ll need to know your common chords in your common keys. If you don’t know how to play basic chords then you’ll experience an unhealthy amount of frustration that might drive the joy out of playing. Hang out with other musicians. They’ll be able to help you figure songs out. They will also help you develop your ear. Before long you’ll begin to recognize things. You’ll hear a song and you’ll say, “Hey I think that’s in G.” Then you might go home, look up the words on the net, play around with some different chords and find out that you were right, that song was in G. You may even get to the place where you pretty well know the key and the chord progression after hearing the song a few times. You’ll even start to remember some of the background figures and be able to play them without the recording. Music will become accessible to you in a whole new. Remember, human beings are natural mimicks. It's how we learn how to speak, how to feed ourselves, and how to do a whole list of other important things Just don’t forget, share what you’ve learned. Pass it on to other musicians so that everyone can experience the joy of music with no more help than the aid of their ears. Now, enough reading…go start transcribing. Here, I’ll get you started…
Chris Tomlin’s song How Great is Our God is in the key of C on the studio album. It has no chords outside of that key. It uses three chords most of the time but altogether the song has four chords. One of those four chords doesn’t happen very often. That’s enough info to get you started. Have fun and good luck.
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