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 Manuel in Venezuela. Manuel is one of our top guitarists, with an incredible ear for detail, but today we’ll be learning that his favorite thing to transcribe is… bassoon?!
Tunescribers
Hi Manuel – why don’t we start off with a bit of a background about your work as a musician and transcriber?
Manuel
I’m a classical guitar player – that’s my specialty. After I studied classical guitar, I became interested in arranging and composition. I studied harmony and counterpoint and started doing some small arrangements for music theatre for friends, or people would ask me to do something for string quartet or things like that. Small pieces and projects. So since I started to get into arranging, I had to learn how to transcribe, because when you arrange, almost always there is at least a small phase of transcription.
As a guitar player, I also play electric. I think for us as guitar players, the transcribing process is very important. You are always learning to these solos and riffs, and you don’t always have the sheet music, so you have to use your ears. So I think for guitar players, it is a little more important than for other instruments – a violin player maybe doesn’t have to transcribe so much. I don’t know, I’m not a violin player! But for us, it’s a very very important part of our learning process.
Tunescribers
Definitely! And the other thing with guitar, of course, is that it has so many specific things you need to know about when you’re notating for it. Every instrument has its own things you have to learn, but guitar, in particular, has this whole world of strange shapes and lines all to itself!
Manuel
Yeah – a lot of composers have this fear of writing for guitar. They can write for piano and for violin and for orchestra, and all these other instruments and ensembles, but guitar is so particular! A piano is almost a limitless instrument, but guitar can be very limited, and you have to take your score to a guitarist to see if it is even playable!
There’s one transcription I did for Tunescribers a little while ago that sticks out – Remington Ride by Danny Gatton. It was about nine minutes long and had crazy guitar soloing all the way through the piece. He uses so many different techniques, and it was difficult because, for parts of it, he was just making noise on the guitar. Just shredding, but it’s not clear what notes he’s playing, because at the moment, in the feel of it, they just become noise! It really works, because he has so much feel in the song, but when you put it on the sheet – you’re like “how do I transcribe this, it’s pure noise!”
Tunescribers
Can you tell me a bit about your process – how do you approach a song like this?
Manuel
Sure – when I’ve sent a transcription job, the first thing I do is listen from the beginning to the end. I listen to the whole thing before I write a single note. That way, I can say to myself “OK, it has a rhythmic part; it has a solo; this part I have no idea what’s going, I’ll have to be aware of that”. Then, after this first listen, I open up Sibelius and do all the file set up – entering the key and things like that.
When transcribing, I have an advantage, since I have absolute pitch; it is rare when I’m transcribing that I’ll actually pick up the guitar, or sit at the piano. I do it all by ear! And because I have so many years of playing guitar, I have the fretboard in my mind. So unless the song is in an unusual tuning, I almost “know” where all the notes are, so I don’t need to pick up the guitar and play it.
Tunescribers
And what is your favorite kind of thing to transcribe – what should our readers send your way?
Manuel
A lot of the transcription process can be quite mechanical, but there was one I did a while back for a bassoon quartet that was one of my favorites I’ve worked on. It was a piece called Miranda by Jean Sibelius, and it was so beautiful, and such an interesting ensemble. So I think the perfect transcription or the ones that I like the most are those where the ensemble is very rich and may be rare or unique. I really enjoy that!
Do you play with an unusual ensemble that will intrigue and challenge Manuel? Get in touch for a quote, and use MANUEL5 at checkout to get 5% off your order, and specifically request Manuel at the same time!