Tools of the Music Transcription Trade

Step One: Download It

Firstly, DOWNLOAD WHAT YOU'RE LIFTING. This is great because you don't need an internet connection or active subscription to a streaming service to make progress, and you can use your own tools to help transcribe. This is the most important takeaway from this article.

My preferred tool to accomplish this is yt-dlp.

If possible, try to find stems for what you're lifting. These are the separate tracks that are recorded then mixed together to get the final product.

The rest of this article will be tools that can help you transcribe.

Music Player

Anything that can play the common audio and video formats (mp3/4, webm, etc.) will work great. I like IINA. The things to look for when choosing are:

  1. Fine-grained control over the playback speed - something better than 0.25x increments
  2. Control over the EQ of sound playback.

Notation Software

Writing things down is handy for later, and most notation programs out there let you play back what you've written. This makes for fast feedback on what your transcription, as you can play the original and your transcription to see if they match.

For bonus cool points, use a midi keyboard to input into your notation software.

Use MuseScore studio. Its free and good enough. The handbook and YouTube playlist have everything you need to get started.

Headphones

This is the other most important takeaway from this article.

Get a pair of in-ear monitors ("IEMs"), and use them to transcribe. Actually just get them anyways they're amazing.

For those who aren't familiar, IEMs are headphones designed for performing on stage. They have high sound quality and rubber earbuds that form a seal on your ear, providing passive noise cancellation. For the purposes of transcribing, the price to sound-quality ratio is INCREDIBLY superior to other headphone products. My $60 CAD pair of IEMs are the by FAR the nicest sounding headphones I own, and they're competing with several VERY expensive headsets:

The IEMs I own are the Linsoul KZ ZS10 Pro, purchased on amazon. I liked them so much I got a second pair to keep in my backpack.