Simple starter project, transcribing song from TV clip

[MixieArmadillo]

First, I want to acknowledge that yes, it's probably extremely dweeby that I love the old Western TV shows. =)

I've only been playing for a couple years, no lessons or anything, really at a very basic beginner level. So far I've mostly been practicing mechanics with scales and a metronome, simple stuff (Old Black Cat/Yankee Doodle/My Bonnie) and a few songs that I have the sheet music for (Sloop John B, Leaving on a Jet Plane, Gunsmoke theme) to give you an idea of level. I'd really like to start working on learning to play by ear, so I thought it would be good to pick a couple simple tunes that I can't find on paper and chip away at putting them down. So far all I really know how to do is to listen to it, pluck around, and happen upon the notes by accident. I don't really have the, um, auditory vocabulary to recognize what is a chord or pick out identifiable sequences yet.

I don't really know why I'm posting this other than maybe for a little encouragement or some starter hints! The two songs I'd like to work on are the Ballad of Paladin (from Have Gun, Will Travel), and this random little tune from Bonanza: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b82VOjrty64

The chords for Paladin are on the web, but I don't really know how to play with chords yet so what I'm looking at doesn't really help me much. Am I mostly working on picking out the strum pattern and correct moment to change in order to make it sound "right"? I definitely don't even know what I don't know!

I should say that I know a handful of chords, I just haven't yet worked on much beyond making the shape and fingerpicking them. This will be my first effort at using strumming or putting them together to make a song.


PS: I also desperately want to learn "Lydia O'Lydia", which I have the sheet music for, but maybe I should save that for the accordion? It looks hard! =)

[Mark Robertson-Tessi]

There are different aspects to transcribing a song that you might want to tackle independently, at least to start with. The melody of the song and the chords to the song are worth considering separately. In the Bonanza clip, there are three different elements you might work on: There is the melody, which is what Pernell is singing. There are the chords, which is what he's playing on guitar. Those two would be enough to capture the song, but you could also go further and transcribe Hoyt's whistling and humming and so forth as a second harmony melody.

One tip is to make sure you have the melody in your head before putting fingers to the fretboard. If you can sing it and hear it yourself, it will be much easier to hear when it's right on the mandolin.

For chords, you might start by just finding where the chords change. Once you have those spots, then you can start filling in what the chords might be. Some theory knowledge can help quite a bit with figuring out specific chords because of certain common relationships (for example, the idea of one, four and five chords being the most common). But even if your theory knowledge is not to the level of knowing chord relationships in a key, you can still work on this. When the chord changes, does it go back to an already used chord? You might find that you end up with only 3 or 4 different chords used in the whole song. Even if you don't know what they are, your ear is starting to hear the different flavors of harmony this way.

Let us know how it goes!

Cheers
MRT

[MixieArmadillo]

Hey, thanks!!!

I can sing the melody (well, Pernell's part) to Endless Road--I ripped it to MP3 and it's in frequent rotation on my play list! =)
I should probably put "sing" in quotes because I don't really know that I know how to make the sounds coming out of my mouth sound like the sounds in my mind. Is knowing how to sing it internally enough, or should I practice singing the individual melody notes in front of a tuner? I'd like to learn how to sing at a basic level too (in the sense that I want to be able to sing to/with my [theoretical] kids some day) but I have a bit of a phobia to work on, there... =)

[Mark Robertson-Tessi]

"Singing" works fine. It's primarily about the internal singing, though there is benefit to singing it out loud, too.

Cheers
MRT