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Transcribing - "Fear Not This Night"
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FinalPatriot
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October 15, 2012 - 9:07 pm
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Hello again folks!

 

If you've not heard this song (link below) yet, it's probably one of the most inspiring and emotionally powerful works I've ever heard.  Sadly enough, I listen to it over and over again as I've been trying to write it for the violin.  However, with my now 6 weeks of study, it's been highly difficult for me to try and figure this out as my intonation just isn't that skilled yet.  I was wondering, do any of you all know where I can find this written for the violin? 

If not (and I know this is a lot to ask for) but could I possibly plead with one of you experts out there to help me figure out who to write this piece out so that I can learn to play it?

 

Thanks!

"I know a girl who cries when she practices violin because each note sounds so pure it just cuts into her, and then the melody comes pouring out her eyes. Now, to me, everything else just sounds like a lie."

Conor Oberst
 
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cdennyb
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October 15, 2012 - 11:04 pm
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WOW, that is an awesome piece of work. I will certainly be following this thread to see what comes up!

I think a lot of the really great music for violin(S) and cellos comes from the video game industry. Fantasy V is a wonderful source for violin music that's easy and slow and has that classical tint to it that us beginners can easily play.

Good taste! thumbs-up

"If you practice with your hands you must practice all day. Practice with your mind and you can accomplish the same amount in minutes." Nathan Milstein

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RosinedUp

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Off the bat I would say to try some easier stuff first.  I would set this as an intermediate-term goal.  Would you be satisfied if you could transcribe this and play it six months or a year from now?

You need to define how complete and accurate you want the music.  I guess you could transcribe the whole orchestral piece into a software file and then you play the violin part.  Do you want to have the violin replace the vocal?  Do you want to end up with a stand-alone solo violin piece you can play?  Do you want the full length, or just to be able to play a few key parts that evoke the feelings of the piece?  I think you have to be inventive and adaptive to do something like this.

You need to say something about whether you can read and whether you have transcribed or adapted anything before.

Maybe twice a week I will hear something I want to learn or remember, so I write the music for it.  I use a program called MuseScore, which is free and works pretty well.  After you write, you can play it back to hear whether it sounds right.  You can score a symphony with dozens of parts with it it you want. Often I don't transcribe the whole piece, but just some key parts.  Maybe I don't intend to develop the piece completely but just write something, planning maybe or maybe not to come back to it.  I've done only a few pieces that have more than one part.

I use a tuner to find the main pitches of the piece, then I fit the rest of the tune to that.  I choose a note that I hear, then I sing that note into the tuner so as to know what note it is.

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cdennyb
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You people that are gifted like that never cease to amaze me!cheerleader

How incredible it is that you can listen to a piece and write the notes that correspond to it... amazing and magic I say...hats_off

"If you practice with your hands you must practice all day. Practice with your mind and you can accomplish the same amount in minutes." Nathan Milstein

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FinalPatriot
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October 16, 2012 - 7:14 am
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RosinedUp said
Off the bat I would say to try some easier stuff first.  I would set this as an intermediate-term goal.  Would you be satisfied if you could transcribe this and play it six months or a year from now?

 

Do you want to have the violin replace the vocal?  Do you want to end up with a stand-alone solo violin piece you can play?  Do you want the full length, or just to be able to play a few key parts that evoke the feelings of the piece? 

 

RosinedUp,

I agree and fully understand that this is a difficult piece as I spent a good bit of time last night trying to figure it out.  I can sort of piece it together on the piano but the vast amount of sharps/flats tend to trick me up a bit on the violin.  As for the time, sure I'd be happy to have it at any point but I'm so hard headed at times that once I focus on something like this, I'll find a way no matter how difficult.  I think the challenge is part of the fun to some extent.

 

As for the piece itself, my goal is to create a stand-alone piece which replaces the vocals and contains the entire 4+ minutes of the song.  You mentioned some software that helps with this process.  Is there anything in particular that you recommend?

"I know a girl who cries when she practices violin because each note sounds so pure it just cuts into her, and then the melody comes pouring out her eyes. Now, to me, everything else just sounds like a lie."

Conor Oberst
 
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RosinedUp

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October 17, 2012 - 10:53 am
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FinalPatriot said   You mentioned some software that helps with this process.  Is there anything in particular that you recommend?

Hit the download key at http://musescore.org/ .  MuseScore is free and growing, runs on any OS, can play the score that you write, produces midi, mp3, .wav, .pdf, etc.

How are you doing notation now?  Can you read music? 

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RosinedUp

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cdennyb said
You people that are gifted like that never cease to amaze me!cheerleader

How incredible it is that you can listen to a piece and write the notes that correspond to it... amazing and magic I say...hats_off

I hate to break my own mystique, but it is no more magical than being able to listen to English and write down what was said.  The first step in doing that with English is to be able to repeat a word that you heard.

If I were to play a note on my violin and would repeat it every time that you asked, do you think that you could match the pitch by playing a note on your violin?  I mean could you play the same pitch that I played?  And if you could do that, could you "read your fingerboard" to know the letter name of the note we both played?

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FinalPatriot
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October 17, 2012 - 2:25 pm
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RosinedUp said

FinalPatriot said   You mentioned some software that helps with this process.  Is there anything in particular that you recommend?

Hit the download key at http://musescore.org/ .  MuseScore is free and growing, runs on any OS, can play the score that you write, produces midi, mp3, .wav, .pdf, etc.

How are you doing notation now?  Can you read music? 

Thanks for the link!  I'm going to download this tonight and see how it works.  As for reading music, I can to an extent though I'm not as fast as I would like to be.  I can read sheet music fairly well though I'm not as quick when it comes to knowing the finger position.  What I've been doing is learning the position and then memorizing the piece.  I actually learn by ear which helps in some cases.

"I know a girl who cries when she practices violin because each note sounds so pure it just cuts into her, and then the melody comes pouring out her eyes. Now, to me, everything else just sounds like a lie."

Conor Oberst
 
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RosinedUp

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October 17, 2012 - 2:55 pm
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I guess that musical literacy goes like English literacy.  You improve your reading and writing at the same time.  You could listen and speak and repeat before you could read or write. 

Not that everybody has to be good with sheet music.  I guess none of the Beatles could read or write.  Of course they didn't need to, since they were leading the way.  But I feel that not reading is an unnecessary limitation.  A lot of people get scared that it is too hard, when really it is not all that hard to learn the basics.  It is a kind of fairly simple code in the way that the alphabet is a code to the sounds we make when speaking.  In the same way, some people never learn to read English, whereas if somebody just explained phonetics to them, they would basically be able to read after ten or twenty hours of study.  I would say with both English and music, writing correctly is harder than reading correctly.

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RosinedUp

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FinalPatriot said 
Thanks for the link!  I'm going to download this tonight and see how it works. 

 

Here is a link to a piece that I transcribed and uploaded in the past few days:

http://musescore.com/user/5001.....es/67952  The Sailor's Hornpipe

Near the bottom of https://fiddlerman.com/forum/s.....t-name-it/ you will find the original youtube video that I transcribe it from.

I am guessing that you will enjoy MuseScore.  Maybe you have already tried the video tutorials on the download page.

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FinalPatriot
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October 17, 2012 - 7:21 pm
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I just downloaded it a moment ago and it's going to be a great tool once I get better at writing.  I was wondering though, is there a program that will allow me to play a song from iTunes and then it will create the sheet music from the mp3 file?

"I know a girl who cries when she practices violin because each note sounds so pure it just cuts into her, and then the melody comes pouring out her eyes. Now, to me, everything else just sounds like a lie."

Conor Oberst
 
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RosinedUp

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FinalPatriot said 
I was wondering though, is there a program that will allow me to play a song from iTunes and then it will create the sheet music from the mp3 file?

I am not an expert, but I am guessing that solving that problem in general is impossible.  Maybe there is software that could take an mp3 of some simple tune with some simple instrument and create sheet music.  But I am not a good one to ask about that.

I don't know how much you have looked around regarding the song you are interested in.  Maybe someone has already done a transcript of it.  Maybe the record company of the artist even sells the sheet music.  Of course you would not learn nearly as much about music that way.

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FinalPatriot
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November 15, 2012 - 8:44 am
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I just wanted to update this thread as I found someone who has done a violin solo for this song and it's simply amazing.  Granted, the video from YouTube is a bit "off" but I really like how he simplified the song.  Thanks to an app on my phone combined with musecore, I'm writing the piece now.  When I get it done, I'll post a link for anyone who wants a copy.

 

Anyways, here is the video and a link to where you can download the song itself:

 

list=PL540D8926C91FC2AD&index=23&feature=plpp_video

 

http://soundcloud.com/diwa-de-.....r-not-this

"I know a girl who cries when she practices violin because each note sounds so pure it just cuts into her, and then the melody comes pouring out her eyes. Now, to me, everything else just sounds like a lie."

Conor Oberst
 
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RosinedUp

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Great that you found someone who's already blazed the trail so to speak.  We stand on the shoulders of giants, as they say.  Yeah, it's a great video.  That guy is quite a performer and producer.

Can you say something about the phone app you mentioned: approximately what it does and how you are using it?

Also wondering what your key signature for this looks like.

I think you are going to learn a lot, including how to play a beautiful song that you love.

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FinalPatriot
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The app I'm using is called "Violin Notes" and essentially, it creates a overview of the violin with all note positions.  In addition, you can push any of the notes and it will play the correct tone (helps with intonation) and show the correct format on each line.  With that, I can use it as a tool to actually write the piece.  Granted, I tend to play by ear but I wanted to write it all out so I can better learn theory. 

As for the key signature, um, I'll have to get back with you on that one.  ;)

"I know a girl who cries when she practices violin because each note sounds so pure it just cuts into her, and then the melody comes pouring out her eyes. Now, to me, everything else just sounds like a lie."

Conor Oberst
 
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RosinedUp

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FinalPatriot said 
As for the key signature, um, I'll have to get back with you on that one.  ;)

The key signature will be either all flats or all sharps or all naturals.  Draw two blank staffs on a piece of paper.  Sound out the first 15 seconds or so of the violin part of the video.  Whenever you come to a note that is not a natural, it has two names.  For instance, C# is the same as Db.  Write flats on one staff and sharps on the other.  (Don't write notes on those two staffs---just sharp and flat symbols.) Then look at  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/C....._of_fifths .  Remain calm: you don't have to read the whole article---just look at the big diagram at the top right.  If the piece has less than five sharps and less than five flats, only one of your two staffs will match one of the key signatures that you see in the diagram: either flats or sharps.  That will be your key signature, and you can read the name of it (in red) from the diagram.  That is the key signature you should select when you create your score in MuseScore.

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