Welcome to our Featured Transcriber series, where we sit down with some of the members of our transcription team and find out a bit more about them. This week, we’ll be speaking to Gatot in Indonesia. Our top transcriber in terms of volume, he’s completed nearly 2000 transcriptions at the time of writing.
Tunescribers
Where most of our team will work on 2-3 songs at a time, you tend to have more like 10-15 going at once! That’s got to take some organisation, walk us through a normal transcription day for you.
Gatot
I divide my working day into sections; for part of the day, I’m actually doing audio editing work, and later in the day I do transcription for Tunescribers. So I keep busy!
As part of my workflow, I really like to use my iPad Pro and Apple Pencil. I do the simpler tasks on iPadOS, and finish up and fine-tune on my laptop later on. I tend to make small chunks out of every project – input some notes here, input some lyrics there – that way I can pick up where I left off any time. The iPad really helps with that!
Tunescribers
You’ve transcribed for just about every instrument under the sun, but what instruments do you play yourself?
Gatot
My main instrument is guitar, but I play synthesiser with an experimental group – soundscapes played in Ableton Live with a MIDI controller. I play some piano, but I’ll never be more than a beginner with keyboard instruments! When I was 11 years old, my sister forced me to learn classical piano for two years But I can’t help it, I group up listening to 90’s alternative rock: Nirvana, Green Day, that sort of thing, so my heart is with the guitar. But the time I spent learning piano really opened my mind towards notation, and it means I know how the piano “works”.
Tunescribers
With the number of jobs that you take on, you’ve completed several hundred more transcriptions than our next busiest team member – do you have any that particularly stick out in your memory?
Gatot
For me, the story behind why we’re doing a transcription is big part of it. There was some work I did a few years ago where I did 2 or 3 songs every week for the same client. I found out later that the client was actually the composer’s wife who was collecting manuscripts of his music after he had passed away. She wanted to preserve the songs. Hearing that got me a bit misty-eyed, and made me feel so grateful to be working on those songs, and helping pay tribute and preserve the legacy of this composer.
This kind of story really makes me want to work, and take every job seriously. There is no simple or complicated work when you think of it like this – we’re always working for a real person, and maybe the song is super meaningful for them.
Tunescribers
That’s really beautiful – it’s always nice to hear that the work we do has real-world impact. Finally then, if you could imagine the perfect transcription job, what would it be?
Gatot
I always wanted to transcribe Chris Cornell – any Chris Cornell song! Soundgarden is my favourite band of all time, and Chris Cornell is my favourite songwriter. So yeah, I think that’s it, that would be my perfect transcription job.
Are you a Chris Cornell fan too and want sheet music for your favourite Soundgarden track? Get in touch for a quote, and use GATOT5 at checkout to get 5% off your order, and specifically request Gatot at the same time!