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 Joanne in Malaysia. Joanne has been with Tunescribers the longest out of anyone on the team, and is one of our busiest, most-requested transcribers.
Tunescribers
First of all, why don’t you tell us a little bit about how you got into transcribing – what’s your background?
Joanne
I started when I was 17 years old actually. It was just for fun, and a little bit for my class. We had to do a short arrangement of one of our songs. That’s how I started with music notation software.
Then, when I graduated high school, I was working in a music school. I had a music mentor at the time – he was very good with contemporary music, so he got me to do some transcriptions to help equip me for university.
Slowly, I began to get transcription work, and as I went through university, the transcription helped me understand different kinds of music. I was classically trained, so there was a lot to learn!
Tunescribers
What instruments do you play? And where do you play them?
Joanne
I mostly play the piano and keyboards. I’ve played in a church band since I was 9, and they mostly playoff chords and lyrics. I learned to play from lead sheets during university – I’ve tried to bring proper arrangements in, but not everyone is trained to play that way!
I’ve also played in some musicals before – we did Joseph and the Technicolor Dreamcoat, which was fun! We did a production here in Malaysia last year; I was the musical director, and my husband was in the band. We only had a five-piece band to cover the whole orchestra, so I had to play around with it quite a bit and played some of it on the keyboards.
Tunescribers
Let’s talk a little about your transcription process then – imagine you’ve been sent a standard piano/vocal score. Where do you start?
Joanne
I usually listen to the song all the way through, once, then I’ll start with the piano parts first. I don’t stop to work out the chords or anything beforehand, I just go start to finish with the piano part. I’ll go back and check the chords again, one more round, and I’ll do the vocal parts later.
I work in Sibelius, and I use a MIDI keyboard for big chords, but I work faster with the computer keyboard – with Numpad especially.
Tunescribers
How long have you been with Tunescribers then? I know you were one of the earliest recruits!
Joanne
I started before Tunescribers was a thing! I got hired by Jeff [Tunescribers founder and president] through a freelancing site, and he told me he wanted to find some transcribers to join a team. Gradually, as the company has grown, I’ve stuck with it. I think I’ve done a little over five hundred transcriptions with Tunescribers.
Tunescribers
Wow, that’s a lot! Do any of those stick out at all – any memorable ones?
Joanne
Well, there’s one project that was quite long. It was a musical called Elite and was interesting to work on such a unique project.
SIDENOTE:
Jeff says: Elite was one of the most ambitious transcription projects we’ve ever done – the music was extremely complex and we were working from single-track, 30-year old cassette tape recordings. However, we were extremely fortunate to have the music’s original composer involved with the project to review our work and help us through some of the murkier sections.
I also really like working on gospel music – those are fun! They’re some of the hardest things to transcribe, but enjoyable to listen to. I recently worked on a great version of Joy To The World. The harmonies of the choir part were super difficult – it didn’t help that they didn’t line up with the piano part at all! Vocal rhythms in gospel music can be very fluid, and sometimes there’s a bit of guesswork about what is intended because it’s not exactly in time.
Tunescribers
Apart from gospel music then, what is your favorite thing to transcribe?
Joanne
Solo piano music – not so much rhythmically complex jazz, but certainly film music, or pop. I do play a bit of jazz here and there, but I’m not a superb jazz pianist or anything, so I find it a bit harder. So yeah, simple, enjoyable piano music is the best!
Do you love that kind of piano music too? Get in touch for a quote, and use JOANNE5 at checkout to get 5% off your order, and specifically request Joanne at the same time!