How a Professional Composer Transcribes Music in Real-Time

Transcribing chords and melodies from random songs in real-time while explaining the process in detail. A step-by-step breakdown of how I figure out music by ear.

Chapters:
00:00 - Intro
01:27 - The Process
0:2:37 - Song #1 Chords
09:50 - Song #1 Melody
11:47 - Song #2
14:37 - Song #3 Chords
18:10 - Song #3 - Melody
21:32 - Song #4 Chords
24:01 - Song #4 Melody
26:24 - Final Thoughts

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[eliasw]

Just found your channel. All these videos and this kind of knowledge/practice is exactly what I have been looking for and have had a feeling that I need to learn for years now. You are the perfect teacher. Thanks a lot for your effort and for sharing your experience!

[Zama.]

I watch a lot of music videos and hadn’t seen anyone do this. Very insightful for me. Well done

[Yhoshua_B]

Having the keys blown up across the bottom of the screen was super helpful! Much easier to follow for someone like me =-)

[rogeralleyne]

You have a very very strong channel that I'm glad I stumbled upon!! I'm an 👂 training "junkie" because for me music @ it's base is an aural art!! So I welcome the instructions and commend you on your channel!!!🙏🙏🙏

[swaggyboi-nkrb]

wow how have i not seen this video yet.. thank you very much for showcasing the process

[mistfantasy]

Thanks for the video!
Really like to see a process of transcribing.
8 months have passed, since I've started to train ear with drones, Function ear trainer and Complete Ear Trainer.
Still cannot hear instantly what I felt, but singing helps to feel scale degrees.
Maybe now I will accent on chords qualities, bass motion and recognizing a chords.

[LincolnFrias]

Thanks a lot. For someone that finds impossible to learn music by ear as is my case, it is really helpful to see someone good at it describing what is happening in his mind. Please do something that helps differentiate major and minor chords in context. Thanks from Brazil! 👏

[rautshsale]

absolutely loved this
2 ideas that instantly came to mind:
1x i'd love to see you do this with one song you'd actually find difficult to learn. maybe something somewhat jazz related? not that i wanna see you struggle per se lol but i'd love to see how your mind thinks when it really does not know something right away (which here seemed to almost always be the case here). something where maybe the bass has more melodic movement and/or the root is not that obvious? or maybe something where the bass isn't playing the root at all, in a way changing the quality of the chord. or when learning a song, how do you differentiate between a chord change and a key change, or how do you deal with rootless and/or more complex chords, or even modes etc. basically would like to see you work through any, or some of these.

and on the other hand, i'd love to see you do this, as if you're a complete beginner. meaning, as if you cannot yet tell right away what a chord quality is, for example. what are context clues from a song you'd use then? what are things you'd try to "take away" from learning each song? what extra things would you do, assuming you don't know much theory? is it "necessary" to stop learning the song, familiarize oneself with the key/scale and then come back to the song? or is this redundant and this will improve just by learning songs themselves?
would you aid the learning with internet, as in googling a chord voicing to learn this way if something is major or minor, for example? or should this specifically be avoided and with scales knowledge and headaches, we should be able to get there ourselves?
basically would love to see the thought process a complete beginner should (or could) have

[deejayvu]

thanks a lot Max - great topic and even better explanation 😉

[fiscaldisco]

This was so valuable. I've done so much ear training and I feel like I'm not progressing as much as I would like when applying my training to real songs, but following along with you I realized I *can* do it, but having a little bit of structure like you're showing helps so much.

[gabriel.andreato]

You are so amazing max, I love how honest you are, any magic, only experience... Thanks 🙏

[garreth]

Most helpful video about transcription I've seen so far! Would love to see more, since most places I look for ways to become a better pianist (musician in general) end up pointing back to transcription.

[videomarknet]

Been looking forever...first time I finally find this type of content. Thanks for putting this together. It's really surprising that no one actually does more of these.

[Pro_Dhillxn]

Learned a lot.. thank you Max for creating such videos✨️💯

[crash]

This is very cool, somehow this is very pleasant way to educate myself, thank you for that.

[bjornstromberg]

Well explained!

It would be cool to see what a hard-to-transcribe song would look like to you, just focusing on one song for 30min. Maybe the song is complex, mix is muddled etc. and you explain what makes it harder and some workarounds, looping, recording, separating with eq.

[janakinathg]

Thanks for your lessons, i follow regularly.
Need to practice and learn a lot.

[findmads]

This is great ! Please do more. Would be nice with a few suggestions as to how you like to practice each competence involved🎉

[flowwithangela]

I am on a learning journey to improve my musicality, I found your videos have been really helpful to train my ears to the music, especially when you sing the tunes out after you play on your keyboard. Thanks to all your music talents👍

[davidespinosa]

Great, looking forward to your ear training course !