What is a Piano Transcription?
Piano Transcription
Generally speaking, a piano transcription is an attempt to reduce a piece of music originally written for other instruments (or vocals) into one suitable for playing on a piano. This can involve reducing the number of notes, changing the register or emphasis, removing accents and so on. It can also involve a considerable amount of work to match up the key of the transcription with the actual sound of the original recording. Often the piano transcription is done in order to enable musicians who do not have access to a full orchestra or chamber ensemble to perform the music at home. Many 18th and 19th century chamber and orchestral works have been transcribed in this way for study and enjoyment and, indeed, it was common practice for the composers themselves to arrange their own music for piano.
The process of a piano transcription begins with listening to the music closely and identifying the various parts and sounds. This can be a very difficult task, especially when the part is played at a quick tempo and/or when it has a lot of articulation and fingerings. The next stage is separating the individual sounds into their constituent parts (i.e., each note, each chord). This can be easier said than done because of the complexity of some musical sounds and the difficulty in predicting how they will sound on a piano.
Harmonics are a very important factor in this. Each harmonic of a given tone creates its own distinct “pitch” and the resulting set of harmonics forms what we know as the melody of a musical tone. The harmonies are usually integer multiples of the fundamental frequency of a note, i.e., 2nd Harmonic = 523 Hz, 3rd Harmonic = 785 Hz and so on. The goal is to identify and isolate these sets of partials in the music and then match them up with known harmonic sequences on the piano (e.g., Middle C is 261.6 Hz).
What is a Piano Transcription?
This step will reveal the pitches of all the notes being played and their durations. Then the process of transforming these into familiar music notation (i.e., an A4 quarter note) can begin. This can be aided by using software such as Transcribe! which can be used to set loop points, adjust tuning and slow down the music without changing pitch.
A piano transcription does not necessarily need to be completely accurate, however. In fact, some of the best arrangers in history (such as Bach who adapted the complete suites of Vivaldi violin concertos into his Piano Suites) created arrangements that were not strictly transcriptions. Nevertheless, a transcriber must keep in mind that if an element is not able to be reproduced on the piano then it must simply be left out.
For the beginner, transcribing without an instrument in hand may be very daunting. The best approach is to start with the easy bits such as melodies and then to work from there. The process is a bit like doing a jigsaw: once the easy bits are completed then the harder elements should fall into place.