AUM162: Week 6

At the end of this week, we have our second Milestone of Project 1 due, which is to transcribe the rhythm and melody of Camilla Cabello's "Havana", so our lecturer this week helped us understand what we needed to do for this assignment.

For the project, we only needed to transcribe the melody and rhythm of the main vocals (both female and male) and the synth bass line for the whole track, as well as to mark out the song structure and include the tempo of the track. It was also recommended to try and transcribe some of the other instruments in the track but for only a verse and chorus.

The track's melody of the vocals and bass were simple and repetitive but the rhythms, especially of the vocals, took a bit longer to transcribe as it was going between 8th and 16th notes, and there was a bit of syncopation going on as well. The bass' rhythm was alright as it was repetitive. After transcribing those, I wanted to challenge myself and transcribe the melody and rhythm of as many instruments as I can hear, for just a verse and chorus. I managed to transcribe majority of the drums/percussion, the backing vocals, harmonies, and ad-libs of both male and female, the main piano sample, and other instruments. I chose the most stock instruments on Xpand!2 and when I listened back to what I transcribed for the verse and chorus, it sounded like a bad karaoke backing track, but I was surprised it covered those sections well I thought.

After doing this transcribing assignment, it has improved my critical listening skills, and now I'm paying more attention to how tracks I listened to are laid out instrument-wise, how they might be EQ's, what effects could be used, etc. It was also good to learn how to recreate a track by just listening, without having to find the chords online or have some sort of reference.