I’ve transcribed hundreds of hours of guitar music over 25+ years, using the method described in this article. It was such a slog that I ended up creating tool to help streamline the process: Soundslice (https://www.soundslice.com/).
It combines audio playback directly with a tab editor, so that you can immediately write down what you’ve figured out and your transcription stays in sync with the original audio. This makes transcribing incredibly fast and (importantly) accurate.
It’s got audio slowdown, precise looping, “synth overlay” (playback of the transcription and original audio at the same time, to spot errors), auto stem separation and a full-featured tab/notation editor with support for hundreds of notations.
When you’re done, you get a very useful artifact: a synced transcription, effectively a bespoke practice environment for that piece of music.
Over the years, Soundslice has expanded into a lot more than a pure transcription tool, but lots of people still use it for its original intended purpose. (It supports any instrument that uses western music notation, not just guitar.) If you’re at all interested in transcribing music, give it a shot.
I'm actually trying to build something similar to this for personal use, not as a product. What did you find was the most difficult technical step when building? I'm finding it particularly challenging to separate rhythm and lead guitar parts (both in terms of stem separation and also when transcribing by ear).
I've been working on it full-time since 2012, so it's hard for me to reduce 14 years' worth of work to a single "most difficult technical step."
Sorry, I don't mean to be rude or unhelpful, but that's not a question I can provide a meaningful answer to. There have been dozens, probably hundreds, of difficult technical challenges in building Soundslice.
Hey, just wanted to say I really love your software and it was a pleasure finding out that you guys are active on HN (I remember your ASCII tabs post). It's very pleasant to use, especially with the sync mode to help play over tabs I have with the official music video. Cheers
I just recently discovered Soundslice after decades of transcribing with various tools and libraries. They worked butyour tool puts everything together so well. Immediately subscribed. Thank you for making this tool. Cheers.
How have i never heard about this, will definitely give a try.
What about a DAW integrated transcription tool, as a VST maybe, is it too niche? This is something i always wanted and never really found in the capacity i needed, essentially doing what soundslice does both track per track and also having the full score, most tools available try to convert to midi via usual methods or do some mumbo-jumbo AI to write the score. Since 90% of recording musicians time is spent on a DAW and sometimes having everything in the box streamlines the work a lot.
Ah! Looks like Drumeo (part of Musora) uses Soundslice as their transcription tool? The UI of the demos exactly matches what I'm used to seeing in Drumeo.
It combines audio playback directly with a tab editor, so that you can immediately write down what you’ve figured out and your transcription stays in sync with the original audio. This makes transcribing incredibly fast and (importantly) accurate.
It’s got audio slowdown, precise looping, “synth overlay” (playback of the transcription and original audio at the same time, to spot errors), auto stem separation and a full-featured tab/notation editor with support for hundreds of notations.
When you’re done, you get a very useful artifact: a synced transcription, effectively a bespoke practice environment for that piece of music.
Over the years, Soundslice has expanded into a lot more than a pure transcription tool, but lots of people still use it for its original intended purpose. (It supports any instrument that uses western music notation, not just guitar.) If you’re at all interested in transcribing music, give it a shot.